4Talent awards

For some reason I have decided to enter the 'multitalented' catagory of the 4Talent awards (deadline is on friday.)

This may seem odd to some who believed I would enter the journalism catagory- and others who might have expected me to put myself forward in a radio capacity.

The reason I have gone for a more 'risky' catagory is because the majority of my writing is blogging. I worry that people will look at my BBC Local journalism and think "What?! She's written a piece about a you tube star and is going to dickens world?!" It's hardly the stuff of Guardian/Observer proportions.

This is not to say I am not proud of it. I believe that my work for BBC Kent has been balanced and carefully thought out. There is a distinct format to BBC Online and I have done my best to fit in with it. This means keeping my work within certain word limits, short paragraphs etc...

You can view it here: www.bbc.co.uk/kent/blast.

I have also become 'Blast poster girl' and on the site my face is the link you have to click on to find out more about the Blast reporter scheme!

Also, I was not sure if blogging counted towards journalism so I decided that journalism and blogging were separate catagories.

I also entered due to my numerous interviews, presenting on screen and on air. I haven't done a whole lot of presenting and my BBC Blast stuff has only been edited into a two minute clip so far (you can find it on my facebook if you're my friend) but hopefully a longer version will be shown on BBC2 at some Godforsaken hour!

I have also entered due to my music. I have a youtube channel, www.youtube.com/frankielovestoday and www.myspace.com/getfrankmusic.

So the recordings/performances might be sketchy (I need a band!) but I'm working on it. I've been playing uke for a month so will hopefully get better. I have classical roots but can't afford the maintainence of singing lessons, so I'm using my voice differently now.

I think I completely forgot to include createdinbirmingham.com in my 'sell' which was very very silly of me as I think my interviews on there are strong...if a little long! (with the exception of my polar bear interview, which was written.) The CIB stuff Chris Unitt has got me to do has used voice, text and video so a nice 360 of formats.

I will be working with 4Talent at Bestival so even if I don't win hopefully I'll get to write for the next bi-annual 4Talent magazine...and even better attend the so called 'champagne fulled ceremony!'

I also wrote to BBC Blast's web team today and suggest they feature a blogger as one of their writing experts (people like Malorie Blackman) as blogging is a great and easy way for young people to get their work noticed. It's got me where I am today, and that's in a short amount of time too.

Frank.