Skip to main content

A Legend In My Own Lunchtime

I was really pleased to get a phone call from Take A Break magazine last Friday saying that they want to use a piece I sent in on their letters page in the next couple of weeks. The item was originally intended for their "Magic Moments" slot but that has apparently been discontinued. (A shame as it paid £150 for about 250 words which even with my lack of mathematical prowess seems like a good deal.)

Anyway, the piece was about a rock and roll concert that myself and some other teachers put on to entertain our pupils during the lunch hour when I was teaching back in the late 1980s. It involved, in my case, dressing up like Suzi Quatro in black leather and playing the bass guitar. (If you want to see what I looked like, you'll have to buy the magazine!)

I've always felt it was a good "story" as the whole event was a bit like Beatlemania, with forged tickets, one pupil falling through a skylight and breaking his ankle and staff and students alike, dancing in the aisles, then having to go back to classes in the afternoon.

I called the piece "A Legend In My Own Lunchtime" and I sold a different version of it to the (now defunct) Annabel magazine many years ago. It just goes to show that you should never give up on a strong idea, however long you've had it, as you may be able to "re-cycle" it for another market. In fact I'm just off to see if I can get a short story for Woman's Weekly out of it now!  

   

   

Comments

Popular posts from this blog

Portfolio Career

I have been telling everyone recently that I now have a "portfolio career". Most people don't know what I mean by this (someone even said they'd have to "Google" it!) but it's really just a fancy way of saying that you have fingers in several different pies. I have been a "professional" writer since 1995 although I have always been a writer of some sort, ever since I was at school. During this time, I have stuck pretty religiously to writing and only occasionally had flights of fancy about getting a "proper" job. (And I still do. Only this time last week, I found myself offering to manage a jazz band!!) However, for various reasons, I've recently been seriously exploring other freelancing options that I can do alongside writing and have now decided to "rebrand" myself as a writer, a crafter and a musician. I also plan to carry on working on community newsletters and do something in the spiritual healing/growth area a...

Shortlisted in the Writer's Toolkit Flash Fiction Competition

Hi everyone. A good writing week this week, despite the distractions of the cricket and the tennis, possibly because my portfolio career has been suspended, pending further enquiries (don't tell my patrons!) and I've been at my desk every night. Long may it continue! I said in my last post that I was recently shortlisted (top ten) in the Writer's Toolkit flash fiction competition. The competition brief was to write a short story of 150 words or less on the theme of 'Secrets'. My story actually came out at exactly 150 words because at the last minute, after I'd sealed the envelope, I suddenly panicked and decided that the wording of the rules could mean that the story had to be exactly 150 words. Mine was 149 if I remember correctly and it was surprisingly difficult to add that extra word! Apparently the competition attracted 182 entries (which I must admit was quite a surprise) and entries came from several European countries as well as the UK. I was particu...

Setting Quotas

Does anyone else set quotas for how much work they send out every week, month etc or is that just me? I decided a while back that I was probably never going to send anything out if I didn't set a quota and for various reasons I decided that six items a month was right for me. Like lots of ideas, it is probably good in theory and so far I have managed to keep to my quota. Unfortunately, the theory seems to fall down when I find myself (usually on the last day of the month!) desperately scratching around trying to find somewhere to send something in an effort to meet my quota. A few weeks ago, while in this predicament, I came across Healthy  magazine in a well-known health food store. I noticed that they offered fifty pounds worth of vouchers to spend in store for the writer of the star letter. Desperate to fulfill my quota and hopeful of winning the top prize, I duly sent off a letter. The email was returned by the "postmaster" for some reason, so ...