Today I embark on an exciting press trip - to Bristol. I’m signed up to various mailing lists for freelance journalists and travel writers, and a short while an invitation popped up to spend three days getting to know the highlights of Bristol. How could I refuse?

What could be better than being shown your own city by the people who’s job it is to draw in tourists from all over the world? We have a packed itinerary of tours, boat rides and visits to attractions. Quite frankly, I can’t wait!

I’ll report back next week to let you know what I’ve discovered.

My month of freedom is over before it even began. That’s the thing with being a freelance writer. Sometimes there seems to be nothing but time - luxurious, yes, but scary when you consider that lots of time equals, inevitably, no money.

I’d budgeted to have August off to focus on editing my novel and focusing on EssentialWriters.com. But then the magazine publishing company I’m freelancing for from the end of the month asked if I was free to do a couple of days at the end of July.

Sounded good to me – it would be a chance to see a few familiar faces and remind myself how those particular pubications work before settling in to my longer contract.

But then my month of freedom evaporated before my eyes. As soon as I arrived at the office they said they’d like me to come in for the whole of August too, apart from the occasional day.

It’s the occasional day that made me agree. Essentially I’ll be spending four days a week subbing and writing for this company, which, joy of joys, leaves me with three days of freedom, fiction-writing and maintaining EssentialWriters.com.

Not as lovely as having seven days a week of this, admittedly, but the benefits of a regular income are definitely not to be overlooked.

So that’s me, from now till December: in-house freelancing and squeezing in as much time to imagine and write my own stuff as possible. You know what? It might just work.

Beautiful Porto

The transition from freelance to full employment can be a bit of a challenge. It’s one I’m facing at the moment as I take on the role of Creative Content Editor for a new travel website, basically writing, editing, overseeing, commissioning, and generally project managing the whole production.

So far it’s been a fascinating journey. The sheer volume of work to be done is quite daunting, but I’m realising that that’s exactly how it was with EssentialWriters.com to begin with, except that I was my own boss then and took things one day at a time rather than having a boss present the entire list of objectives to me on a sheaf of A4 pages.

Being part of a team is enjoyable though - I share a small, wonky-walled office in a historic building in one of the nicest areas of Bristol. Each morning I have a lovely walk in to work over bridges, past a turret-towered church and across a park, which wakes me gently and happily, and far more effectively than my walk from my bedroom to the living room ever did.

There’s as much coffee as I can drink, and just the right balance between silence and noise so those things are all fabulous. Plus I’m doing lots of travel-writing - my favourite kind of armchair travel! This week I’ve revisited Geneva, Spain, the Alentejo and Porto, if only in my mind. Bliss!

The structure of a normal 9am till 5.30 day is harder to handle though. I’m having to relearn how to sit and work for several consecutive hours instead of bobbing, working, wafting, working, meandering, working, from around 7am till 9pm as I’m accustomed to.

But I’ve only on experienced one week of my new working life. I’ll let you know how the job, and I, develop as the days go on.

After the emptiness of January, I’ve suddenly been hit in the face with an influx of work, from days in-house on publications to feature commissions and requests from a clutch of artists and galleries to produce their press releases. I even had to turn down work for the first time, because I noticed my sanity slipping as I tried to meet an excess of deadlines!

It’s all good - money coming in, lots of interesting things to do, but I really think the biggest challenge of the freelance writer is surviving the extremes. Forget sub-zero temperatures and searing heat, the vacuum of an empty inbox (if you ignore the spam) in contrast to the one that’s bursting at the seams is more than most fragile journalist minds can handle.

Today it’s Saturday, which is completely irrelevant from my point of view, as I will be slogging on, coffee within in reach and TV remote firmly out of reach, in an effort to tick a few things off my growing list of priorities.

Funnily enough, this blog was top of the list, followed closely by reminders to update Twitter and Facebook. The key is to updte fast and get out before you discover you’ve been sucked into the social networking vortex and an hour or more has passed.

Once that’s achieved, however, I’ll have the satisfaction of scrawling a big fat tick, and feeling a sense of progress, however small.

© Stock.xchng

Ah, Sunday. I do love Sundays. Even though my hubla is slogging away at work today, and I too have spent, oh, maybe an hour working this morning, there’s a gorgeous sense of relaxation hanging over me. Plus I have fun plans for later, which means I actually had a reason to get dressed before midday - hurrah!

It may seem slightly ridiculous (and possibly verging on disturbing) to celebrate having cause to change out of PJs on a Sunday, the one day when most people remain firmly glued to bed-wear, but as any freelance writer knows, when most of your week in spent inside with only a vase of white roses (aw, thanks, hubla!) for company, any activity involving leaving the house becomes a novelty.

