My second internship gets under way

This week I started my internship at the Navy News and I've settled in really nicely. On Monday I researched and wrote the 'Time of your Lives' column, which is where they publish some news stories from that month in previous decades. So I had to go through the archives and find an interesting story from November of 1972, 1982, 1992 and 2002 and then write a brief summary of each along with quotations. I also picked out a nice picture relating to one of the stories - a cat being awarded his Good Cat Badge!

Then yesterday I was given the task of writing lots of charity-related press releases into proper news stories, which I found really interesting because at my last internship with Fusion People I had to write and edit some press releases, so I now have experience of writing for both sides of the process.

Today I had the scary task of meeting the chief executive of the Mary Rose trust and interviewing him about the soon-to-be-opened museum and the whole project of building, conservation, etc. But it turned out not to be scary after all, he was very nice and eager to talk to me about it, which was great because it meant the interview ran really smoothly and I got a lot more information than I had questions for. I also hope this means I'll be less terrified the next time I go in for a job interview, because I know what it's like on the other side!

I recorded the whole interview on a voice recorder, then when I got back to the office I played it back and typed it all out. Tomorrow I am working from home to write up the article, which is looking to be very extensive. It will be fantastic to see the finished article published in the Navy News.

I'm really pleased with how many times I have stepped out of my comfort zone and taken on new challenges in the last few weeks. I feel like I'm a lot tougher and smarter than I give myself credit for.

I'll be posting some book reviews in the very near future - right now I am reading Miss Peregrine's Home for Peculiar Children which is way out of my usual choice of genres but it seems like a fun read so far. I have also been reading Edward Abbey's Desert Solitaire on my train journeys, so I can pretend I'm escaping to the beautiful, wild American desert rather than travelling through grey England!

Bad Flo :(

I haven't posted in over a month! So I'm forcing myself to write something now, even if it is just a poor recap of what I've been up to over the last month.

At the start of September I went to Rome for a week! It was fantastic and one of my next posts (hopefully you won't have to wait a month for it) will be my top tips for anyone visiting Rome - dos and don'ts, that sort of thing. It was a great holiday and the first time I've been to a different country as a proper responsible grown up rather than letting my parents do all the work. I ate a lot of gelato and pasta, but I also did an awful lot of walking so it balanced out rather nicely.

I am now two weeks into my three week placement at Fusion People, where I have been working on the marketing team and doing lots of research, editing, copy writing, etc etc. It's been a great experience so far and I've learnt a lot, as well as (kind of) overcome my phone-shyness! It's gone really quickly and I will be quite sad to leave. But I've got another internship coming up on the 15th October, working in the editing office of the Navy News in Portsmouth. I've been so lucky to get all these opportunities, and experience in marketing and editing is a really valuable thing.

It's my birthday next Wednesday. I have no idea what I'm doing or what I'm getting from anybody. I hope I get brioche for breakfast, but other than that I'm not particularly fussed! I'm getting into the writing spirit again, and I'm desperate to write a book of some sort, so it's lucky that November is next month so I can take part in NaNoWriMo for once. Everyone from my university graduated today except me, because I couldn't afford to get tickets or hire a hat and robe. I didn't really feel like floating around in a cape all day anyway.

I'm planning on setting up a Facebook and Twitter account for this blog so I can post updates through those. It'll mean deleting my pre-existing 'Love from Florence' Facebook account which was for my handmade jewellery, but that seems to have dwindled over the last couple of months as I've developed a social and working life out of nowhere!

I have another couple of posts planned out, including a book review, a craft tutorial and my aforementioned Rome guide, all of which I'll write and post over the weekend, and I will continue to update regularly from now on...I promise!

More Writing Resources

• Written? Kitten! The concept is simple. For every hundred words you write in the text box, you are rewarded with a new picture of a kitten, or a silly LOLcat meme. You can change the word quota to more or less, depending on how much you intend to write. It also saves your writing, so if you accidentally cross off the page you won't lose all your work. There is also a version with pictures of Tom Hiddleston if that's what gets the cogs whirring. 
• The Best 100 Opening Lines - Okay, I don't agree with all of these selections, but this is a great reminder of what makes a good story opening and how to intrigue your readers and make them eager to read on!
• The Phrase Finder - An archive of phrases, idioms and sayings, and their original meanings.
• 72 of the Best Quotes About Writing - Exactly what it sounds like! I wish I had found this list back in my first year of University, because I remember a part of my first 'notebook' assignment was to find 5 quotations about writing, and explain them... and I struggled a lot more than I probably should have. 

A few useful links for creative writers

I seem to have reached a point where I've been away from University for just long enough to start thinking about writing stories for enjoyment again - not just jumping through hoops for a creative writing degree, but really letting my imagination lead the way. So, I'm placing these links here mainly so that I don't lose them, but also to help out any other writers who happen to stumble across my blog!

The Speech Accent Archive  - recordings and phonetic translations of people speaking in different accents. So if you want to write about how a character speaks when English is not their first language, but you're not sure of what their accent would sound like, this is a useful tool. Remember, it's best to write about what you know, and do your research when writing about a country or a culture that is unfamiliar to you, otherwise your writing can come across as uninformed and could even offend people.

34 Tips to Make You a Better Writer - some we've all heard before ("Write every day for 30 minutes!" Yeah, yeah) and some are more unusual and will really get you thinking. I'll definitely be putting some of these tips to use.

One Word - I love this. When you press 'go' you'll be presented with a random word (I got 'seeds'), a text box, and a timer counting down 60 seconds in which to write as much as you can on that topic. Great for making you think about topics that wouldn't otherwise cross your mind, and it can help you to come up with new ideas and directions to take a story or a poem you're stuck on.

(Click the 'writing' tag to see some links to similar tools that I've posted before)

The Online Typwriter

Here's a great little tool for writers. It saves automatically every few minutes, you can customise how your writing looks, and the most important thing of all . . . you can set it to make typewriter sounds! It even goes 'ping' when you reach the end of a line!
I'd love to use this for stream-of-consciousness writing, or just so I can pretend I'm writing in the 'olden days' on a swanky typewriter instead of boring old Microsoft Word.

writer.bighugelabs.com