exactly the look I was going for

yesterday I went to my writing group - we have two groups, one in the main library for writing new stuff and one in the lovely Lit and Phil for reading stuff. yesterday was the reading group and I read the story I'm writing on the theme of "departures" which I intend to send to Mslexia in September. naturally, its a sad story. what can I say? I think misery is far more interesting. anyway, when I'd finished, Rowan told me that it was heart-wrenching and said that it made her want to go home and hug her children. and that, my friends, is exactly the look I was going for. it made me feel really warm inside. now I just need to write the other half of it, edit it, and get it off in time.

in other news, the boyf has broken his ankle. again. not the same ankle he did last time. the other one. how did he do it? walking. just walking over the bridge at Tynemouth whilst we were at the market. I've re-named him Mr Glass-Ankles...anyway, I'm going to have to leave it there because he's decided to play the Prodigy really, really loudly next to me, and he keeps talking at me, and poking me with his crutch, and I can't concentrate so I'm going to go and wash up instead.

lady of letters

this week, I have mostly been writing letters. lovingly crafting letter templates, drafting standard paragraph after glorious standard paragraph.

and the best news is, I've only just started. there are many, many letters just waiting for me to get my sticky little mitts on.

oh, how I am enjoying my new job! may the letters never end...

a little bit of tweaking...

So I told you that I’d pre-paid for a competition so I would have to enter, right? Well, as I pre-paid, I selected which story I was going to enter. It was “strongly considered” for last year’s Aesthetica competition, re-entered in this year’s Mslexia competition and as far as I could see, pretty much good to go, right?
Wrong.

I’ve just undergone the short story equivalent of thinking you’ll perhaps clear out your jewellery box and before you know it, you’ve emptied all your drawers, pulled everything out from under the bed and are sat in the middle of your room surrounded by piles of crap you haven’t had a use for since 2002.
A full-on accidental re-write, but oh! how I feel so much better for it. I’ve also given myself the luxury of time (it isn't due in until the end of June), so I can now leave it til next weekend and hopefully when I look at it again any faults will pop out at me, easily fixable, so I can then send it off.
I've also (finally) fixed the last lines of my story for the Waterstones Perfectly Formed competition and have just emailed that off. Over the last few days, I've had the inklings of another (longer) story, and the title has just come to me, as have the characters names so I'm going to start off by making some notes and see where that takes me. Originally, I thought it would be my NaNo story this year, but I need to start making notes now before I forget so if I play by NaNo rules, I can't technically start it yet...hmmmm...I think I will just have to see what happens. Its likely that I'll put it away and not look at it again until November anyway, so it might not technically be cheating...

Anyway, must go. The sunshine is glorious but I'm sat at the kitchen table being dedicated to my art. Go me.

odd day

today was a very strange day. it started off normally, I spent yesterday out of the office so caught up on my emails first thing, chatted to my team, drank some tea, as you do. about half past nine, my manager and the rest of the ops managers, and our director, and a girl from HR (carrying a box chock full of letters) spoke in whispers and then disappeared upstairs. uh-oh, we thought, and immediately started discussing all the horrible things that this could mean.

whispers + letters = change

five minutes later, we (ie all the managers) were summoned to the fifth floor. they like to get everyone in a room and give news in a controlled environment. we've recently moved into our building, and the fifth floor is currently unoccupied. glorious views of newcastle, some upturned tables and big empty spaces. everyone was thinking redundancy, what we got was redeployment. there are two sides to our department, benefit entitlement checks (where I work) and community legal advice (where I don't work), and my department is getting smaller and people need to move over to the other side.

phew! is that all? well, thats ok...isn't it?

well, yes, and no. no-one is losing their job (technically), but there are currently eight managers on my side. David and I are off on secondment for a year (more on that later) and we need to cut down and have two managers transfer to cla, and have three managers left on bec. doing the maths, that means that one person who is currently a manager will have to not be a manager soon. and that sucks. and for me, it means that when I go off on secondment, my job disappears, and although I've been reassured that I will still have a job to come back to, no-one knows what that job will be.

