A Busy Bee

These are strange times. Partly, because my current job at the Edinburgh International Science Festival is, well, strange: every day, I drive around Scotland with another Amanda and we perform a science show to primary school children over and over again. It’s called Little Giants. It’s about bees. I’m the beekeeper, the other Amanda’s the bee.

But that’s not even the really strange part. The oddest thing is that, after getting up at stupid o’clock in the morning to drive to these schools – an experience I find akin to  pulling teeth – and after doing this show three times with the energy of a couple of CBeebies presenters who have broken into a Red Bull factory, I have been getting home and writing.

Seriously, why is this? Why am I not able to write a thing after a week of languishing about in pyjamas, but when I’ve spent the day yelling at the lady inside the tomtom and jumping around singing the praises of pollination, suddenly I can get home and bash out 2,000 words of novel.

Why?

The Bridport Prize

Due to a drunken episode in which my name was googled (not by me), I have discovered that my small victory in the Bridport Prize 2009 Short Story Competition is now public knowledge. As you can see, I am one of many, many shortlisted writers, nevertheless it makes me feel rather warm and fuzzy inside.

Next year, I will try to enter this competition with sparkly new fiction (as opposed to just picking a tired old story at random) and hope I do even better. For now though, I am content just to gaze at my name on the website of this very prestigious prize.

Bridport Prize 2009