I Will Not Be Pushed, Filed, Stamped, Indexed, Briefed, Debriefed or Numbered. My Life Is My Own.

Well, ish. Because yesterday I resigned from my job at St Brad's.

This has been coming for a while now -- I've been struggling to balance writing and working with jobhunting, which is one of the reasons (as predicted back here) for the sporadic and patchy updating of this blog since then. I'm sorry about this, but I hope it's clear now why I couldn't be more specific about it in a public forum.

Since then I've been applying for a variety of library or information-based jobs, favouring the better-paid, even-more-part-time ones which don't come along all that often anyway. I've had half a dozen interviews, not one of which has resulted in the bouncing joy and celebratory Mexican meals.

I haven't stopped looking, but as it's become increasingly clear that starting another academic year at St Brad's was not going to be good for me, I've been evolving a backup plan. So until an appropriate job manifests itself, I'm going to go full-time with the freelance writing.

I've got the necessary versatility -- as well as my fiction (which has emulated a number of non-fiction styles, particularly in Of the City of the Saved...), and of course a bloody great academic thesis, I've written web-journalism, film and book reviews, vast amounts of stuff for various jobs like a style guide and newsletters and similar, and of course this blog.

I'm not proud -- the only thing I'll draw the line at is sports writing, and that's only because I can't imagine being able to fake the necessary knowledge or enthusiasm for the subject.

On top of this I've done proofreading, copy-editing and editorial consultancy with varying degrees of formality. So convincing a few more publishers to take me on should be a doddle.

To that end, though, if I may make a plea to the regular readers here -- if you know anyone who's in the business of commissioning any kind of writing from freelancers, do please either mention me to them or vice versa.

Tell them I'm cheap, I'm reliable, I work to deadline and do what I'm told, and I have an astonishingly pedantic grasp of English spelling and grammar.

Your help in this matter will be much appreciated.

We now return you to your regularly scheduled wittering about politics, religion and S.F., moaning about the weather and reviewing random bits of media tat.