I just want to sit down with him over a good meal and a bottle of claret – and talk! I think he’s the best person who ever lived, though he was all too human. He was brave, reticent about his own history, always generous to those around him. He wrote great poetry, but also great letters, in which he often shared his philosophies of life and poetry. He had a great deal of emotional baggage about women, but chose his true love, Fanny Brawne, wisely. Despite becoming a qualified apothecary, he gave up any thought of a medical career to pursue poetry. He was pragmatic at times and a dreamer otherwise.

Many of his friends had their own gravestones inscribed “Friend of Keats”, years and even decades after Keats’ early death. I would just love to hang out with him, and a long afternoon and evening of conversation with him seems like bliss to me. And it’s not even that I want to ask him anything in particular. Try as I might to come up with an alternative, my answer here is John Keats. If you could sit down with one other writer, living or dead, who would you choose, and what would you ask them? (I suspect that becoming complacent would be totally counterproductive to my creativity.) I am always trying to find out just how good at writing I might be able to become. But I am always trying to discover whether I am actually good at it. Sterne – that I began thinking that maybe I could be a writer after all.Īs for whether I think I’m good at it… I must admit that I’m pretty darned pleased with what I’ve written and published so far, both fan fic and pro fic. But it was only at 29, when I finally started writing a professional novel – which became The Definitive Albert J.

And did I mention that lack of confidence…?ĭiscovering fan fiction in my twenties fueled my motivation to keep trying to write, and to keep trying to fail less badly at writing. I took Creative Writing classes in the latter years of high school, and then switched from Accounting to Professional Writing in college – before dropping out due to Real Life pressures. My early attempts were all thwarted by what I feared was a lack of imagination, or an inability to turn an idea into worthwhile prose. Or, more precisely, I always thought that a writer was the most marvelous thing to be – but I had no confidence that I could be one myself. When did you know you wanted to write, and when did you discover that you were good at it? Julie has written some questions and answers to share with us today! Julie has also brought along a great giveaway. Julie has come to talk to us about a new release, Writ in Blood. Today I am so pleased to welcome Julie Bozza to Joyfully Jay.

Albert J. Sterne by Julie Bozza