Growing into my very geeky job

When this blog first started I'd *just* been accepted into a University course in Creative writing and Criminology. I dropped the 'criminology' part, and focussed, instead, on Psychology for the five 'spare slots' that I had. That was just under two years ago - and last year, around this time, I finally worked out what I wanted to do when I graduated.
It's been a long path this year - because soon after I researched and discovered the fun that is my new carreer (and it's FUN with several invisible exclamation points after :D) I was quite badly injured - something I haven't - really - recovered from. But this week I finally, perfectly, married my love of writing with my love of psychology and crime, in a not unexpected (for me) way. And I'm hoping over the next couple of months that I can share it with you guys and other writers.

And that's why I'm so geeked out right now. I can do this - and I can teach it, and write about it, and talk about it passionately. It's growing, with my interest, and it's just about boundless.
And that's where I am. Training to be a forensic linguist 'by day', via a degree in Creative Writing and Psychology, and a postgrad diploma, and working on this 'by night'. I'll get to geek about it properly very soon, but until then I'm just delighted to get to take a run at it. Till then it's kinda hush hush, cause the platform is probably a 'one off' and I want to be fully ready to do it. But yay!

How's your summer looking?

Mama has her contract (kinda)!

I'm sorry I've been missing lately - it's been mad around here with end of year work for Uni, a photog shoot that just wouldn't line up with everyone that wanted to be there (and I can't post my part in it because it's 'ghostcamera' work - a bit like ghostwriting, just I loaned body pieces (my back specifically, because of my biohazard tattoo) and other fun stuff.

BUT - got my grades back this week and found out I got 3 B's and 2 D's (where the 2 D's are appealable because you can see where I was coping with my head injury (badly), or at least explainable), giving me a high 2:2 (C) for the year overall. Worse than 1st year, but in 1st year, I didn't have memory problems and serious trauma based writers 'block'.

And then, the week before we went off for the year, I wrote a book proposal, based on some of the stuff I'm studying right now (linguistics, forensics and some other stuff) and discovered I'd hit onto a great idea.
This morning I got my partial request back - with a note saying that they would want to see the rest once they'd evaluated this part unless my query didn't live up to the reality.
Contract for me!
And I'm back to blog. So...how have you been?

WOW, Twitter and writing

Talk about title stuffing huh, but that's the kind of attention span I have at the moment.
Anyway...
World of Warcraft is eeeebil. With four capital E's. For a start, I'm finding it very difficult not to stand up and scream 'Pwned' at the top of my lungs in creative writing board meetings, and for seconds, I'm trying to find a way to incorporate writing and WOWing. And it' isn't happening.
The thing about World of Warcraft is it's repititon on an ever increasing difficulty slider, but it's more like this buzz tooth scale, cause for a little while, at your new level, you're a 'harder' target for most mobs (non player characters, controlled by the program, that you have to kill). It's a bit like writing really - in some ways at least. You write up the scale, 'level' and then things are easier for a bit, till you tackle the next 'boss'.
Screaming PWNED at your manuscript won't win you points though.

Twitter is one of those things I'm now discovering is an intregal part of my 'day'. Since I got myself a very shiny G1, it's easier to do social networking basics, like tweet, so my feed has become just as innane, but updated no matter where I am, so it's slightly more random. No Pwning (ok, I'll stop it now), but plenty of silliness abounds. The great thing about the updater I use is it does my facebook and myspace feed - the downside is 'is ' is three outta 140 characters, so I miss it off most of the time, so my Facebook looks kinda wierd.
I'm looking for more people to add to my feed though, so if you're there, feel free to @kaiberie me and I can add you (and you can add me, if you like ;))

Writing on the other hand, unless you include my tweets and WOWage has gone....interestingly. I'm still halfway through my degree, and it's kinda hard to keep focus, to be honest. I'm constantly tired, and headachey, and have been coping with the snow on top of that, but lately, I'm finding that my non creative writing stuff (psychology and crime) is making me write more fiction. Poetry is intermittently sucky, depending on whether I'm focussed enough or not (usually not) and blogging is a complete non starter at the moment.

And that's my round up. Now, I'm curious, as ever. If you had to choose three words to sum up your week, what would they be, why and what slant can you put on them?

The *facepalm* week

It's been a *facepalm* week. (swiped from the vernacular of my nine year old who idolises Homer Simpson. Everything is 'doh' or *facepalm*!)
I planned everything out meticulously - even worked out that if I break my tasks into blocks of half an hour, or an hour, I cope better than four hours of working on one project. I actually get MORE done mixing up my day a bit, instead of blitzing through everything in massive chunks.
So there I was, calendar ready. Everything fit. I mean - I even managed to plan stuff around my odd uni hours (my university insists on having classes at 15 minutes past the hour, instead of on the hour).

And then - facepalm moment. I'd done a bragging twitter about it (which I have since removed) and another freind responded in IM - so you even fit your non fiction and fiction writing in? WOW! go you.
*FACEPALM*.

No, no I hadn't. Queue lots of desperate scrambling. I think, by getting up two hours earlier a day, I can be a zombie, and at least be too tired to care that I'm not working on my books, and own projects this week - after all the rearranging I did, other stuff just seems to have seeped into my gaps.

Another facepalm moment - I'm giving a presentation, on a wonderful book, called Beloved, by Toni Morrison, at my uni...wait for it...on my birthday! And not just any birthday, oh no. It's my 30th, and mom is coming down especially. Woooooo.

Anyone else had any facepalm moments this week?
Anyone else wanna share thier twitter id?

Freedom is a writer and a pen...