Yesterday was very exciting because I had reason to leave the house not once, but twice, and not just to empty the recycling bin! The first time was to got to a lunchtime end-of-show party of my pet photographer’s art exhibition, and the second time was long after nightfall and involved cocktails and lengthy discussions about a friend’s torrid affair with a married man. So a good time was had by all (apart from, perhaps, the married man’s wife).

Today’s adventures involve meeting up with my entire immediate family sans hubla, and attending a local cheese fair. I’m not exactly sure what that entails, though I assume it will have more to do with sampling tiny cubes of locally reared cheeses than riding waltzers made from cheddar.

I’m slightly disappointed that it’s not a chocolate fair, rather than cheese, but, whatever, it’s a reason to go out, talking of which, I’d better go and surgically remove my slippers in order to don more outdoors-worthy footwear.

© Stock.xchng

As I get into the swing of the new year, I’m finding my week is naturally dividing itself into patterns, with two days devoted to creative writing, two days to the website and two days to sourcing and carrying out the freelance writing work that keeps a roof over my head.

Yes, that does add up to around six working days a week, but while I’m doing what I love, I really don’t care. Besides, some days that simply means logging on to check in on the forums (which are currently suspiciously quiet – where are you all?) and delete spam, while creative writing days can include long strolls and longer chats with like-minded people who inspire me.

This week has been particularly fruitful creatively, as I completed a short story yesterday, sent off an entry for a short story competition, submitted a short story to a literary magazine and sent off some query emails to agencies offering support to selective mutes, as the protagonist of one of my novels suffers from that particular social disorder.

Ooh, and then today I found out that a poem I entered for a creative writing competition run by Sense has been shortlisted, which is fab news!

The stipulation for the poem was that it had to be written from the point of view of someone who is both deaf and blind. It was an interesting challenge, but one that meant a lot for me as Diabetic Retinopathy is something that’s looming alarmingly on my horizon.

So I engaged all my other senses and wrote a poem about a deaf/blind person being taught about colours by their lover. I enjoyed the challenge, was pleased with the result, and am now tempted to go through some of my old short stories and see what happens if I remove one of the protagonists’ senses. It could alter the whole slant of the tale, which might utterly revitalise some of them.

So 2010 is looking (and sounding) good already. Now all I need to do is maintain the momentum…

So, 2010 has begun and with it the return to reality. I’m already missing the joyful limbo-days of Christmas. As a freelancer, it’s the only time of year when I feel truly in sync with the rest of the world, as regularly 9-5.30s are forgotten and hours are suddenly rudderless and whim-focused.

In fact, it was pure heaven, with daylight hours devoted to long country walks and dusk-onwards to lounging by my parents open fireplace, tap-tapping away at my first event theatre-script. The fact my parents don’t have wifi was an unexpected delight, setting me free to concentrate on fiction writing without the distractions of emails, twitter, facebook and, um, EssentialWriters.com.

Once I returned home, the internet did holler for attention once more, but even then, with most media offices closed until yesterday, there was little to disturb my happy creativity.

I also managed to make three trips to the cinema in little over a week, and saw three excellent, very different, films.

The first was Nowhere Boy, the John Lennon story which could have been about any young lad with dreams of being a rock star. Sam Taylor-Wood’s vision of John was both beautiful and very real, and while she steered clear of too much Beatle-mania, the hints of what was to come gave the story a hint of a rosy ending without the Hollywood sheen that could so easily have tarnished the whole affair.

The second film was Where the Wild Things Are, a raucous reimagining of the children’s book by Maurice Sendak. With Dave Eggers and Spike Jonze taking the few words provided bySendak and transforming it into a full-length screenplay, the evocative pictures I remember from my childhood took on life and emotions.

Max, played by the fabulously named Max Records, is a desperately unhappy child dealing with the break up of his family, who runs away one night and breaks all kinds of health and safety rules by sailing off on a lake that transforms into a sea and washes him up on an unfamiliar shore. There he encounters a tribe of disconsolate monsters who make him their king on the proviso that he makes their sadness go away. It’s deeply moving, and definitely not one for kids.

The third film was James Cameron’s Avatar, which I was unsure about seeing, having heard that the storyline was beyond daft. However, the visual affects, aided by 3D glasses, are incredible, and to be honest I would have been happy to spend three hours simply exploring the planet of Pandora without a single event or story-arc.

The world imagined by James Cameron and created by Weta is beautiful, brutal, and utterly encompassing. Seen through the eyes of marine Jake Sully, it becomes even more astonishing as he knows no more than we do about the creatures and plants that surround him. Yes, there’s a bit of a mushy love-story, some tree-hugging stuff and lots of explosions, but really, for me, the planet itself is the attraction.

