Thursday 28 March 2013

Qunitegenerian thoughts

Qunitegenerian thoughts
So here I am a new member of the quintegenerain club!  I feel like I should have some words of wisdom for those of you who haven’t got here yet, but honestly I still feel like I did when I was 25.  I keep waiting to feel like a grown-up.
However, despite the inevitable physical slackening, mentally I am a much happier and saner person than I was in my 20s and 30s.  I’ve had a few hard knocks over the past few years, but experience has taught me to face them with hard won resilience and stoicism.  And while I’m not really a believer in there being any grand plan, it has often proved true for me that when bad things have happened new doors have opened leading to better places.
Some people go in for extreme sports in order to get a kick out of life – well I did all that a long time ago.  I dived through caves full of stingrays in the Canaries, and went surfing in stormy seas off the Gower coast.  I climbed mountains in the snow and slept out in bivouacs on the Brecon Beacons.  I had many adventures, but the one I’m having now is the most exciting yet.
I’m currently in the most creative period of my life and feel like I’m producing work that I couldn’t possibly managed without my years of experience behind me.
I’ll keep you posted on developments as soon as I can J

Friday 22 March 2013

Being a passionate networking entrepreneur.

Yes, it’s been a while since I last blogged, but that’s because I’ve been crazy busy since the start of this year working on a huge number of writing projects.
A lot of this came into focus yesterday when I was asked to give a talk about my career trajectory to a group of creative writing university graduates and I identified three key words that apply to building a career in writing.  Up until two years ago my career was trundling along nicely with all the science plays we were creating at Timezones, but then the recession hit hard and overnight 90% of my income stream dried up.  The past two years have been the scariest financial period in my life, but artistically they’ve been the most exciting.
I’ve had to quickly develop a huge NETWORK of contacts in order to find opportunities for work.  This has been fun at times, but at other times extremely tiring.  I’d love to spend all my days writing and using my creative skills, but finding work has been a constant priority.
Luckily I’ve always been vey professional about my work, so having an ENTREPRENEURIAL approach to my work came easily to me.  Talking to the students yesterday made it clear to me that this is something many writers don’t appreciate, and yet it’s key to being successful.
And finally I realised why I do this instead of just getting a ‘proper’ job – I can’t not do it!  The thing that keeps driving me forwards is an absolute PASSION for writing and communicating my ideas to others, and I’ve been lucky enough to find opportunities where I can do that.
I’ll blog more about the projects I’ve been developing over the next few weeks, but for now I’ll just say that I’m very excited!