I never realised how deeply University affected my attitude until I returned last week. DESPITE having a headache - DESPITE being bone tired and worried about a million and one things. I wandered onto campus, Tuesday afternoon, a week ago today, and sat down in my poetry lecture. A lightness lifted my spirit - and it's lasted the whole week.
Today, I go into a workshop, for a booster.

Freedom though, for me, is as simple as that. I'm free to go to University, and for that I'm infinitely grateful. But I can find that freedom just as easily when I'm writing. And it's something I forgot in my hurry to write and sell my work.

I should probably say for the record, that I'm a really spoiled person in many ways - I've got a partner that supports my writing and allows me to go to Uni without worrying about too many bills. He also supports my writing 100%. He's given me room to try out being several kinds of freelancer - and when it's gone badly, he's helped me work out why. When it's gone well, we've built on it. But, ultimately, he knows what makes me unhappy - and that is, struggling to keep my income at certain levels. I hate having to work out anything where money is involved - I always miss something, or overlook something, or forget something.
That's what dissipates the lightness - and the happy feelings I get from writing. So I'm working on understanding the business side of freelancing more - which has had an unintended side effect of making me timetable my writing.
AND BAM!
I've written more this last week - despite being at uni, than I managed in the last four (unscheduled weeks) of the holidays. Given Linda was talking about this too, I thought it was important to share this.
You can find freedom, even in places that are timetabled, scheduled and managed to the max. Cause, for a writer, freedom is a pen, some paper, and a bit of free time, IMO.
What do you think?

Hippo Barfday MNABC!

Image via Wikipedia How do you feed a blog cake? aha ---->
In all seriousness, Carolyn emailed us a couple of days ago and reminded us about our anniversary. I thought it was next month, which shows how much I was paying attention, huh?

This time last year was a mad rush of slo-mo organisation. The kids were going back to school, my mom was down visiting, I was getting ready for Uni. I was not the happiest or most settled of bunnies on the planet - stressed out to my eyeballs, trying to work out if we could even AFFORD University for me. Working through, desperately, the forms and information everyone wanted to have me send in. Accepting a place at a wonderful Uni (Gloucestershire, Francis Close Hall, which, this year, I'll get some snaps of ;)) and then wondering if I'm really worthy.

I could tell you - month by month - how hard it was - how fun it was - how amazingly validating it was, but instead, I'll let you in on a little secret - I still don't feel worthy. I'm a second year, passed with a 2:1, and am desperate to get back - which isn't for another month.
I've also had other milestones this year. We discovered my youngest has some fairly serious problems with her mental health, which I've been on courses, and support groups to help her with. The prognosis is better than it was when she started up, but we've still got a long way to go. That's OK though, because she's my daughter and I truly believe that we just need to find the 'right' solution for her. Mostly, at the moment, it's lots of cognitive behaviour modification, which is hard work, but seems to be paying off.
We adopted an adorable, if a bit sneezy cat, who has more allergies than I do! She wakes us up every morning by singing (licking, treadling and headbutting too) and goes to sleep at the foot of our bed every night. She's been with me eight weeks and made such a huge difference to my life and my outlook.
Writing wise, I've accepted posts, I've left posts. I've looked at contracts, but haven't signed (many) this year. Mostly, this has been a year of settling into my new world.
And my other half asked me to marry him...

Hacking, writing and life

Three of my biggest sites got hacked this weekend - what I took to be a simple database issue was actually something far more serious, so I've killed the blog databases for the moment.
You might wonder what that has to do with writing?
Well, for a start, I didn't keep ANY of my blog articles anywhere other than these blogs. More fool me. So I'm now backing up more often than before (daily instead of weekly) and writing my blog posts offline, instead of on the fly, and in the blog sites themselves.
This is teaching me a really nice habit though - before I'd forget to trigger my spellchecker before posting - now, before I upload it I spell AND grammar check about six times, mainly because I have to. Once in Word, once in notepad (to strip out all of the code that office adds and is completely pointless in blogs) and a final time when I put it live.
This gap of a couple of hours between writing and posting also does me the world of good, because I'm now seeing where my posts do and don't make perfect sense.
Life wise, I've been garnering 70% marks for hand in essay style assignments, so life is good on the University front. On the family front, things are tough - my youngest is special needs, and hard work, but she's also SO worth it, so we're weathering that little storm as best we can. 'Work' wise (read that novels and my own blogs), I'm doing ok. They tend to be the last thing I pay attention to, and most of my sites are just languishing now, so I'm trying to decide what to do with them. Its amazing how things change over a year.

I'm curious though - have you found anything 'different' - any challenges you're up against that you didn't expect - any successes or learning spots (note, NOT failures) that you've encountered?

Speaking of contracts...

You know when you’ve been spending far too much time reading the Hobbit to the kids when you wander around referring to everything as ‘booksies’ and ‘my preeeecious’. So once I got through reading the bit where Gollum is riddling Bilbo, in his mind at least, to death, I came and wrote this. Got a bit sidetracked cause its a couple of minutes past Eleven.

Tomorrow, I am going to ‘meet’ with an Internet Marketer who wants to discuss co-writing a blogging book with him. I’ve never negotiated a contract in my LIFE, so I’m going to be asking advice in the next couple of minutes, and of course, anything I learn, I’ll share ;)

Alongside that, I’ve got a tonne of forms and contacts to make, because of going back to University. So that’s more contracts. I’ve got around a week to sort all of this out, and then my mother is down for a week of roller coasters, swimming and hanging out with her grandkids.

:)

Anyone else picked up, or are negotiating any cool contracts?