Write On

Tags

amazon vine voice, deadlines, ocelot magazine, swindon advertiser, swindon shuffle

Okay, I know I haven’t posted here for a while but there has been good reason, a little thing called The Swindon Shuffle. It’s a yearly 5 day, indoor music festival that we have in Swindon every year and with 12 stages and over 50 bands put together it obviously takes a lot of time to sort out leaving me little time to attend to the writing side of things. On the other hand it has given me lots to write about and opened up a few more business opportunities. What it does mean is that I am now playing catch up. Not only do O want to blog about the event…more of that later, but I have a host of writing deadlines on an incoming trajectory, like editorial artillery strikes in a literary Vietnam. I have regular pieces for The Advertiser and The Ocelot, a stack of CD’s for various PR companies and a few books to review for The Amazon Vine program. So a weekend of putting pen to paper, and by that I mean fingers to keyboard. Coffee is on, Albinoni’s adagios play quietly from the other room,  a cool breeze running through the room and next doors cat sunning himself on the flat roof of my kitchen below. Everything I could possibly need. Alright chaps, it’s over the top we go….

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The calm before the storm

Tags

community radio, deadlines, income streams, schedules, secret chord records

Thursday is the day of rest before my working week races head first into writing deadlines and gigs, radio and blogging. Tonight is our fortnightly gig at The Victoria, the eloquently named Songs of Praise were we endeavour to host the best original local bands and also bring in those from surrounding areas. After that as we go into the weekend my few money generating pieces need to be planned, prepared, written and submitted. The start of the week then gives me breathing space to concentrate on PR and other writing for the record label, Secret Chord Records and also planning for the radio show which takes place on Wednesday afternoon and then we have gone full circle.

I’m also in the process of relaunching my music review site, though it is taking longer than I thought it would and I have a pile of music waiting to be written about. Hopefully the site will come back up shortly, this time with some level of advertising so that it can in some small way become part of the income stream.  I guess that I have have to look at any task undertaken now in a slightly different light. Does it earn money or does it at least move me nearer a place that does or raise awareness of me as a writer or the label as a business.

Ahh, yes, I knew there was something else I have to do next week…the small matter of moving house.

 

To quote Douglas Adams….

Tags

a clash of kings, a game of thrones, a song of ice and fire, a storm of swords, deadlines, douglas adams, fantasy literature, george r r martin

For those of you who don’t remember the excellent Mr Adams attitude towards deadlines he said this…

I love deadlines. I like the whooshing sound they make as they fly by.

It seems quite apt to bring it up after my last post about the how much work I had to get in this weekend. Well, it got done eventually and now one has cancelled my services so no harm done I guess. I’m pretty good at finding other things to do when I am meant to be working and one of the problems with working for yourself is that there is no-one looking over your shoulder or moaning when your work rate drops. I’m also very good at justifying such descriptions especially if they involved being in the pub or watching bands…or networking opportunities and valuable product research as I call them.

Talking of product knowledge, I was lucky enough to stumble across the first four books in George R.R. Martins Song of Fire and Ice series…or in TV terms Game of Thrones. I keep seeing snippets of the TV show but don’t really want to indulge in the purchase of a box set until I have read the books. Old school? I know it will be exactly my type of book, I grew up on fantasy and after years of trudging my way through more seemingly worthy authors, Chekov, Kerouac, Austin, Genet and the like, I have returned to my first literary love. And as I say it is all research of a sort, you can’t be a good writer without reading widely. There I go again, justifying distractions and unnecessary expenditure, but as they were going for £1.99 each in a charity shop, I don’t think it will kick too much of a hole in the weekly allowance.