Tuesday, March 27, 2007

Sometimes you don't need to write to have a productive day

Today or rather yesterday was not a productive day when it comes to writing, but was productive in the preparation for writing. First off I went to the housing benefit office. Opening post and dealing with paperwork fills me with dread. It’s been 5months since I started the course and it’s only today, I took the evidence in to say I’m a student, and get a discount on my council tax. As well as this I was making a claim for housing benefit, and had to make arrangements to pay towards the summons I got last week (see Facing demons post)

I spent over an hour there, and a lot of the time I probably made the woman helping me quite uncomfortable, by my constant tears. I felt completely drained afterwards, and couldn’t get my head round any writing.

Later however, my friend came round, who had inspired me in the first place, to write a book about vaginal medical conditions. The plan was interview her more on lichen sclerosus (LS), specifically this time looking at alternative remedies she has used. What had worked for her, and what hadn’t. We spent a few hours working, chatting, and eating dinner. We gathered a lot of information that I’m sure would be really useful for women with LS to read.

Then after bidding her farewell, I checked my emails. I start work experience at Vitality matters (www.vitalitymatters.org.uk) on Monday, and had an email from the editor. I have had 2articles already published in their magazine. They want me to go to an Organic Business media event on Monday, where small local organic businesses will be promoting themselves. They want me to write an article on Cut4cloth www.cut4cloth.co.uk, a Cornish based company that specialises in making clothing for babies, using natural organically grown cotton, which fits around a cloth nappy. When my daughters were babies I used cloth nappies, and found that babygro’s etc did not fit around them, so I feel this really fits a niche in the market. It’s very exciting to get right in there on my first day, and I’m really looking forward to it.

I also had an email telling me my website was online. As I’m a bit of a technophobe, I didn’t know what I was doing to set it up myself. All the pages are exactly as I had built, and designed them using the dreamweaver package, on the University’s computers. It looks great, all the links work. The only thing I want to change is some of the writing samples, as I have edited and improved them since I designed the site. I have added a link to my website, from this blog. It’s quite basic but I think its good enough for commissioning editors, and publications that may pay me for articles, to get an idea of who I am.

I may not have done any actual writing today, apart from on my blog, and comments on others, but my day has been productive in other ways.

3 comments:

miss-cellany said...

Love the website - well done. Am really impressed.

Suddenly realise I need to get my act together. Who did you get to do it, and was it lots of £?

x

Jacqui said...

I copied the pages onto a CD, and got Sara's hubby to sort it out.

It does costs £50, for the domain name etc, but this includes technical support, and it can be edited and changed around without having dreamweaver.

emapple said...

Well done for facing the benefit office. Bureaucracy often gets me in tears. "The computer won't let me" is, I find, the worst.

Website looks cool and nice to hear your feeling inspired.
xx