I thought I was all newed out

Suzie Eisfelder

I was struggling with reading new books. I tried several books in a row but either didn’t like them or couldn’t read them. I put it down to being all newed out.  This is a term I coined a few weeks ago to explain why I couldn’t read anything new. It all started with my new class. Hardly new at that stage but we were moving onto a different part of the subject and it felt new.

The way the subject worked is that in the first few weeks each student wrote a 2,000 word piece. This piece of writing was then marked and added to the slush pile. The new part was that we were divvied up into groups and told to put together an anthology. Support and guidance was given along the way but there were problems.

The first problem was all about the slush pile. As authors we were not allowed to accept more than two offers for our stories. This became problematic when everyone desperately wanted two or three stories. When we were turned down for this reason we had to do what everyone else did and head back to the slush pile.

There were 89 stories, each loaded into the course resources divided up into various folders with 15 stories per folder. Our team divvied up the folders. With four of us in the team we each took a folder, at the time that left one folder unallocated, folder six with yet more stories was added later. We’d each read the stories in our folders and marked some stories for further thought. When we had our moment of panic because we’d been turned down and had used up our spares I headed back to the slush pile. I worked my way through the stories I’d not yet read; highlighting some for the team to have another look and discuss.

We finally had our five stories and I stopped reading. But that was when I’d read the bulk of the stories. As of today I’ve now read 79 of the 89 stories available. And it was at this point I couldn’t read anything new. I resorted to Terry Pratchett, Anne McCaffrey and Tom Holt just to enable me to keep reading.

Anyway, we finally got our ebook together and submitted on time. I then wrote my personal report and submitted that a couple of days early. I’ve completed and submitted everything for my other subject, I think I’m tired and I’m now on a slight break. Although, I wonder if I’ve broken my brain with all of this work. Yes, I’m back blogging but I’m having trouble even thinking. Anyway, I’ve got a few weeks before uni starts again so hopefully my brain will come back into gear soon.


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