Thursday, April 19, 2007

Irons in the fire and arrogant professionals

I have a friend who says that whenever you are getting swamped from all different directions, you should cut off one of the branches – and you shouldn’t have more than about five before you reach overload. Needless to say, she never takes her own advice. More to the point, I feel overloaded at the moment, and it’s when I get to this state that I spend more time playing freecell or minesweepers, primarily because I don’t know which job to do first. My desk is piled high at the moment, and on Tuesday, I went to Jennifer of Goldenford’s (www.goldenford.co.uk) office to deal with the bookkeeping there, and have brought it home with me to produce statements of our financial activities of the past financial year. That’s the problem with a very few of us running a small publishing company, we have to be everything – computer whizzkids, bookkeepers, design experts, marketers, salespeople – oh and of course, we’re the writers too. But the good news is that, since setting up our account with Gardners, the large book wholesalers, we are regularly getting orders (probably from Amazon, though there’s no way of telling) for all our books, my novella, A Bottle of Plonk, amongst them.

I finally finished polishing my latest short story on Tuesday. The deadline was the 18th April, so I hadn’t allowed much leeway. I printed it all out, fished out WN to read the specific instructions and discovered that Life was going nowhere was to be the first line, not the theme of the story. I quickly changed it, which was not hard to do, and sent it off. As I browsed my Excel sheet, I found that I hadn’t recorded the three stories I sent to a competition in February. That was very irritating, as I don’t remember which ones I sent, and may have to hold back on competitions till after the winning entries are decided. Still it’ll be OK if I don’t win anything, so I probably don’t have to worry. I’d like to send something to the Winchester Writers’ Conference, (www.writersconference.co.uk) – entries due 25th May and 8th June, and will certainly want to submit to my local competition - results during the Guildford Festival in October.

The news about body parts removed without necessarily getting consent at Sellafield ties in very much with the private enquiry on haemophiliacs who received blood contaminated with the AIDS virus. Every now and then we find people in the medical/scientific community so arrogant and so concerned with their research that they give no thought to decent human behaviour. However, the first case has not yet been proved, and if it is found that only cells and minor tissue has been removed from bodies already undergoing post mortem examinations, then it may be that the whole thing has been exaggerated by the media. The other case is far more horrific, as there is the suggestion that a doctor/doctors gave blood to haemophiliacs, knowing that it was contaminated and that they did not disclose to the victims that they had become infected for years afterwards, potentially allowing more infections to take place. If that’s the case, striking the doctors in question off the Medical Register is not enough. They should face a very serious charge.

2 comments:

Sue said...

Jackie, I'm in the swamp with you at the moment.

Not only do I have to get all last years accounts sorted, but I have to find a new accountant as well. Our lovely chap is having to cut back on his workload.

I am also shovelling piles of rubbish from one room to another in an attempt to get the house ready for the first of the childrens parties next week.

Plus, working three days a week and helping hubbie with business.

I feel like I'm in the Matrix where I'm standing still and I can see everything moving around me.

Good luck with all your story entries. A Bottle of Plonk sounds interesting. :-)

Take care.

Sue x

Jackie Luben said...

Hi Sue,
I think anyone who works from home finds themselves in a similar muddle, though at least I haven't got my kids at home any longer. But I'm a great believer in finding a bit of time for yourself. You have to, to keep yourself sane, and I did this, eveny when my children were home and I was a lot more stressed than now.