My brain hurts
Just a short episode of musing today methinks, in part due to the fact that it's still all a bit doom and gloom here because nothing is actually happening; the other part being me not wanting to bore you to tears with more of this tedious credit crisis, the world is ending stuff.
So on a lighter note, I've been trying to press on with my writing course with renewed gusto. If I haven't already told you the story, I bought this comprehensive writing course (if I'm truly honest) way back at the end of 2003, the idea behind it being I could possibly make some money on the side of my day job doing something I actually enjoy - much as it pains me to say it, I didn't spend most of my carefree childhood days telling everyone that "I want to be a recruiter when I grow up."
As the 'comprehensive' in the title suggests, the course moves through various different genres of writing, teaching you about non-fiction articles, women's/men's magazines, local newspapers, through to how to develop the plot/characters/settings of your first novel from and onwards to writing for TV, radio and the stage. Along the way, there are assignments to complete which are assessed by a tutor, who makes suggestions for improvement or whether you should be submitting the piece to an editor/agent/publisher.
As you can tell from how long I've had it, I haven't found motivation the easiest thing to come by, especially when working full-time and wanting to use my weekends for sleeping and .... well, mainly sleeping actually.
Now that I have the time on my hands, I'm keen to plough on through the assignments, but am being driven mad by the fact that I don't seem to have any good ideas locked away in my teeny tiny woman's brain! (As you can possibly tell if you've been following this blog for any length of time...) I'm still in the non-fiction part of the course, so most of my assignments require me to write articles for either magazines or newspapers - a fantastic amount of free reign and I should be jumping at the chance!
I think what I need is some fresh inspiration possibly, so I am going to go out next week and just be nosy; observe people and see if anything sparks, or I could go and see some more tourist-y things perhaps, with the aim of doing some sort of travel article...hmmm...yes, that could be the key!
But in the meantime, the essence of this posting today is: if you have any cracking ideas that you think I could use, please send them my way - I'll buy you dinner with my first writing payment!
picture source: http://hill.troy.k12.mi.us/staff/bnewingham/myweb3/Clipart/writing%20girl.gif
