Tough but exhilarating week last week; radio workshop, assignments deadlines crashing in and husband away with four kids to tend to in between gasps for air. Top moment - playing a sexy snake in the finished radio play and maybe raising a ripple of surprise from the younger students. So good to just be me (not that I ever saw myself as a sexy snake) rather than the mother of the above mentioned children - fantastic as they are. Such a cliche, but I have got lost over the years and feel as if I have begun to find myself again since beginning all this MA malarkey. Also had a line in a comedy sketch show that the very talented guys on the course have been putting together - have no aspirations to launch myself on the road to Edinburgh but shows how stepping out of my comfort zone can be a laugh.

Ponder of the moment - an MA based around novel writing or a radio play....

Night shift shelf filler

"I don't want to do work experience!" I wailed petulantly as I stamped my foot and glowered impressively. I'm over 40 years old for heaven's sake and I've done stuff. I've worked as a corporate fundraiser, a copy writer, a broker in the City (to my shame) and even stacked shelves in Sainsbusry's on the night shift (feel more proud of that one)!

I do not want to spend two weeks in a publishing office or similar shuffling papers and making the younger people in the staff wonder if I am a tax inspector. It was bad enough when interviewed for an "apprenticeship" for a writing agency. I was much older than the interviewers and I think far less nervous, in fact I could have been Alan Sugar in a dress. Needless to say I did not get the position.

Besides, I already have a job. I am a mother of four children and I copy write for charities and very significant businesses - but will it sell my novel...ah, so that's the point. Of course that's the point, but my life is so crowded I need any spare minute I have to write the novel before I can even contemplate selling it. That I will do when I have time - that will be when the children have left home then.