Michelle's corner

Life has meant I haven't written for a while. The Wrap has sat, untouched for months and I'm fine with that. I'm not going to force it. My department is being restructured and it isn't looking good. I'll be taking a drop in wages and that's assuming I keep my job, as I'm having to re-interview for the new post.

I've read about other authors who became successful after being made redundant and sinking it all into writing books... but I don't think I'm like that. For a start, I have responsibilities... other people depend on me. I can't take a risk with their futures. Apart from which, writing is something which I now do for pleasure. I don't want to force things. I want my imagination to come out on the page when it's ready... and I don't want to be a story grinder, if you know what I mean.

Of course, I've been doing other things. One of them is that I've donated my voice to VocalID. It's a system that takes a surrogate's voice and infuses it with the guttural sounds that someone who can't speak, can make. Those sounds are infused through the surrogates voice to make a digital voice that is unique to the person, who needs a digital voice of their own. And to boot, they're going to use my voice as their demo voice. Super cool. As I'm transsexual, they've actually listed me under "other" rather than male or female. I am a bit pissed at that, but hey ho. You can find it here - https://vocalid.ai/ - just scroll down to the voice demo section and select "other" from the gender option.

But I'm not up to much else right now. I did get something called MOFT for my laptops. It was on kickstarter and it requires that the laptops have no venting underneath, so for my Toshiba and Mac Air, it was ideal. Glues to the bottom and folds flat underneath when not in use. It doesn't unpack quite as neatly as it does in the promotional videos, but it definitely helps my wrists. Worth looking into if you write on the go.