Friday, February 15, 2013

In which I go back to college

Just a quick thing today, a reflection on the rewarding day I spent last weekend at my old college, St Edmund Hall, which held a celebration of "writing at the hall". It was enjoyable and inspiring. I'd like to write about it at length - and I may well do that - but I've got a full workload in front of me, and this Horus Heresy novel isn't going to just write itself (before you ask, it's The Unremembered Empire, direct sequel to both my Know No Fear AND Aaron's Betrayer, and The Lion hasn't actually punched Guilliman yet, but the fan and the faeces are going to meet when they both find out which other of their brothers are present in Macragge City...).

Anyway, the day was great. I particularly enjoyed the talks given by Samira Ahmed, Emma Brockes, and Stewart Lee (who, I discovered last night, name checks me in the extras on his latest stand-up DVD, Carpet Remnant World, which surprised and chuffed me). I also loved the fact that Samira was live-tweeting from the audience of my talk. And I found truly fascinating the fact that all of us, though we use writing in vastly different ways, had almost the same thing to say – or parallel, comparable things, at least – about the basic practice and craft.

As I said, I'm a little too busy writing to spend time today writing about writing, but I will direct you to Samira's blog where, unsurprisingly, she provides an excellent report of the day.






3 comments:

Jennifer White said...

Representative of the family and friends of the late and wonderfully talented science-fiction author James White here: I just discovered that you wrote a Doctor Who novel entitled 'The Silent Stars Go By'. Given that White wrote a critically acclaimed novel of the same name in 1991, I'm very curious as to how you could magically come up with the exact same title (one which is very relevant to White's work, and not, from reading the plot of your novel, to yours). We are very upset.

Helical Strakes said...

I believe Dan's Christmassy Doctor Who story was named after this book: http://www.amazon.co.uk/The-Silent-Stars-Go-Christmas/dp/1892514079

Anonymous said...

I thought it was named after the line in the Christmas Carol, "Oh Little Town of Bethlehem".