Writing and Stuff… (by sarah)

I did a lot of things last year like readings and festivals and what not but I realised I'd lost the time to actually write and draw. And that all my blogs and sites were in various states of disrepair. Some never recovered from the flood in 2007, some didn't recover from periods of no internet that subsequently happen, the last of which was me tipping coffee on myself and the laptop at the end of August.

There is also the issue that for 18 months after having a baby I just appear to function well below par and everything just takes me longer to do.

But I decided to try and get my writing stuff back on track - I submitted about 6 pieces of work last year, 3 got published, one won a prize and two got rejected and that was it.

SO I thought I spent last year trying to finish old projects off and barely dented the list but I discovered just how much material I really do have! It's time to start submitting.

But during November whilst sitting at the first NaNoWriMo meet I realised I've forgotten stuff I did know and the industry has moved on! I haven't really had the time or ability to focus on trying to get things published since before the flood - just a few bits a year basically. Main thing that has happened is I have some how ended up taking off as a crafter and poet for events with the help of twitter and two not well kept blogs, plus being the sort of person who ends up in conversations with people.

I tried not to just 'disappear' whilst pregnant which was excessively hard as we had no car until just before the birth and the last trimester I could not get up to the bus stop even using the crutches.

So I thought it's time to get organised and made lists and lists and more lists and Al got me a wall planner which we've put up in the library and I ordered Writer's Magazine and News again and got a free Writers and Artists Yearbook with it which was something I was aiming to get anyway - the last one was 2007 and the Childrens 2008 (again basically pre-flood).

My main plan came out something like this:

1) Get Alaric to extract that novel I wrote for the Terry Pratchett Prize a few years ago (the laptop died just as I was editing the 86 000 word story). Finish editing it, send it to friends to edit and send to publishers.

2) Type up The Drs Wife (everytime I start trying to do this something happens like the house gets flooded, or the computer dies (we are talking multiple computers here). Once typed up, edit, send to friends to edit and send to agents.

3) Sort out the 5-8 books (not sure how fat to make them!) that I have written for Punk's universe - sort their blogs, edit, send to friends to edit, do art work and self publish - but possibly not before I have finished each set of books (there are two series now set in the Punk's Universe The Punk and The Godex not to mention the graphic novel and film script both of which aren't finished).

4) Submit 10 or more pieces of shorter works, flash fiction, shorts and poetry a month.

5) Spend up to £10 on competitions a month.

6) Finish illustrations and submit various children's books via agents and direct (depending on how long an agent getting takes).

7) Sort out The Little Books of Poetry - these are children's books but there is no point in trying traditional publishing for children's rhyme - they don't like it as it isn't easy to translate nicely. Not a problem - The Little Book of Spoogy was downloaded over 100 times when I put it out there for free for three days and once I took it down people came and asked when it would be avalible again 🙂 There are a lot of these books with the poems already written and I have been recording audio and stuff too.

8) Sort out blogs.

9) Apply for Science writing stuff.

10) Create several arts, crafts and cooking books (both self pub and traditional depending on if anyone will take the brief) plus tutorials for etsy.

And it is sort of working - I have submitted 6 things so far this month and yes I realise I am running out of month but it is a start. I have signed up for another days writing retreat to help me finish the last bit of The Godex Trilogy and we scheduled Alaric time to extract my novel.

And that is were it has gone a bit wrong 🙁

We assumed that it was the bit were the power jacked into the laptop that was broken as it was on the wonk anyway but when he tried to do his technical wizardy it failed 🙁 So we have a quote for almost £200 from a data recovery company we know are good and are waiting to try something else a friend has suggested before we try and find that sort of cash 🙁

Now I hear you all crying - why didn't you back it up?

Well the laptop was on it's last legs so the port to plug a USB key in would no longer work. So what I was doing was a) printing out a hard copy just incase and b) emailing it too myself and c) Al was backing it up with his tech voodoo.

But...

This didn't happen for the novel as it was written incredibly quickly as the deadline loomed and I really really would have loved The Terry Pratchett Prize - out of all the things you can win for writing I wanted that one and it was the first time it had been avalible - so I wrote like a mad thing.

It was written at a point when we had no internet so I could not email to myself - we had no car and no spare cash for bus fairs and then the food to use free restaurant WiFi. Our printer died as I tried to print out the first couple of chapters and we had no way to replace it and Al was away doing lots of extra work trying to get our finances back on track so... he didn't get to do it's latest back up.

And WHAM! Me the paranoid saver lost her novel and didn't get to enter the comp and now may even have lost that novel and some photos for ever.

I now have a dongle, I am now in walking distance of a library etc... but I wasn't then. But this has put a crimp on my great plans for this year.

On the other hand I have been updating my blogs and have all the hand written story and notes and the printed back up for The Drs Wife. It will just take me longer to actually get something out there that is all - also part of me is worried that if I start working on that novel again something will happen to stop all my writing in it's tracks again. I'm still going to try though because I sort of don't know how to give up.

Oh and as a cross-genre generalist I am screwed for making money but I have found were I am going wrong with the drawings - I'm not an artist! I'm an illustrator and cartoonist! Dad will be proud - cartooning is something he should have done! Much better than that arty stuff.

Stegi the Fimosaur (by sarah)

I ment to mention before that I have an image/picture/photo thingy in the Stegosaur Gallery over on Art evolved 🙂 I only managed to submit two pictures last year. I normally draw my entries but have been known to enter cakes, textiles pieces and fimo - this is an image of one of my fimosaurs. I made these to show to a museum who decided they did not want to run them in the gift shop, so I have taken photos of them in the hope of turning them into something else - maybe a web comic or some such.

