Goodbye and Thank You from Meg

This is my final blog for the SAS for the time being at least. I’m a far from ideal blogger as I rarely get chance to read other blogs and comment on them. The pressure on my time is currently increasing so there’s no hope of change in the immediate future.

One major cause is the need to make money! As readers will know from my previous blogs, I’m a part-time writer, running a youth theatre as well and keeping financially afloat by doing a lot of free-lance projects which are writing related. Unfortunately, as we know all too well, funding to the arts and schools is tight or, in some areas, almost non-existent, and the impact is big on free-lancers such as myself. In the past, I would have weathered the storm but as I am, to put it euphemistically, making the transition back to a single lifestyle, I can’t rely on a partner’s income to help with the shortfall. That’s the bad news and it does make me wonder about how much children’s literature (and literature in general!) is kept afloat by partners with bigger incomes! I certainly know of one author whose husband says he rather likes seeing himself as a patron of the arts!

The good news is that I have fallen on my feet in my quest for another part-time job to give me some more regular income. I’m becoming a part-time school librarian, job-sharing with someone who has (we hope!) all the technical know-how that we need. What I’ve been employed to provide is the love of children’s literature and the va-va-voom – apparently! At the time I was appointed, I felt like I had about as much va-va-voom as a dead rat but I have at least begun to twitch now! We’re hoping to start a children’s book group within the school and get into reading for the Oxfordshire Book Award and perhaps even the Carnegie. All brilliant ideas for things you wish school librarians would do (apart from employ you as visiting authors for a very large fee and plug your latest book to the exclusion of all others!) will be very gratefully received. Of course I hope we’ll be able to have lots of author visits but you all know about budgets...

So...I won’t be giving up writing. The current plan is to spend 4 days a week being the youth theatre/librarian person, leaving space to carry on writing and keep my fingers in some at least of my other pies (the ones that are still solvent principally!) With some midsummer enthusiasm, I started a new novel. I hope I’ll have enough va-va-voom to continue it – and, with heady optimism now, at least to read the ABBA blog in the future, if not contribute to it!

Thank you for reading my various posts in the past and especially to those who have commented. I’ve really enjoyed the posts I’ve read here. Long may you all keep on blogging.