This month I am gearing up for Festival season proper as well as doing my normal two challenges - this months are National Picture Book Writing Week (NaPiBoWriWee) in which I will be attempting to write 7 picture books in 7 days. I have already completed the first draft of number one. This is obviously only the first week of May so I normally then follow it with a month of working on my kidlit stuff. The aim is an hour a day working on editing, redrafting and illustrations.
The second challenge is a month of writing flash fiction - the aim is one a day. Flash fiction are stories under 1000 words. I wont be posting them daily but rather getting ahead of myself for the Friday Flash postings I take part in.
Apart from that I have a lot of blogging to catch up on and editing of short stories to be sent off there is also the processing of festival photos to happen this month!
Children book and illustration stuff appears on Orange Monster
Poetry Festival write up stuff will be on here and Turquoise Monster
Flash Fiction is Magenta Monster
Photos in general go out on Salaric Photography
Yesterday I sort of forgot to do any work - after 9 days of intensive festival coverage I awoke tired but happy and helped get the girls off to school mind buzzing with more things to write up about the Cheltenham Poetry Festival. But I had to go to the bank at 10 and somehow this took up the entire morning!
I did find some fantastic bits of wall art to snap whilst out though!
Then my parents and Al had conspired together meaning that I was taken for lunch were I relaxed and ate and drunk and produced the rough first draft of a childrens picture book.
I then came home and slept!
When I got up Jean was home from school and I ended up watching Cloudy with a Chance of Meatballs whilst buried in children and kittens. It was then tea time which was eaten in the garden.
With a rabbit for company!
My dad also tried the trampoline.
Then I had a bath and read the book I was given as part of World Book Night during the festival, in bed I wrote two poems and babbled about arty stuff.
Of course today I am staring at the state of the house going eep! And Mary isn't going to let me get much done as I've basically been missing for a week and she is determined to catch up on snugs!
The kitten got very ill, she'd been manic for a couple of days, really bitting people and not settling for cuddles at all, we thought she had just reached a hurtling around phase but then I came home from the poetry festival after midnight and she was all floppy, Al had stayed awake as he was concerned about her. I thought initially she'd just exhusted herself.
But I couldn't sleep and kept going down stairs, when I came down to find my mum holding her I knew she was ill, I woke the house hold up and questioned them as to what had happened to the kitten that day - the baby had y on her (eek I thought), I'd had to clean tooth paste off of her from where Jean dropped her tooth brush (eek I thought maybe she eat some), she hadn't eaten anything, and the amount she'd been eating over the last few days had been reducing - my friend suggested she had a hair ball and I had already had to remove a big clump of fluff from her mouth so that seemed likely.
So it was off to the vets as soon as they were open.
He laughed when we explained the sitting on and the tooth paste, stuck a thermometer up her bum and prodded and poked her - she had a fever so he gave her two injections and gave us liquid antibiotics to give her. I was relieved that it wasn't anything serious though left it could have been but part of me had been thinking please don't let it be from Mary sitting on her or the tooth paste - Al had been thinking the same - what to tell Jean if it had been tooth paste posoisoning. She loves the kitten and looks after it and had gone to school that morning in tears as she wanted to stay with the kitten because it was sick - the tooth paste was an accident. I felt awful I felt that in going out and working for a week the house had fallen to pieces and one of the little dependants had gotten ill because I wasn't there to keep an eye on things.
The kitten is now uber bouncing and happy again with out the bitting or manic edge which I assume was the pain/grottiness she had before the fever broke.
She spent three days just snuggling on one of us, she and the baby were kept apart as we didn't want her pulled about at all. We fed her water through a syringe and the antibiotics the same, she liked being in Al's hood. For something that was basically dumped on us less than a month ago she has become so integral to our lives, the thought of the household without her bouncing about was heart braking. I never do realise how attached I am too pets until something happens. I spent most of the piggies lives calling them silly suasauges and saying how daft they were and then when they went missing it was me trying to hunt the hedge rows on crutches killing my pelvis and setting back my recovery to look for them, I cried and cried over those little fluffies and am still so angry about their demis.
Still the kitten is fine and happy again - I am however currently banned from adopting anymore baby animals. Talking of which I should go and give that bunny some breakfast!
After proddings from several friends I decided to get a Pinterest account. I really love the site - it allows you to share cool photos and images but it also allows you to nicely credit the site it came from and has a policy to help you point out and correct copy right infringement.
I was exstatic to find that some of my images were already on there and linked back to my sites 🙂
I'm 5affy on there but a search of my name will do 🙂
Last night I went to watch my friend Dan Holloway perform his show Some of These Things Are Beautiful as part of the Cheltenham Poetry Festival.
He is a fantastic poet and as always his set was emotionally charged dealing with creative freedom and the intensity of life and death.
Lighting levels at the venue were a bit tricky so I apologise for the quality of the photographs.
Again I did some experiments with long exposures and this photo came out in a way that I just feel fits with Dan's creative zest - to me it is a poet in a spiralling tunnel of thought and creativity.
The event also had two other poets performing - I unfortunately had to run away before the last performer but I did catch James Webster.
Who did a wonderfully funny piece on time travel and the self - it was philosophically deep but light in the presentation.
The event took place in a lovely bar called The Strand in Cheltenham which had some lovely wall art I will have to go back and photograph at some point.
Anna Saunders one of the Festival Directors was there in person to compare and I just love this shot of her I got - I think it shows her fantastically warm and bubbly personality.
Art and Craft, Sarah, Writing | sarah | 
Wed 1st May 2013 8:19 am | 
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