I don't like uncertainty. I like to plan. and I feel so, so sorry for whoever doesn't get their managers job, because although I know that having a job is better than having no job at all, and it could be an awful lot worse, the reality of being the one person who doesn't get it would be absolutely mortifying. and this person will be one of my friends.

as for me, well, I have a year to find myself a permanent job. a lot can happen in a year. part of me thinks, ok, I hadn't really intended to return from this secondment anyway. the plan had always been to find another job (more money, etc) and now my hand has been forced and thats ok. and then, another part of me thinks, sometimes life hands you a ready made deadline, and I should take advantage of it. a lot can get written in a year...

perhaps I should harness this uncertainty and use it to motivate myself. why perhaps? that is exactly what I should do...

in other news, with my new secondment comes a work blackberry. I am more excited by this than I should be. I've already sent one sarcastic out of hours email to IT... 

lovely, lovely three day weekends, I wish I had one next weekend too, oh, hang on, I do...

oh, how I love not being at work. the weekend so far has not been super-busy, apart from today, when we've had an adventure. we got up early and drove up to Alnwick to go to Barter Books which is a wonderful secondhand bookshop. you take your old books and they buy them off you and in return they give you credit which you can use to buy new books. its a marvellous system that makes me feel warm inside. anyway, they didn't want all of my books but they still gave me £16 credit, and I bought £20 worth of books so perhaps I failed on the part of the exercise that was to come back with less books than I went with, but hey ho. such is life.

so now we're catching up with glee, and I'm thinking about doing some writing. I've paid for some competitions already, so now I have to enter them. right? right. must stop procrastinating...

busy?

write write write write write write watch medium email for some info about a competition write write write drink a cup of peppermint tea and think about eating some icecream write write write well possibly more typing than actually writing does it still count? type type type type typey type type look on facebook phone my mum type type typey type type

the end

absence makes the heart grow fonder (is this true??)

hello. yes, I know, I know, its been a while. quite a while. a bit too long, perhaps. internet me went a bit shrivelled and wilted like a plant that I've been tasked to care for (I am very good at killing plants. every so often I decide that I'll buy living herbs and always have lovely fresh herbs for when I cook. I think I managed to keep some coriander alive for a week, once)

anyway, I have been watered (with tea) and now I am back. hooray! the reasons for my lengthy hiatus are...

• laziness (always a big reason)
• Las Vegas (where highlights included, but were not limited to, some small scale gambling wins, lunch in the revolving restaurant on top of the Stratosphere, watching Peepshow starring Holly Madison of Girls of the Playboy Mansion fame, a DJ set by Mix Master Mike where there was hardly anyone there and we threw some awesome shapes and it was a bit like a private disco, and then I harassed him loads at the end getting lots of things signed for almost everyone we know, getting an industrial ear piercing and buying a designer dress)
• a sunny weekend in Newcastle (where we've been to Tynemouth and eaten cider lollies and been to town and I found everything I was looking for and the boyf took me to the Vietnamese restaurant for my lunch, oh, and I've pitched my very pink tent in the back garden in the hope that it will rain soon so it will "weather" before I go to Glasto)
• applying for - and getting - a secondment. eeek! for the first time in a very long time I will be doing a job that doesn't involve benefits. scary, but exciting

anyway, they're really just excuses, but I have been very busy having fun and sadly, when I do this, the first thing to slip is my writing. I did write a little bit in Vegas, I started an awesome story for the next Mslexia submission on "Departures", I just hope I can pull it off (and get it in in time!!) I also worked on a story for a really good competition, and the idea was good but the story was terrible. no, thats not quite true, not terrible, just not finished. nowhere near. but because it was free I sent it off anyway. it made me feel horrible. I was embarrassed that someone will read it (probably not too many people as I imagine it will be binned almost immediately). anyway, I've learnt a valuable lesson there. although its important to set deadlines and stick to them, its also mortifying to send off work that I don't want to be associated with. I won't be doing that again.

speaking of competitions though, I've found a lovely little competition by Waterstones called Perfectly Formed

http://www.wbqonline.com/feature.do?featureid=505

very free, very good prizes, so really I think it would be rude not to enter it. and since my stories seem to always be on the short side, its the perfect competition for me!

next weekend the boyf has promised me a trip to Barter Books in Alnwick, so I've been sorting through my study quite ruthlessly - it is easier to get rid of books when I know I can exchange them for a credit note to buy more books. yaay!

anyway, must go. typing to do.

bye! xx

ps if anyone wants to see the very beautiful, very expensive, very designer dress that I bought, you can check it out here...

http://www.betseyjohnson.com/store/productdetails2.aspx?productid=8387&np=1101

its a bit longer on me (kind of top of my calves, the model must be a giant) but isn't it lovely? I have a wedding to wear it to, and then I will wear it to every occasion ever, until I get too fat to wear it, or it falls apart, whichever comes first. sigh. it is the most expensive thing in my wardrobe. its probably more expensive than the wardrobe itself. oh, how I love it so...