So I am very happy to have it on Art Evolved.

A day of drilling (by alaric)

Last Thursday, I had my safety induction for using the laser cutter at Bristol Hackspace, and as my test piece I laser-cut a name tag for Jean. She likes that sort of thing.

However, she requested that it have a hole in the corner, so she can attach it to her school bag. So today we went down to the workshop and I helped her to drill it out.

But I had more drilling to do. A friend asked me on Facebook how she could drill holes through pebbles. It just so happens that Sarah owns a set of diamond core drills, so I borrowed them and had a go, so that I could offer some advice.

I set the bit up in the column drill:

The challenge was in how to hold the stone still while it was being drilled. Irregular shapes are tricky to hold. First off, I tried a simple clamp:

The drilling has to happen under water, to help cool it and to wash away the dust that the stone turns into. I put some scraps of cardboard underneath so that I drilled into that once I was through the stone, rather than the bottom of my box, which would lead to it leaking all over my cluttered workbench:

As soon as the drill cut in, dust whooshed out into the water and made it impenetrably murky, so after a short drilling session, I took the stone out of the water to see what was happening:

It looked good so I tried again, but this time the stone pivoted in the clamp. I tried to clamp it back again but it wouldn't go back at the same angle and kept shifting, so I tried a new approach - gluing it to a piece of wood that was large enough to not be able to rotate inside the box, so I just needed to hold the box steady while drilling:

That worked quite well, but the vibration shook the stone loose after a while, and I had trouble with the wood wanting to float and the stone wanting to sink causing it to flip over in the water. so I glued it more thoroughly (making sure glue came over the side of the stone so it was held in place rather than just stuck in place), and glued a bit of scrap metal to the bottom to stop it floating over:

That worked; now the stone was steady, it was easy to press on all the way. I had to drill a millimetre then back out (with the drill still spinning) to clear the dust out into the water, then press on again. Progress was slow but steady, taking a few seconds to do each millimetre:

Once I felt it go through the bottom of the stone, I had no trouble in peeling the rubbery hot-melt glue back with my fingernails to free the stone. Job done:

So, to conclude:

• Use a column drill.
• Use a diamond core bit.
• Hold the stone steadily in something that conforms to its shape. An ideal technique might be to use something like Plasticene to firmly secure it to the bottom of the box before pouring the water in.
• Drill slowly, backing off to clean the bit every millimetre or so.

When I came back, Sarah was asleep on the sofa:

Aww!

The End of the Festive Season (by sarah)

Today we had our last Christmas visitor, Barbara, so I put out the minced pies and cut up Christmas Cake and we apologised as we seem to have lost her tea towel with Mary's print on it that we were going to give her - so we gave her same homemade jam instead.

She gave Mary some lovely Hello Kitty wellies which is brilliant as it was starting to be a squeeze to get her into the ones she has and the previous bigger set she lost one of whilst we were out shopping one day. Jean got an art casse which she was excited about and Al got cheese which is always a hit with him. I got a pot of tulips which shall be going outside the front door.

Jean also tidied the front garden, litter picking the litter that blows in and sweeping up the leaves - mainly as she is whipping through her worst witch books and wants to earn money to buy the missing ones.

There would be photos of today but unfortunately Jean was taking photos yesterday and dropped it and today it has gone completely screwy 🙁 It was on it's way out anyway which is why I had saved up money to get a good one but I spent it on the TV so that we could use the X-Box, I do not regret this but I do now find myself with out a camera - right at the point where I am trying to launch myself back into things seriously - sigh.

On the other hand I do have a rather serious back log of photos to sort out anyway so maybe this will give me time to do that?

After Al's aunt left we started taking down all the decorations to general chagrin of the kids - Mary was walking about saying 'Oh! No!' whilst Jean was whining that the room was starting to look so bare which we felt too. Somehow Christmas went so fast this year.

It has been a fun one though.

Of course tomorrow I have one of my best friends from school visiting in a sort of post-Christmas/pre-birthday type of way which is going to be ace!

And last night I forgot to go to the pub with one of my local friends which I feel really bad about - It wasn't a good day medically for me but still...

Anyway the good thing about the decorations coming down is that I am in the mood for Spring Cleaning to be honest. We started today with putting hooks up to hang various house type things up, such as sun catchers and wall art butterflies and the broom and duster and carrier bag suasage.

Today also marks the constructed language Lojban's 25th Birthday - this is the language that Alaric has been learning for the past few years and that he has been teaching to Mary. So we have begun work on a little language comic type thing - we came up with the idea ages ago but haven't had the time to act upon it!

Apart from that we made bread in the bread maker and made our own sauce for the chickpea hodge podge we had for dinner - January is already a month of highs and lows but net effect seems to be positive at the moment.

Merry Christmas On And All (by sarah)

Merry Christmas on this dreary Christmas Eve!

Here at the Snell-Pym Household we are recovering from mulled wine and minced pies with friends and are about to under take some lovely craft activities followed by christmas food prep!

Until then here is the outline of the Cathedral I have drawn for Percival's Christmas Wish. I have only so far managed two complete drawings both in outline but will attempt some more later on! I have a confession - I'm not very good at drawing buildings - I've never really done it to be honest and it took a lot longer than expected and I'm not entirely happy with it but it will none the less be going up on Wiggly Pets with the story a little later today!