Wednesday 18 June 2008

Winchester and Crooked Thoughts

My elder son has one GCSE left ... After that, as far as I'm concerned he can sleep till midday, go to bed at midnight, and Facebook and Playstation to his heart's content in between. I will no longer be in nag mode.

I wasn't able to blog last week because of nagging/teaching/exhaustion/stress, so there's a bit of a backlog. In the meantime, just want to say that next week I'm off to Winchester, to teach a day course and to lecture at the Writers' Conference there. It'll be frantic and full-on, as it always is, and very knackering, but fun - it's especially good to see old friends there each year and catch up on what's been going on with them in their writing lives. And if any of you Literascribees are planning on going, do say hi - but if I have a glazed and drained look and need to check my own name badge to know who I am, please be understanding - I'll have probably just finished teaching my course on plot-structure. I always start a course thinking I won't have enough to say to fill the time allowed, and I always always do and end up over-running.

If you're interested in the conference, check out the link in the right hand box. It's mad and often chaotic, but offers a huge range of topics - there genuinely is something for everyone there. And Winchester is a lovely place to be - if I didn't live in Oxford, I might be tempted to take up residence there.

Finally (before hauling son out of pit for more Graphic Design revision), check out Susan Hill's latest blogpost (see blog links to right) - she refers to a book called 'Manage your Mind, the Mental Fitness Guide' by Gillian Butler and Tony Hope. The title alone calls to me to buy it! She lists thirteen mental habits which are examples of 'crooked thinking' - take a look at them. They begin with Catastrophizing (I'm a black belt at that one) and end with Wishful Thinking. And I'm guilty of all thirteen. All. Thirteen.

Bet you are too.

3 comments:

Denise said...

Glad your exam mania is almost over. Hope to see you at Winchester next week, glazed or otherwise! I'm doing the pitch and presentation course on Friday, in preparation for the room of despair, sorry, agent 1 to 1's on Saturday.

I did far too much nodding through that list of crooked thinking...

Lorna F said...

Good to hear from you, Denise, and look forward to seeing you next week. Good luck with the one to ones!

Karen said...

Exams are finally over here, too. What a relief! We might even get back to Normal now.

I went to the Winchester Writer's Conference a couple of years ago and thoroughly enjoyed it, but there was a LOT of despair among the agent 1 to 1s ! Luckily they remained polite :o)