A bed of roses

 I edited another story this morning. This one needed a lot more work. I got it from 735 words to 703 - stripping out some of the adjectives and most of the 'that's, then beefing up some of the other areas. The story itself was fine, I just needed to tweak the wording so it read better. I'm finding it a surprisingly satisfying process. Writing 700-word stories is very satisfying, anyway. I can get a whole story done in an hour - usually. Writing some of the tales in this collection did feel like pulling teeth, at times. But these were the stories that wanted to be told. For me, writing isn't so much about creating as channelling. The story is floating around in the ether, waiting for my writer-radar to pick it up. Then it bounces around in my brain whilst my poor fingers try to type it out. I know I did a light edit of all the stories before posting on my webnode site but I'm glad I've come back to them again.

I'm really not sure what the end goal is, here. With 'The Curse of Mannerley Manor' (still available to buy on lulu.com!), I just wanted to get published. I made some attempt to get a 'proper' publisher interested but went with the self-publishing route, in the end. Now I've satisfied the 'I want to be a published author' itch, I'm more keen on using a 'proper' publisher. But this collection is sooo random. There's a bit of just about everything in there - fantasy, sci-fi, historic, crime, even some pure whimsy! Can that even be marketed? On the other hand, there are several stories that would make great full-length novels. I have enough material for a decade or three of nano's in there!

I had an 'interesting' morning. There were local elections on and I needed some stuff from our local shop, so I set off with my passport and purse, voted then shopped and headed home. I went out via the front door because that's the quickest way to the polling station but I didn't take my key because the back door was open and that's more convenient for coming back from the shop. Still with me? So, I get to the back gate and... it's locked. Damn! I walk round to the front of the house and knock on the door and window, getting ready to apologise to husband for getting him to move. But there's no response. 'Perhaps he's gone to sit in the back garden,' I think (it was a LOVELY day, today), so I go back to the back and knock on the gate. Still nothing. So, I go back to the front and knock harder on the window. Then I spotted one of the workies putting in a new front door next door and hop across the grass to enlist his help. He's just about to take me through the house so he could lean over the back gate and open the bolt (I'm an inch or so too short to do so), when husband opens the door. I came THIS close to seeing the results of all the hammering and drilling :D

After that, I zoomed off to work and got a background task from the CIO for mapping all the things we do and where they land in the organisation, in an attempt to bring our strategy doc to life. All the main areas of the uni produced their own strategic plans but nobody thought about joining them up. Example - the Sustainability Strategy sets a 'net zero' target that would consume the Estates Team for the next decade and wouldn't allow any time for maintenance. And, of course, IT is very non-sustainability friendly. Anyway, I have that to ponder over the next few months.

I've also had a response from the FD on my email about the pensions fund, in which I am assured the uni will have conversations with the pension fund because we don't invest directly or indirectly in arms companies. It was pointed out that we're just one employer but surely it wouldn't be beyond the realms of the possible for us to get in touch with other employers? Just like the pension fund wouldn't listen to just me but might to the uni (which is a MAJOR local employer and, therefore, investor), if they won't listen to just one employer they'd have to listen to a group of them? And do we not check things like what our pension fund is investing in? Why have I had to just stumble across this? Anyway, I'm just glad I've raised it and it's landed, at least in part.

Right, time to get ready for bed. I'm nearly at the end of 'Persuasion', which is my favourite Austen novel. Although Anne's speeches can get rather flowery, now and then!

I am so proud of our daughter.  Her company is trying to force its workers to sign a new contract that will leave them at the beck and call of the company.  At the moment, she has a contract that assigns set hours, which works for her, her son and makes things easy when it comes to claiming benefits.  The new contract pays £1 more an hour but doesn't guarantee which hours she'd work.  Any extra she did earn, she'd lose in benefits - and the benefits system is notoriously bad at paying out at the best of times, let alone if it was 16 hours this week and 19 next.  And she needs to work at least 16 hours to even claim the benefits!

But she's standing up for herself, refusing to sign the contract even though it means she's effectively making herself redundant in 12 weeks.  And because she's leaving work 'voluntarily', she can't claim job seekers (or whatever it is these days) for 6 months.  This is focussing her mind, however, and she's actually applying for other jobs - which she's been threatening to do off and on for about 10 years!  And she's getting interviews; I'm sure she'll land something, soon.  I can't emphasise how much I admire her - I know I'd never find the courage to do this.

She, her boyfriend, and our grandson are all off to Turkey later this week - I hope they have a lovely, stress-free time.

My own work situation is moving forwards at the University's usual glacial pace.  After my annual appraisal with my line manager, I have some objectives to build on what we did last year, with an eye to (finally!) getting that regrade.  We're going to review it in January and April, rather than leave it a full year.

And I'm getting to grips with the formatting for publishing Mannerley.  And also finding bits that got missed during the umpteen edits - some of my young ladies still had contractions in their dialogue! - and there were about two pages where every paragraph started with 'they'.  But I've worked through them and I think I've got everything sorted, text wise.  Next week, I'll tidy up the actual document, deleting the example pages (like the contents page) that I don't need.  Perhaps by Friday I'll be ready to actually submit it...?

So, that's life.  Here's to more of it!