Thoughts

I am managing the ‘Tagore’ event on Monday 26th March 2012 at Clyde & Co: http://www.poetinthecity.co.uk/events/128

Looking forward to it

It’s a free event filled with Tagore’s biography songs, dance and poetry – reserve your place by:

•     Telephoning Poet in the City on 07908 367488
•     E-mail info@poetinthecity.co.uk

I’m organising a dinner on Saturday 17th March in which I will read an excerpt from my novel in progress.

I’m very protective about sharing my writing in progress. Keywords: *in progress*. Anyone who has attempted to write anything will know how hard and arduous the first draft is and how unpolished it is that you don’t want to embarrass yourself by sharing with anyone until the novel is utterly complete and shining.

I’m putting myself and my work out there just to raise awareness of  Restless Beings’ 100Kids Campaign, for which I am doing my sponsored 50k50day novel-writing challenge.

If you would like to come along, drop me an email sulthana@hijackmyheart.com before 4th March. The dinner will be at a restaurant in East London. It will be a casual affair, like friends going out for dinner.

Those of you who can’t make it, PLEASE DONATE here  and help the amazing Restless Beings build a village for 100 street children to change their lives! Thank you.

I did a live radio interview with DJ DiddyWah at NTS Radio for his pre-valentine special last week.

You can hear the recording here: http://ntslive.co.uk/?p=8672 (I’m on from 30 minutes onwards).

Diddy Wah has an absolutely amazing deep radio voice (I have a thing for deep voices). We discuss love and poetry with a shout out to Poet in the City and their upcoming event on Alfred, Lord Tennyson (did you know he spread a rumour that his relationship with his wife-to-be was forbidden?). I also read my poem, ‘The Sickliest Love Poem‘.

Thanks to the flexible hours of my job (which I love), I haven’t been on a rush hour tube for a long time. One day after a radio interview with NTS live, I boarded a crowded train during rush hour. You know the scene; the one where you’re squashed in between several people, trying not to breathe in someone’s armpit or get a mouthful of someone else’s hair and you wriggle about to avoid bum contact with a stranger you can’t see behind you.
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To help myself get back to finishing my novel which I started for NaNoWriMo, I’ve made a challenge to write 50,000 words in 50 days (50k50day) starting today, Monday 6th February.

To help motivate me, I’ve decided to make this a sponsored challenge.

Please sponsor me e.g. £1 or 50p for every 1,000 words I write. The money will go towards the Restless Beings One Hundred Kids Campaign (www.onehundredkids.com) to help little ones have somewhere safe to live and flourish.

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I’ve been feeling a little guilty for my lack of posts lately, though I’m sure it wasn’t noticed, except by myself.

I want to get back to writing here. Next month is going to be crazy though, as I’ve decided to attempt participating in NaNoWriMo. Attempt being the keyword.

Say hello if you’re participating too.

photo courtesy of sxc.hu

“Excuse me!” I heard a man call out to someone who’d just got off the central line train at Mile End station. I looked up to see the other man pause on the platform.

“You dropped your phone,” said the first man in glasses. A smiling man on the train passed the mobile phone to the bespectacled gentleman on the platform. He took it quickly, a few seconds before the train door gave its shrill warning and closed.

I watched him pass the phone on to the man to whom it belonged and who thanked him, I presume, before the train whisked me away from the moment into the dark tunnels of the London underground.

It made me smile, this act of kindness on a soaking wet and solid grey Summer’s day.