Scattergun approach

I'm in a content little writing routine at the moment. Having the 3 year old at pre-school for three mornings is lovely, although I feel guilty about all the other things I'm shelving in favour of writing. It's not a long session, by the time I've fed Chick-pea, and tried to persuade her to sleep so that I can write, but it is something.

Meanwhile, an old opportunity to write a column regularly has resurfaced. The governors at school weren't too keen, to my deep disappointment, but there is a flicker of hope. Flatteringly, the newspaper are enthusiastic...although if I go ahead with it, I don't want to end up using all my writing time on that. But it would be good training, and improve my writing skills...not to mention helping me to produce more effective, pared down prose rather than my usual wordiness.

This week, I bought the latest Writing Magazine, which has the annual competition calendar with it. There were a couple of articles about planning your comp entries for the year, and I was intrigued by the idea of entering one competition a month.  Sounds hard, doesn't it? But I thought back to the days at school, when I used to be endlessly excited by my English homework, and realised that if I tackled a project a month as if it were an assignment, I might be able to do it. It would force me to write things that I don't, normally; it would force me to widen my writing experience; most importantly, out of my comfort zone, I would be forced to explore my creativity more fully.

As with the column opportunity, my deepest concern is whether it would dilute my energies, when I'd rather be using them on my older Work In Progress (which I can't find a name for) and the book I'm currently conceiving, which has the working title 'The Web'.

 It's just occurred to me that I've rather inaccurately used the word 'energies' as if the plural applies. I don't think I can scrape together enough energy after the school run or the teatime tantrums to make one whole energy, let alone a collective of them...