May’s Challenges 2017 (by sarah)

May is about my picture and children's books - there is a write a book/script a day challenge for the first week of the month. It's called NaPiBoWriWee and is actually more insane than the nanowrimo writing challenges 🙂

I have plenty of ideas for my picture books and zines so this is kind of a great way of actualising some of them 🙂

I am being slightly boring in that I am focusing on stories I kind of need finished for festival, workshops and my activity booklets anyway... but the plan is to kind of continue the challenge and actually spend this month working on my children's stories and picture books (and yes there is actually a distinction between the two groups - they heavily over lap but not completely - so I have kids books with no pictures and picture books that are not aimed at kids!).

So for those who want to know this means I am working on:

1) The Origami Story Box - this is a series so as long as I get number one done I will then work on it until I get bored 🙂

2) Scripts for the Paper Pals Theatre - same as above really only these are scripts for making the puppets act!

3) Folded Friends - again another series and yes it involves the origami and paper craft creations but this one involves humans too 🙂

4) The Little Books - there is lots of finishing up to do for The Little Book of Spoogy Poetry like finally putting it on Amazon and making sure the audio is out, same with The Little Book of Festive Poetry, then The Little Book of Easter Poetry needs to be put together and zined and The Little Book of Baby Poetry needs recording and zining. There are also many many more that are written but not edited or illustrated so probably going to get bored before completion here as well 🙂

5) City Scum (might be Scum City I can never remember!) - this is Alaric's role playing game and I need to finish the illustrations for it!

6) Activity Booklets - these are booklets I create to accompany workshops, they contain stories, games, facts and stuff to make and do. Main focus is Cuddly Science 2, Salaric's Arty Activity Booklet, Funky Folding, Spring Time Activities and Summer Activities.

7) Colouring Books - finishing off my Myths colouring book, sorting some sort of year thing for Love: A Stranger Dream, finish the Autumn Colouring In Booklet and make a Spring and Summer version.

8) Admin stuff - sort out Orange Monster which is my illustrations and kids books blog and in general sort out my art work and writing into easier archives for searching, sort more places to sell products etc...

9) Graphic Novels - I have unfinished The Punk Universe comics so getting them finished and planning out the other story lines 🙂

10) Zines and things - there is stuff waiting to be scanned, edited, printed, folded, stapled, and the Wiggly Pets blog needs some work on it.

This is obviously a lot of stuff which I doubt I'll get through but it gives me clear goals and shows me exactly what there is to do 🙂

My only concern is that there is no room for random creation - but then that does have a tendency to just happen anyway so maybe that's not a bad thing?

And that is just the writing side of things... so apparent from that little lot I am also having a finishing things off month again. So the aim is to try and finish one started project or work on a larger already started project each day - at the moment this is mainly things like candle making and knitting

Suppose I'd better get on with it all then 🙂

The End of Spring Camp Nano (by sarah)

It is the end of April - I have not reached the 50, 000 word goal that I set myself, instead I have just under 20 k. However I have also spent over 30 hrs on my poetry stuff this month which has payed off including workshop design, editing and typing up stuff in notebooks and sorting out events and performances - it even got to the stage where it was all so sorted I could just instantly hunt out a poem and submit it to a themed anthology 🙂

Also I have created the ground work for more graphic novels set in The Punks Universe and even scripted the first part - now I had wanted to achieve 100 pages of script but obvs. that didn't happen. And that is fine. Considering the restrictions of the head injury this is actually amazing as I am actually typing and not using voice recognition software or just writing long hand in note books 🙂 And typing is hard for me still.

It is an amazing achievement and I was making sure others I know got time to write as well. But it is also frustrating - for comparison: 60 - 100 k words is my pre-head bang normal whilst running one to two other challenges on the side. But you know the thing is the head injury turned out to be more serious than we'd imagined and the state I was in means that it is amazing that I am writing and performing and all the rest of it!

Big shout out to Mr Al who broke the 100 K barrier on Wojtek - a story we conceived together on our first date! (Ok it might have been the second but what ever it was we had the story line hammered out by our first Christmas 3 months later). He doesn't get much time to work on his projects so I have been giving him priority with the writing. This has now been a novel with more than a decade of making and it needs to get out there!

Second shout out is too my Dad Leonard Pym who has taken part in his first ever writing challenge 🙂 The results of which can be seen on [Yellow Monster}(http://yellow.monsters.wigglypets.co.uk/).

