I promised to tell you about my new job, and now that I'm a week into it, I will.
Firstly, I suppose I should get some housekeeping out of the way. I am now employed by Oxford University Press, and involved with their blog, but all opinions given here are solely mine, and not OUP's. There, that's out the way - transparency always a good idea! But I'm not going to pretend to keep blog and job completely secret, because I think there are things on OxfordWords which you'll really enjoy. Indeed, I linked to it before I ever worked there. It would be silly to keep these things to myself.
So, yes, I am Content, Communications, and Engagement Manager for OUP online dictionaries (for four months, as part of someone's maternity cover). And - I love it! I have really, really enjoyed my first week - to the point where I'm already a little sad that it's probably only going to last four months, in this position. Everyone's very friendly, and the job is both challenging and fun, so far.
What do I actually do? My lovely line manager is still easing me in, and at the moment most of my role revolves around the OxfordWords blog - commissioning, editing, proof-reading, and (occasionally!) writing blog posts about language.
Although I won't be writing hugely often, I have written my first post - which is a competition, so I didn't actually have to write very much, but I did come up with this Dickens-related question. Enter to win a Kindle Fire HD! (Yes, yes, you know my stubbornly paper-books-only-please position, but if you're Kindle-inclined - Kinclined? - then it's a fantastic competition. And obviously I can't enter anyway. Incidentally, the only downside to this job is that I can't receive OUP review copies anymore!)
We language-lovers also, of course, love puns. If they're puns mixed with pedantry, what more could we ask for? I don't know where I stand with copyright, so I'm not going to copy the picture across, but I crafted something in Paint which will stand for time immemorial as Great Art... no? (If that Twitter link doesn't work, try this one on Facebook.)
All in all, I'm so happy that I applied for it - and, more than that, that they offered me the job! It's even more ideal for me than I'd imagined, and the people friendlier than I could have hoped. It already feels to me like I've been part of the team for ages.
I'll keep mentioning OxfordWords content here, if I feel it's appropriate for SiaB readers - and hopefully will also be posting regularly here. As a teaser, one of (seven!) books I'm reading at the moment is a fantastically good and observant chronicle of the Second World War... and it isn't by Nella Last... guesses?
