Writers and visits

My goodness, I’ve had quite an interesting day today. Managed to finish off the minutes I took yesterday and send the first draft to the boss for checking. We also had a really good meeting throwing round some radical ideas for the update to the Personal Tutors’ Handbook and getting started on sorting out the team away day over the summer. I even felt quite inspired – gosh, how astonishing!

At lunchtime I chaired the University Writers’ Group and we had a really good time – quite a few people, one or two new faces and lots of inspiring work. Bliss. No time to play a writing game today, unfortunately, but I’ve given it to them for homework. So there’s no escape, aha! Ooh and the lovely Rosemary took me to one side afterwards and said how much she’d loved Thorn in the Flesh, how unclichéd and unique it was, and what a positive and hopeful read. Thanks, Rosemary. And goodness me – it makes me think that when I tell everyone (as a kind of warning) how dark it is, then what I’m actually saying is how dark and difficult the writing of it was, rather than the reading of it. Heck, I should know by now that the last person to know what a book is really like is the writer. Or maybe I just find it difficult to cope with people asking about it – I must learn to be less English and apologetic! It’s a damn good read and I’ve very proud of it. There. I’ve said it now. Phew. I will have to go and lie down for half an hour to recover.

This afternoon, I am bravely attempting to tie the team down to a day they can actually do for our summer away event and checking out all those lovely conference hotels on the web. I particularly liked the one where the first picture you saw (and no, I’m not naming names – to protect the innocent …) was four scantily-clad girls preening to the camera. Hmm, maybe that’s not quite the sort of away day the boss was hoping for, though it’ll certainly catch their interest.

Tonight, I shall pop in and see Gladys on the way home, and hope that she’ll be awake enough to know I’m there. Last week, she was so fast asleep that after twenty minutes I left a note and sneaked out, feeling both relieved and guilty. It’s not a task I find terribly easy. And I’m wondering if I’ll get round to watching the video I was planning for last night, as I ended up running out of time yesterday. I’m not really in a writing mood today, so maybe.

Today’s nice things:

1. Feeling inspired by work tasks – gosh!
2. Writers’ Group
3. Rosemary’s comments about Thorn.

Anne Brooke
Anne's website
Goldenford Publishers