Back to normal...

How can September have gone so quickly, yet been such a long month?  Fully back into the swing of things at work, it has been a month of planning, not only for day to day work but also two other major projects: our school production of 'Oliver!' in February, which will be staged just a month before I hand in my final dissertation.  Work on the novel is temporarily suspended, as planned, while these two events take over my life for the next few months. 

Because of the dissertation, I had to investigate the horrors of Skype this weekend - I cannot think of anything worse than being able to see the person I'm phoning but it is the most obvious solution to the problem of being two hundred plus miles away from the university and my supervisor. The web cam is my least-favourite bit of IT kit of all time. I am debating wearing one of my commedia masks when I use it!!

However, it's not all bad.  My favourite new 'toy' is a planning tool called Scapple, which is currently in beta for Windows and is fabulous.  I've always been a spider diagram kind of planner, but I tend to go through several versions of the diagrams until I get it just right, by which time I've wasted so much time I have precious little time left to actually do anything else with the diagram.  With Scapple, you have an infinitely flexible and endlessly editable page - if you want to add or amend your notes it takes only seconds and you don't have to waste time redrawing the diagram because you realised you missed out something vital the first time round.  You can drop in photographs too and the size of the planning sheet is even expandable, way beyond a sheet of A4. It has been an entirely brilliant tool for clarifying my thoughts about first the novel and then the dissertation. 

The programme is incredibly easy to learn to use and at the moment, while it is still in development, it is entirely free of charge.  I will be buying it as soon as it is launched: a month after discovering it, I can't imagine how I ever managed without it!  The same lovely people are behind Scrivener, another favourite bit of writing software I also bought this term.  I think all this software shopping may be the online equivilent of the annual 'back to school' stationery shopping trip!  Except, of course, I did one of those as well...!

Best cake for a good long while was a big slice of Bakewell Tart at the Charles Dickens museum in London.  I was there to pick up on the Oliver vibes and we ended up sitting in the garden (which is little and lovely!) drinking strong black coffee and putting the world to rights!  I was already in 7th heaven, having seen the wonderful Adrian Lester in Othello at the National Theatre the night before - the cake just made me float a little higher!