Yeah, so I’m fresh out of parrots to perch on my shoulder, and left my eyepatch back in Brisbane, silly me. So that is where the pirate talk ends. Thank god. Haha.

So, evidently the lack of an internet connection where I am staying took its toll on my timely blog posting, oops. Sigh.

 But, the flipside of that is that I’ve been nicely busy at the Sunshine Coast Daily, working on a bunch of features, a wedding piece and tagging along with a photographer for an afternoon.

First the features. It’s a little different doing a placement where I’m predominantly writing features. I found myself at a bit of a loss. Not with regards to the actual interviewing or writing, but the time in which it needed to be done. Doing a news placement, deadlines are clear and soon. Work needs to be done speedily almost always. But writing features is a little like sitting a bubble within the newsroom. Questions and comments and topics change often, and things are much faster, while I’m sitting here working on maybe two different subjects a day, and even then the deadline is for publication in a week or whenever. It’s a little strange, I’m never quite sure how fast I should be going, or if I’m doing enough. I asked my editor today, and things seem to be going fine.

The writing is different, of course. I’m figuring out what kind of colour I can add on in to the pieces I’m writing, and what else needs to be added. This is definitely a newsroom where eye-catching intros are a must.

As well, I asked for a stylebook, only to be told that I’d be better off to just pick it up by “osmosis”, and that it was not the same as regular News ltd. Style. So, a little uncertainty there too. So far, doesn’t seem too different, but I guess I’ll have to wait and see how that goes.

I was told this morning to expect to get about 10-12 features published out of my 2 week stay. Nice. That kind of made my day, as with the whole features time warp, I haven’t yet seen any of my features published, and wasn’t sure if they ever would be. Guess it’s a time delay kinda thing.

 I’ve just been assigned my second wedding piece. The first, I wrote last week in a rush when my editor needed it quickly (ah, blessed familiarity – the newsroom rush). I was to interview the daughter-in-law of on of the sales ladies who recently got hitched to her son. That was an interesting jaunt – couldn’t get in contact with the bride, so interviewed the groom and mother in law. The second one I’m to do has a long deadline though, and if for the son and daughter-in-law of the lady I’m sitting opposite. Again, should be interesting.

 Last but not least, Friday arvo. I went on out with one of the photographers on a couple photo shoots. One was a local man coming through stroke rehab, and the other was a kids surfing comp on the beach. They were both nice, but only one made me a little sunburnt. On the upside, discovered that my makeup has inbuilt sun protection as my face was the only bit of exposed skin that didn’t get a little colour in it.

Right, must get back to work then – doing this on my lunch break. When I’ve got a moment I’ll upload my photos of the beach here!

Good luck all!

Lara x