Time flies...

Where has the time gone?

It's Sunday night here - 11:38 as I write this entry. My eyes are hanging out of my head and my bed is calling to me loudly.

Friday I figured I'd earned a day off so I chilled out on the computer playing a game. Saturday, I worked on BJ's new dog mansion (not looking too bad, even if I do say so myself). Sunday (today) I was at work. I would have logged in and updated the blog then but the Internet connection was down so I was restricted to actually working :(

I've touched base with my school teacher friend in the States and she's got more great news. She's received an honourable mention in the latest round of the Writers' Of The Future contest. I feel like she's leaving me behind. I must polish this latest round of stories and have them accepted soon.

My friend has also agreed to swap work for critique. I trust her judgement and I think she trusts mine. My problem is time. I don't have enough of it. We'll see how we get on. I may have to drop something if it becomes too difficult to manage.

I need to get stuck into my next assignment tomorrow night. I haven't looked at it yet. It's titled "Editing on screen" so it shouldn't be too difficult. My assignment after that is on poetry. I am not looking forward to that.

Okay, that's it from me for tonight.

I hope your writing is going well. Don't give up. Someone, somewhere--will love that story you've been trying to find a home for. You just need to keep sending it out.

Good luck.

BT

Assignment 6 Done

Module 1, assignment 6 has been completed and will go out the door either tomorrow or Monday. Depends on when my wife or I remember to go to the post office to send it.

At 18 pages long, it's one of the longest I've done so far.

Each of the two modules in the first semester has 8 assignments. My kids have 7 weeks of school left this term so I suppose that also means I have 7 weeks of this semester left. Once this assignment goes out the door, I have 5 assignments left to do in a little over 6 weeks. Somehow I ended up in front - cool!

This assignment started way back as part of assignment 4 in module 1. I wrote a 600 word story beginning from a prompt. In this assignment, I completed the story, then changed it into a one act play and then polished it, extracting an 800 word, dialogue-rich fragment. If I was to put the play on, I think I could just about recite all the lines by heart already. I was out in the backyard reading it out loud to see if it sounded right. BJ (the puppy) was looking at me very strangely.

Dark Rose received input from another Aussie writer today. The majority of his comments were good but he did think it needed a bigger twist. Time is against me to add that bigger twist at the moment. His suggestions were interesting though so I've added them to the folder for future reference.

No additional crits on the latest version of Too Late the Rain which is disappointing.

I'm up to date on all my current crit requirements so I managed some reading last night, which was nice for a change. I'm now almost halfway through John Saul's "Suffer the Children" - an excellent book but I think my increased knowledge in writing is damaging my enjoyment. I'm starting to pick up areas of the writing that could be done better. Good for my writing, but bad for my reading enjoyment. Over all though, the book is still a very good story. I'll post a review on my normal review page when I'm done. As it's an old book, I won't post it to HorrorScope.

Well that's it from me for tonight.

Good luck with all your writing endeavours and may all your submissions be successful.

BT

Sleep

I apologise for not posting yesterday. Sleep got the better of me. I got home from work and crashed into bed around 6:30 last night. I didn't get up again till 6 this morning. I guess I needed it.

I gained another B+ for the assignment on speech writing which was a nice surprise. I struggled a bit with that one, so a positive outcome was good. Still struggling to find an angle for my next SA50s+ article. The editor and I are going to discuss it tomorrow.

I'm still working on a reading list to post both here and on the website. Currently it stands at twenty something books. Stay tuned.

Nearly time to take the kids to school. Tonight's reading night so I won't have a great deal to post this evening either. Fingers crossed I receive additional assignments back in the mail. One lecturer is still a few behind in returning them.

I hope you all have a wonderful and productive day.

BT

Stage Play

Just to see if I could, and to see what it would come out like, I turned the first draft of the new short I've written for the local writing contest, and turned it into a one act stage play.

It's not too bad, and it's good practise for any scripts I need to write down the track in my diploma. So I've decided not to use the "Confused Love" fragment for the latest assignment, instead I'll polish the new stage play with the working title "The Idol Con". It's not a mis-spelling, rather a play on words.

I've received more feedback on Dark Rose and Too Late the Rain from TPN members. Interesting thoughts. I don't agree with all of them in regards to this piece, but there is definite food for thought in regards to future pieces.

That's it for me for tonight. I need to do a quick update of my assignments page on the website and then it's off to bed.

BT