August already - how the year has been flying.

Time to make an admission. First semester in my Graduate Diploma in Professional Writing was frankly often a bit of a bludge. I found it so very easy to belt off the necessary work. Even the subject that I was struggling with did not prove to be too big a problem in the end as I achieved a Distinction for it.

Reality has leapt up to smack me hard between the eyes in second semester though. I am having to work this time. And I'm loving it. I took myself right out of my comfort zone and decided to study a unit of poetry. This is has been a real eye opener. My decision to take this step was to help me learn more about another written form. While I do not agree with everything my lecturer says, here at the end of six weeks of classes, I have realised that this study of modern poetry has helped me learn to think in a more abstract fashion.

I was a science student in my last years of high school, deferred a civil engineering degree and ended up working in a bank. Best part of ten years later I left the bank, obtained accounting qualifications but ended up largely working in statistics for the next fifteen years. Along the way came army officer training with the Australian Army Reserve until I was diagnosed with Crohn's Disease and forced to resign my commission. Is it any wonder that I tend to be very anal and left-brain? This abstract thinking does not come easily but I am seeing the virtues and benefits. I am quietly proud of a short poem that I write on the fly only earlier this week in a tutorial.

In July, I attended the Canberra Writers Festival. At the end of that I was just so inspired to write and write. And write I did. I wanted to start getting articles published once more. A flurry of activity resulted but unfortunately these were resulting in 'we like it but...' sort of responses. To my great disappointment, I was singularly unsuccessful in placing my piece on the battle of Fromelles anywhere. Presumably too many staff writers had already been assigned to it already. The experience was far from wasted and an advanced draft may be found on my articles blog, Ross's Rant. This morning however I received a nice email accepting one of my articles for publication by the Internet Review of Science Fiction. They have published my work before and it was very nice to get another acceptance by this publication once more. No, more than nice, it was a thrill. Being published is not new to me but I do still get a thrill when it occurs.

Writing - I love it.