Writer's block, deadlines and exams

 There’s no point in trying to hide it. I’ve got writer’s block today.

In this game, this is never a good thing. But I feel like we’ve done so much this week that it’s difficult to know what to say, or where to start.

As a journalist you harden pretty quickly to four letter words, but one in particular has reared its ugly head a few too many times at News Associates this week. Exam.

And so the preparation has begun. Plenty of practice reporting questions, extra law notes (I understand the technical term is an ‘orgy’ of them...), and the much anticipated 100 words per minute in shorthand. Busy, busy, busy.

I also found myself making my first ‘death knock’ as part of an exercise in interviewing. Ok it was only by telephone, and obviously a set-up, but it’s still a bloody hard thing to do. All good practice though, and I appreciate the inevitable criticism. Better that I’m too blunt now than in real life.

We ended the week with the deadline for our second patch pieces, which meant another afternoon of frantic Quark-ing and last-minute editing. How many idiots does it take to write a headline? Too many, is the answer. Thirty-seven rejections later we finally made it to the pub at 2.30pm. Chaos.

You can probably understand, then, why my brain is a little bit muddled. In four days I’ve delved into the world of child-related court cases and employment tribunals, learned all about tweets and text alerts, identified all the possible differences between county/borough/city councils (almost), and the less said about the shorthand the better.

Enough to confuse anyone, I think. The drinking probably doesn’t help either.

Nicola Hine