[Women in Genre, Day 11] Juliette Wade and Builders of Worlds

The Internet has its ways to connect people and I’m not sure whether I first met Juliette Wade as a person on Twitter and then discovered her wonderful blog or discovered the blog and thought it would be neat to meet the owner. Either way, I’m very glad I crossed paths with Juliette as she is a fine lady of genre – fun, kind-hearted and the most knowledgeable storyteller I’ve ever seen.

Juliette Wade is a fantastic person to know as a friend, but even better to know as a professional within the genre community. It’s people like Juliette who convince me day after day that I made a wise choice to throw myself in the one creative circle, other creative circles look down upon. I have been looked down upon by other ‘artists’, though honestly I know SFF writers and geeks is where it’s at, but it’s good to know we have erudite, considerate and positive people in genre – ahem, Juliette Wade.

Are you a writer? You need to stop reading this post and go visit her blog – TalkToYoUniverse (I hope you don’t take me seriously enough – you stay here and read this post; I’m not done here.), because it’s your substitute to a Creative Writing degree. Juliette Wade covers everything you’ll ever need to know about writing, because she’s technical as hell. I think she’s the only author I know who understands how to utilize every single word to its fullest potential.

Wade has an academic background, which explains how easily she switches from a storyteller to psychologist, anthropologist, linguist, historian and whatever her writing demands. Every single time I talk to her about writing or a particular scene or work, I see how she can get the best out every idea.

Every word matters. Every phrase serves a purpose. Every scene matters.

Wade is a master surgeon (clock-maker, if you prefer) in the way she can instantly break down a story to its components and address issues after one reading. Her fiction has so far been brilliant. She also helps other writers and is open to questions. Juliette even hosted a feature on her blog, where she would analyze the beginning of novel-length projects and provide her impressions as well as feedback on the worldbuilding. It’s incredibly hard to find people who are ready to help you as willingly as she had and I’m extremely grateful she has read my work and helped me out.

The newest project she has up and running for almost a year now (could be less, but I’m not one for keeping up with time) is the Worldbuilding Hangouts on Google+, which gathers passionate worldbuilding nerds and lets them loose on a topic. The resulting discussions are stimulating to say the least and provide multiple angles to an element in the worldbuilding process. It’s one of the few shared genre activities I have seen to benefit writers as fully. The best part, it’s hosted at an internationally friendly hour and has seen people from multiple cultures take participate.

I honestly can’t understand why she is not higher up in genre echelons by now, because she has a set of mad skills and a huge likeability factor.