Hello from Jo
We are Jo.
Jo – short for Josephine – is our preferred pseudonym.
We are a (happily) married couple. He mostly writes scientific papers, she is a published novelist. She writes in Italian. English is not our native tongue, so creative writing in English was initially just a divertissement, and the idea of completing a novel – let alone publishing it – was a far cry from our expectations. Then something happened, and – in Jo’s analytic mind – the probability of getting published stepped up dramatically, from one in a million to, say, one in a thousand.
So here we are. One in a thousand is not so bad. And creative writing in English is so fun! We are looking forward to meeting you all.
Jo is not just a pen name. When Jo writes, she shows her distinctive personality and her signature style, mixing and merging creatively our writing styles and our discussions and our Weltanschauung.
Jo is us.
Nice to meet you Jo. 🙂
English is not my native language either. First drafts aren’t a problem – it’s fun! – but editing is. Also, my native language – Russian – is very descriptive and we loooooooooove long sentences. So to keep everything compact and condensed is another (HUGE) challenge.
And yet I’m determined to get published one day 🙂
Hi Victoria
thank you for your comment. Actually, you are lucky. There is at least one famous author who wrote in English and whose first tongue was Russian: Vladimir Nabokov. Joseph Conrad knew Russian as well – although his first tongue was Polish, I think – and he was a great innovator of English creative writing. So, you can have hope… and this gives hope to me, as well. The difficulties of writing in Engish for non-native speakers may seem overwhelming, but they are well-defined (essentially, we need a good copy-editor). The advantages seem non-existent at first sight, but I believe we do have a few…
I see from your profile you write hilarious and ironic female-driven short stories, and I’d really like to read one of them. Can you send it?
Thank you in advance
Best
Jo
Hi Jo! Thank you for your feedback, Yup, I’m in a good company ))
Reg. my short stories: that’s actually funny, because when I write them in Russian – they are ironic, but when I write the same story in English it’s DRAMA all the way. I don’t know, why!
Atm I’m digging deep into “childless egoist” label society plasters on women. And it’s not funny… But I do hope my writing can help both parties to understand each other better.