Welcome - The International Writers Magazine - 2008

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Editorial: The Importance of 5 Year Plans
This week I was asked by my head of department to come up with a personal five year plan. I think, like most people in these situations you nod and mutter something then go away with a sinking heart. Five year plan! Stalin had five year plans, European directives have five year plans, my five year plan is as it ever was, win the lottery and get the hell out of education. Apparently that isn’t quite enough these days.

Reflecting on this in the evening I realise that the people who ask for five year plans are in the main family orientated. They have kids and as a consequence, have 20 year plans. Johnny will go from Junior school to High School to College to mortgage payments in around 22 years. Parents can easily fit five year plans into a 22 year schedule. Add two more kids and there you have 30 years to waste raising kids contributing to global warming with disposable but not degradable nappies and decades of school runs in the SUV. Perhaps add in heartbreaks, accidents, drug and alcohol rehab and teenage rebellion to add spice.

Well what if you aren't in a marriage or permanent relationship? What if there are no kids to hold you together. (Even a divorce holds people together when there are kids).

For example: Kit and I have been together, bonded by a spiders web of life, for thirteen whole years. Still attached, but the line has been spun out so far almost anything will snap it, the smallest crisis. Who would have thought this relationship would have drifted along for thirteen years, but then again, if we had had a five year plan, we would have known that it should have ended Feb 5th 1999. It would have been in the plan. (Actually Kit did try about then but events conspired against it). But right now, I suspect much like many marriages, one continues, despite the fact that the label on the jar has a clear expiry date and one risks poisoning by continuing to use it. Like many relationships I suspect they change over time and she and I have become each other best friends and nothing is planned without the other knowing or discussing it first. Like friends there are things I do that piss her off and lifewise things she does that make me annoyed, but the point of friends is that they are there as a safety valve and no matter what happens, they enable one to let off steam and calm down without too much personal damage. So with luck we will still be connected and good friends for the next ten years.

So a personal five year plan?
Where does one begin? Every year I have a plan, who doesn’t. (Aside from wanting to win the lottery) This year it it is to sell my latest novel, started last summer in France. Then prepare for the Winchester's Writer's conference this June and make sure everyone knows about the Borderlines Anthology we just produced as part of the MA in Creative Writing here at Portsmouth University.

But five years? That would mean I would have to know what I am doing in 2012 gosh darnit. Factor in Global Warming, the Myan calendar which says the world is going to end in 2012 and oh yes, retirement from teaching. Good grief, is it that time already?

Who on earth plans that far ahead? Perhaps he is right, my head of department. I should have a plan. But, then again, as soon as I think of one, my throat constricts, my mind goes to the edge of a cliff and I look down, a still small honeyed voice says the ‘the rocks look lovely this time of year’ and I have to look away.
Perhaps, for parents at least, five years is but a moment. For anyone else it seems glacial.

Yet, already Hackwriters is in its 10th year. Time is relentless. Yes things are happening. I have five novels out there for sale. I have written and sold a few articles this year but as luck would have it , not been paid yet....sigh

I will think more on this, but this is happening all over education now. Each poor academic, overwhelmed with marking, trying to motivate the listless, trying to pay rent or a mortgage, trying to make a life, now has to plan it as well. There are things beyond which your job should not go. Planning your life might be one of them. It reminds me that I once went for an interview at Plymouth University and I was asked about my five year plan. My reply ‘This is a only a three year contract,’ didn’t go down too well.

© Sam North Editor June 2008
hackwriters at gmail.com
kit on swing

Borderlines Vol 2 A Literary Spark - ISBN: 978-1-4092-0494-7 A University of Portsmouth publication from the School of Creative Arts, Film and Media- Available from Lulu Press now Borderlines Vol 2 - A literary Anthology of new fiction, travel writing and poetry from the Creative Writing Programme and invited writers at the University of Portsmouth, UK under the editorship of Freya Scott, Ryan Sirmons, Aby Davis and Sam North 'An exciting insight into the amazing talent and diversity of new writers out there today' Stuart Olesker - Playwright

Published June 2008 - Mean Tide by Sam North 'Extraordinary novel about a child's psychic awakening' Lulu Press - ISBN: 978-1-4092-0354-4 Review: 'An engaging, unusual and completely engrossing read' - Beverly Birch author of 'Rift' Be one of the first to read it - Order now Sent to live with his spooky Grandma by the river in Greenwich, Oliver (12) discovers a whole world of disturbed people who are probably even crazier than the ones he left behind. When he finds a dog with its throat cut on the beach, everything changes. Age range 12-16 and adult

Another Place To Die by Sam North ISBN: 978-1-84753-899-4 The Great Flu Pandemic is coming. Are you prepared? Reviews: 'It will keep readers in suspense, laced with gritty-gallows humor' Charlie Dickinson 'Beautiful, plausible, and sickeningly addictive, Another Place to Die will terrify you, thrill you, and make you petrified of anyone who comes near you...'. Roxy Williams - Amazon.co.uk Fascinating, frightening and compelling, Another Place to Die is the ultimate page-turner which I guarantee will result in many late nights under the bedside light with you uttering, ‘just one more chapter!!’ Ian Middleton Read the first chapter on line Order Now direct from Publisher : Another Place To Die

The Curse of the Nibelung - A Sherlock Holmes Mystery by Sam North ISBN 1-4116-3748-8 $19.98 Retail - 300 pages - Lulu Press USA 'Chocolate will never be the same again' - Sunday Express Buy from your favourite on-line retailer Amazon UK Amazon USA Barnes and Noble & Waterstones

Diamonds - The Rush of '72 is also available from the publishers direct

Diamonds - The Rush of '72 By Sam North ISBN: 1-4116-1088-1 Buy now from Amazon.com 'a terrific piece of storytelling' Historical Novel Society Review Also printed in the UK and available from Amazon.co.uk & Waterstones

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