But now, sadly, it’s time to get back to reality, take off the 3D glasses and do some work.

I love this time of year. Despite the cold weather that nearly snapped my nose off when I went out earlier, there’s something about all the sparkle and shine, the bright smiles on shoppers faces (note: this was at 10 this morning - they’re probably a bit grumpier now), the decorated trees (ours is a glittery black faker bought in Woolworth’s closing down sale last December), and all those promising presents balanced beneath it.

Frankly, I’ve turned into an over-excited kid, and the soothing carols oozing in off Classic FM are only making me fizz harder.

Christmas bauble © Julian Cenkier

The one thing I usually miss at this time of year as a freelancer is the buzz of a pre-Christmas office. The world of publishing is slightly unusual in that it firmly shuts down from Christmas to New Year, so deadlines are crazy, everyone’s overworked, but no one’s complaining because they know they’re about to wallow in at least nine days off. Tins of fancy chocolate biscuits, mince pies and festive chocs do the rounds, and tinsel creates a cheery fire-hazard around computer monitors.

This year I’ve had the chance to appreciate it in full thanks to a few days subbing at a publishing house in Cheltenham, a mere 40-minute train ride from my house in Bristol. I’ve loved every moment of it, despite having to leave my house when it’s still dark and returning home when it’s dark again.

Cheltenham is a very pretty town that comes into its own at Christmas time. As www.britainexpress.com succinctly puts it: “The town is resplendent in Regency terraces of cream-white houses and wrought-iron railings.”

With lofty Christmas trees and tasteful fairy lights twinkling in each window, the town is even more elegant and enticing, with bright baubles and Advent candles adding to the glow.

Previously I’ve only ever been to Cheltenham when the literature festival is on, but now I think I’ll go there more often, and if the opportunity comes up to work there again, I won’t hesitate to say yes.

© Rodolfo Clix

I’m coming towards the end of a three-month stint on a magazine. Long-term contracts like this are gold dust, and a curious reminder of what my life was like when I was features editor for a particular magazine rather than being freelance.

I’ve thoroughly enjoyed working as part of a team, getting to know the way the mag works, seeing and contributing to its development… These are the things I miss when I’m flitting from job to job, and I know I’ll be sad to leave.

One of the perks of this time has been the break from wondering where the next month’s rent is coming from. There’s something delightful about having a regular income, even if it means daily commutes and spending most of my time in an office. All in all, I’ve enjoyed having a something of a routine for a while. I’ve liked coming into a place where people know my name (like the pub in Cheers, ahem) and chatting by the kettle and going for bagels on Fridays, as well as the satisfaction of working on an issue from beginning to end, planning future issues and giggling over the more bizarre requests from readers. It’s been interesting to gain a deeper insight into a specialist subject, learn new terminology, come to understand the needs of a very picky readership and suss out this particular company’s way of doing things.

That said, moving on after three months was always the plan and I’m hoping it will open me up to new possibilities.

As of October 19th I’ll be available for writing, editing and PR, so give me a shout if you need a hand. I’ll be happy to oblige!

© Emily Lucima

A friend of mine who had a baby almost nine months ago said to me recently that babies are tiny scientists - everything they encounter needs to be investigated by whatever means possible: they reach for the sharp shiny knife because that’s the object they’re usually kept away from - they go to touch the flame because they want to know what it is, and more importantly, what it’s for.

As writers I believe we never quite grow out of that stage. Okay, so it’s safe to leave us in a room with sharp objects and other potential hazards, but our endless curiosity is what keeps us investigating, examining, eavesdropping on the world. The only thing that’s really changed is the question, from what to why.

As we seek fuel for our writing, we’re searching for answers to the questions that we hang our writing on. Many agents and publishers say that the themes of a book are a crucial ingredient - these themes are in fact the questions, ideas, theories and curiosities that drive us to write.

Every book is a writer’s equivalent of a scientific investigation - as we research human relationships, the motivations that drive us to commit acts of benevolence or horror, the difference between each and every one of us…

And journalism does this in a far more straightforward way, as assignments demand that we become experts on all kinds of things, if only fleetingly. This week, for example, I’ve been writing about cross stitch, knitting trends, 18th century piracy, and nuclear waste disposal - none of which I have first-hand experience of. It’s amazing how knowledgeable you can seem with a suitably authoritative tone!

I suppose in a way writing is a form of acting, as we take on the characters that we write into our novels and assume the persona of the person best equipped to write a feature on a particular topic. It’s something we all do as children, trying on different personalities along with our mother’s high-heeled shoes, our father’s gigantic jackets.

We writers just never quite stop doing it, even if we don’t always put on the costumes to help us along in our endless quest for new information, for the discovery that glimmers always just out of reach.