Lots of profiles and a lot of scepticim

Had a fairly productive day.

Did a rush article overnight for a magazine. I also wrote a short piece about writing. I'm still trying to decide the market that would be most appropriate. It was not a well-planned and commissioned piece; just something that stuck in my head and I simply had to write it down.

I also landed two assignments to do six case studies on a telecoms company and two case studies on ICT companies that are doing well internationally. If you're a South African company doing extraordinarily well to penetrate the international ICT space, please contact me?

The great thing about the telecoms case studies is that I'm already familiar with the projects being used as case studies (from a news perspective). So the research and writing process should be informative, but not too stressful.

Wasted the rest of the day trying to publish my Windows calendar, so I can share it with selected people.

Arrrg!

I sooooo miss MS Outlook, but sales consultant quoted me about R5000 for it, and there was no way I could afford it. So I decided to use Windows Calendar, and now have to learn to understand its full functionality.

Voice of Africa

Essentials magazine is running a short story competition, in partnership with Mills &Boon. Baby, who is ten years old, saw me reading the competition rules and she almost rolled on the floor laughing.

"You? Write a romance novel? This I've got to see," she said.

I admit her scepticism is justified. I've mostly written business articles and children's stories. And while I've published nine short stories in anthologies over the years, none of them were romances.

But I'm tempted to make the attempt and submit something to the competition, just to show her that I am a versatile writer. The short story must be no longer than 1500 words, and deadline is 31 December, so it's doable.

Anyway, if you're an aspiring romance writer, buy the magazine for the rules and a sample novel. Or you can read the rules online.