This week's tasks

Hooray – I have found a flat to move into and am no longer going to be homeless in 2 weeks time! I’m also hoping things calm down a little more at work. Both these factors mean I’ll hopefully be able to pay my second ‘job’ a little more attention. I have two days off this week (Monday and Wednesday) and intend to make the most of them. My aims for the next couple of weeks are:

-After providing feedback on two books for The Artists’ Studio I have a new brief to work on from them.
-Write report on the latest script I received through the Feedback Exchange.
-Try a first round of editing on my as yet unnamed script. I still haven’t decided if it feels like a radio or television script, so need to immerse myself in it tomorrow.
-I have also begun working on a second script, which will be a stage play or radio play.
-I also need to re-write the work I did for my writing group but am going to try from the first person.

There are also a few writing competitions I should try my hand at. One is the Guardian short story competition http://www.guardian.co.uk/books/2010/may/15/guardian-weekend-short-story-competition closing date 18th June 2,000 words on the theme Summer. The other is the Asham Award http://www.ashamaward.com/ for unpublished women writers. The deadline for this is a bit later, 30th September, to write maximum 4,000 word ghost story or gothic tale. I have a little idea brewing for this one, after hearing recently how Alan Ayckbourn greeted a burglar in his house thinking it to be a visitor. I like the idea of a ‘visitor’ in a house greeting a child night after night only for the child to be told they don’t exist.

Here’s an excerpt from last year’s winner Because it is Running By, written by Jo Lloyd:

She would take a book and go walking, along the river, up the hill, nearly as far as the sea sometimes. She would find herself a quiet place in the bracken, and lie there, the book unopened, breathing green bracken, gorse flowers, worm-turned earth, things pushing into life, things dying, things rotting down into the darkness. Insects busied themselves around her. Further away she could hear the sudden panic of lost lambs, the despondent bleat of those that had been lost a while. Further away still, the hum of cars heading for the coast.

I really like that paragraph, and in particular the phrase “worm-turned earth” and the way it conjures the smell of wet wood and damp grass.