By twelve o’clock, I’d been handed two stories (which quickly turned into three), the local school briefs and two press releases to turn into short stories.

So the very first thing I get to do is to interview a little old lady about rug making. I get handed the contact info and pretty much get left alone to write.

When it comes to ringing her, I have to call about 4 times to finally sort everything out. This is pretty much the most intimidating part because I hate calling people. But, luckily, I get over it and realise there’s a difference between calling people from an office with your own landline and calling people from your bedroom while you’re wearing pj’s.

So, story numero uno polished and filed and I’m off to write another story. This one is about artists moving to the ‘burbs and so Quest likes it and I get to write two different versions and interview different people for different newspapers. I feel pretty accomplished at this point.

At one point there’s a guy shooting a giant green toy gun near my desk. I’m not totally sure how I’m supposed to react to that so I decide to blend into the wall as best I can. Coincidentally, the wall has a picture of another guy stomping on the desks in a green firefighting suit. The editor was not lying when he said it’s pretty casual (although, I think he may have been lying when he said this week was all about me doing whatever I wanted).

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My editor wondered on over and assigned me another story for tomorrow and he encouraged me to bring in some softer stories (the homelessness one didn’t fly) tomorrow, so this definantly wasn’t what I was expected. I’ve gotten three bylines and will have more tomorrow so all my nervous googling was unnecessary.

Hopefully the rest of the week turns out the same..