by ·Comments Off on The Writer’s Quest Continues

When this blog goes for any length of time without an update it’s normally because I have succumbed to my tortoise-like nature and become incredibly lazy, but this time it’s mostly because I have been incredibly busy.

What follows after the jump is a brief summary of my last five months or so, what I have learnt about myself, what I have done and what I am doing.

I am earning money as a freelance writer

If you want to employ a freelance writer, please drop me a line on davidDOTofDOThingATgmailDOTcom, replacing the capitalised DOTs and ATs with their relevant symbols.

At the moment I’m probably not quite earning enough to give up the day job, which is a shame, because I gave up the day job, but that just means I need to find another day job in the near future.

I am now (results pending) a fully qualified NCTJ journalist.

I did a full time course set by the NCTJ (National Council for the Training of Journalists:  An acronym that I still embarrassingly enough get muddled up whenever I say it) that finished a couple of weeks ago.  I met some fantastically talented people there, some of whom will undoubtedly be the next big thing in your favourite paper, on your favourite website or your favourite news broadcast programme.  The rest are probably sick of journalism right now and will need a break because the course is rather intense, unrelenting and tends to beat the journalism into you so hard that some of it will occasionally go right through and come out the other side.

Incidentally, if anyone reading this is interested in a career in journalism, do an NCTJ.  You won’t realise how little you know until you do.  I did mine at News Associates, who have centres in London and Manchester and although they are pricey by comparison, it is the first piece of education that I have paid for that I feel I not only got a good deal but probably didn’t pay them enough for all the work they put in.

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by ·Comments Off on The Incomplete Works

I don’t believe in New Years Resolutions.  I think they’re daft and only set you up to look stupid when you inevitably fail.  Not only that, but if something is worth doing, you might as well just do it instead of needing to tie it to some date-triggered calendar event.  Despite all of this, I do have a sort-of-resolution-of-sorts.

I have a chronic problem whereby I constantly start projects and leave them hanging.  I know that I am not alone in this, but my problem extends to the point that I get distressed about their incomplete state, procrastinate, get more stressed about it, assign some arbitrary requirement for ultimate quality on the project, panic that my work will never be good enough for it and then never progress at all.  I have one project in particular that was born out of a five minute think on the bus about what I would do if I had to do a 24 hour comic, grew from there and now sits in my “I will never be artistically good enough to tell this story” pile with everything else.

My resolution that is happening at new year but is not a new years resolution is therefore the following:

This year, I will work on at least one of my unfinished projects and see it through to either completion, or a state where if it was never continued, it wouldn’t be considered unfinished.

In order to do this I’m going to source a little help from anyone who is interested.  Over the next week or so, I will be posting information on each of my unfinished projects and samples of them and inviting any criticism or encouragement for which, if any, projects have wings and which, if any, projects should be buried.

I might not take any advice or suggestions, but I thought I might invite it, partly to see if anyone beyond a few people I know actually reads this, and if anyone out there really desperately wants comments on at all.

by ·Comments Off on A Change of Scenery

I’ve just spent the evening messing around with my flat and rearranging all of the furniture.

It’s amazing how much of a different mood you can put yourself in by just moving things around a little.  It actually feels like I’ve moved into a new flat.  I’d found myself lounging around in the evenings, not really managing to achieve anything and even staying away from my computer for large stretches of time, which although sounds productive, actually means I just end up watching television all night instead.

I just can’t help feeling that there’s something I’ve overlooked or not thought through properly and as a result hobbled various functions of my room.

I would post pictures, but it would feel weird having pictures of my bedroom up on the internet.

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Greetings.   If you are reading this, then you are probably reading the first post of this blog.

A brief introduction:  My name is David Hing and you are currently a visitor in the realm of davidhing.com.  This blog is the blog of David Hing.

I am a writer of sorts.  The accurate description would be a “struggling writer” who is really struggling to write.  I still have a day job in insurance administration, I have an academic background in Ancient History and more recently Law, an obsession with games in board and video format, an increasing fascination in programming, and an on-again-off-again relationship with creating comics.

Chaotic Tortoise breaks down thusly:  Chaotic refers to my critically short attention span with any single over-arching project and a tendency for my mind to wander far and wide when I’m trying to get anything done whereas Tortoise indicates that I tend to work on my own personal projects rather slowly.  The way I could really prove this is by waiting six months before making another update, but I’m not that committed to making that point.