Guys, I appreciate you know nothing of what I'm doing at the moment in terms of poetry and protest, but if you fancy helping me win the Morning Star Award for Protest in Poetry 2013, can you put in a vote here for 'Fit to Work: Poets Against Atos'? Many thanks, folks.

https://docs.google.com/forms/d/1-6tGMb ... ested=true

The project is here, if you need further motivation:

http://ftwpoetsagainstatos.wordpress.com/

The awards get announced in a week.

Done.

We won! It was announced last night.

The campaign isn't over, so it's hard to feel elated. But that's my second editorial project ever, and the second to have won an award. So that makes me happy.

Didn't get the job.
Has anyone been using 750words.com? I love it. Unfortunately I got into about a week too late and now any newcomer has to pay to be a member.

Bummer, man.

Hey, 750words looks cool! I just signed up...it didn't ask me to pay anything. Did I do something wrong (or right)? I will try to use it for dissertation ideas.

You get a free 30 day trial. I didn't realize that until after a few days of using it.
It's great because it allows for completely unfiltered writing since no one will see it. I've been using it to develop characters for other stories I'm writing.

Cracked 400 pages on my novel. It's fun because I've just tried to sit back and let the thing flow and not think or revise too much as I'm writing.

Now, I'm in a corner. I've given the story a major obstacle and I'm not sure how the characters will overcome it. I think some real serious shit might have to go down.

I love when serious shit goes down in A story.

Me too. I'm terrified, but also eerily excited to see what happens next.

I've spent fucking ages waiting for the reply from the publisher, but I've just had my first full collection, 'Species', accepted for publication in June next year!

The part where the 'obstacle' was created, was just a dream/coma/drug induced hallucination. i.e. It never really happened.

That's how I live life anyway:
Accidentally run over my cat with the mower. "That never happened, it was just a dream. In fact, the cat's existence was all part of the dream. I never had a cat." Go on living life.


Edit: Just for the hell of it, relevant gif:

Spoiler: show

Dude!

That's awesome! Congrats!

How did I miss this the other day? Even when I posted my comment after it, I feel terrible now.

Congrats man! That's great news.

Hey Durden, is the any chance that my suggestion helped you?

Massive congrats dude.

Thanks guys! You're the only people who know, I've not made it public yet because I'm still trying to flog some copies of my current book and I don't want people to give up and wait for the full collection....

What's your current book about, and how can we buy it?

I write poetry, mate. In terms of books published, I have two short collections / pamphlets / chapbooks / whatever you want to call them: The Snowboy (Salt Publishing, 2011) and Lever Arch (The Knives Forks and Spoons Press, 2013). I would recommend, if you're interested in purchasing them, going straight to the publishers' shops. They're used to shipping out internationally although I don't know the cost (where are you based, anyway?). I'm not a fan of Amazon, they don't seem to be able to get their shit together with pamphlets.

First book: http://www.saltpublishing.com/shop/prod ... 1844718733

Second book: http://www.knivesforksandspoonspress.co ... rarch.html

The Snowboy is a LOT less weird than Lever Arch, but then, the latter was sent to a publisher of mostly pretty weird experimental stuff, and was intended to be a piece of strange and self-indulgent fun before I went for my major first full collection.

Thanks for the info man, I'll check them out.

What a day. A lot of hard work. Five hours later and I'm feeling joyful, humble, surprised, privileged. The first draft of the first novel is coming along. There is an end in sight. 504 pages, 106,636 words.

The hardest part is just getting out of the way.