Busy Poetic Times Ahead (by sarah)

Busy poetic time are coming up 🙂

Thursday 27th of April Villanells Gloucester Fountain Inn from 7-11 pm - I am running a workshop at the beginning of the evening followed by recording performances and interviews organised by The Gloucester Poetry Society

Saturday 29th of April ReneGade Festival 2017 3 -1:30 pm which is opening with Food For Thoughts Poetry performance

May 4th - 15th Cheltenham Poetry Festival, I'll be in the Slam Friday 12th May 8:30 but will be generally about the place 🙂

Saturday 20th of May A Pint of Prose organised by the Gloucester Poetry Festival

Plus as many regular nights as I can get too 🙂 Feeling very excited!!! (there might be another slam as well but it just depends on fitting things in!)

Regular Poetry events in Gloucester and Cheltenham are:

Buzzwords 1st Sunday of every month in Cheltenham

Speakeasy 1st Tuesday of every month in Gloucester

Waterstones Poetry Night Monday evenings in Cheltenham

Poetry Cafe 2nd Wednesday of the month in Cheltenham

Food For Thoughts variable but during the afternoon once a month at the weekend in Gloucester

Villanelles last Thursday of every Month in Gloucester

Cheltenham Poetry Societies Kickstart Workshops 1st Tuesday of the month in Cheltenham

Jam Back at the Tav every Wednesday evening primarily music but accepts spoken word in Cheltenham

Villanelles Recording (by sarah)

The Gloucester Poetry Society have been recording poems at the Villanelles night and turing them into videos for their channel - I am in this one after the rude poem that begins it!

It was recorded at the Fountain Inn Gloucester and is a rather historic and listing building which is always fun!

There is also the wonderful Peter Wyton, Clive Oseman, Nick Lovell and a host of others to enjoy in the video 🙂

For those of you who know your poetry structures you will have detected that the poems performed and/or read are not villanelles. Rather the event is going to the origin of the villanelles as peasant/normal person poetry rather than the educated elite as it were. This doesn't mean you can not come along if you have an English degree - far from it, the organiser himself teaches at the college - no what it means is it is an event for everyone.

Here are a couple of photos I took:

Wonderful eco-vegan poetry sadly I can't remember her name!

Ziggy reading dildo-rama coughs - see video for NSW poetry 🙂

Peter Wyton getting ready to perform from his book Even The Beggers Have Pearls.

I loved the event and it is moving towards having a workshop at the beginning which I hope to get involved with 🙂

Info for the April one is here.

CampNaNo April 2017 (by sarah)

I love writing challenges - they are a bit trickier these days with my limited time window of working brain but it is still possible. One of the things I like about them is not feeling al on my on 🙂

And so me and Alaric are signed up for one of the Nation Novel Writing Months add ons... CampNaNo. This used to be Script Frenzy and is where I'd work on my comic book/graphic novel stuff. Pretty much I still keep it as a Screnzy and work on my graphic novels and Al's role playing game. There is also a poem a day writing challenge NaPoWriMo in April so I bung things up on the WoPo site and the FB page and things to help others. I myself take it as a time to look over what I am doing with my poetry and spend a little time each day on it.

Both girls are doing their own CampNaNo - but me and Jean are having a writing race - known as The Stubby Challenge!!! This is how I did my first actual written and not voice to text stuff after the head bang (I think but to be honest it's all a little foggy back there!). It doesn't involve screens and I can write as big as I like and Jean loves it and... it works - though obviously it means that at some point there is going to have to be a lot of typing up!

The way it works is that we find funky pencils - this time it is catapaults to go with the camp them, last year I think it was dolphins and bats?

We have the ream of paper and our pencils and we write! Then when you are scratching the paper with wood you sharpen the pencil - the first to end up with a pencil stub wins! We even have a special Octarine pencil sharpener from the Discworld Emporium!

I'm slowely lurching my way through a novelisation of my first comic book script about how The Punk ends up being apparently immortal. It is slow progress but that is fine 🙂 Jean is working on her project from last year too - The FoodVerse - we typing up and editing chapter one An Apple Pavlova, now it is about about carrots.

Mary on the other hand is dictating a set of stories about a rainbow jungle and the sparkly creatures within 🙂 When the rest of us are working on our books she sits and colours in the picture she has chosen for the front cover. Interestingly they are quiet Roald Dahl in nature.

Of course I am still managing some typing so am kind of working on multiple projects - this means that I have to have check lists to keep myself on track especially as the time I can concentrate for is actually so small - I can't do hyper focus and I can't fall through the page - my brain just shuts down and I fall asleep! But I think I am getting there and producing good stuff.

So yeah CampNaNo is go and I am prodding people to write and create!