Wiggly Pet Blog (by sarah)

The Wiggly pets have finially got round to proding me about the community blog I promised them about 2 years ago!

Its been running for a few weeks now :)

What do people think of it?

http://www.wigglypets.co.uk/

Possibly Officially an Artist? (by sarah)

Yesturday at the Scouting Sunrise Ceromony which I'm hoping to do a more indepth post about over on the scout blog I found out that my painting of cricket gear has finially come back from the framers and has been hung in the Village cricket club :) I will take a photo of it on the Feast Weekend so you know what I am talking about!

I donated it to them but was too shy so actually just pounced one of the people I knew and said, 'do you think they'd like this?' They've had it framed and basically put straight up and I painted the thing when I still 14 right at the very beginning of GCSE's!

I am amazed that its gone up and was wondering if now that I have artwork out there in the cough big wide world, weather I count as an artist or something :)

Internet Fear (by sarah)

I keep finding myself in the strange position of having to explain internet publishing, blogs and author popularity.

This is what I get for trying to get the lituary world to get their heads out of Edwardian Britian and into the real world with real market pressures and heaven forbid real people and concepts (though weather a concept is real is something that I am not going to tackle).

Last night I found myself definding the exictance of blogs, some of the people hadn't even known there were such things as blogs before I started and then onto stupidly innane comments about - but people could just copy it!

Well yes and they could just copy things from books too! I explained I would make all the copy write stuff obvious on the site etc... and therefore it would exactly like if the people were copying it from a book - 'but we wouldn't know if they copied it would we if its on the internet?' I pointed out that you wouldn't know if they copied it from a book and that they would still be breaching it.

Then to the fact some don't want to have their work on the internet as their collegues and family could find it - in which case as someone else pointed out it should go under a psudonim (I personally think if thats the case it probably shouldn't be published in a book!).

The I find myself arguing about things I know very little about really - I suppose that becuase of my science back ground I'm used to the concept that you write a paper to get academic aclaim or for people to notice you, your project or the institution in the hope that a) what ever it is you are doing will be furthured by this, b) new collaborations will be formed and c) you will at some unspecified date (being hopeful here) get funding to continue.

For me writing is about sharing information so that ideas perculate and grow and form new ideas, or purelly as self expression and craftmanship which I want people to read - I want views and feed back - I need that to keep writing the creative stuff other wise it stagnates and without an audience I think whats the point - now obviouslly I mix all the things up but I'm trying to make things simple here - maybe so that I can understand what I've just been arguing about.

For people who want to get their writing careers off the ground I found these attitudes peculiar - why should I put something up for people to read without getting anything for it - erm.... to get yourself known and read and maybe just maybe then people will want to read more of your stuff?

Now I did a bit of research into this for myself - being as I am also trying to launch a writing career (hence I've ended up making websites and starting blogs for writers) and all the reports say that peoples sales went up when they put free stuff, sometime the entire book they were selling, on their website.

We ourselves have copies of such books becuase we like reading books (and I get headaches trying to read bulk txt on screen), we have Tom Reynolds book and look how well thats done and you can just down load for free!

If people know your name they are far more likely to actually buy a book by you. Even in the 'paper' publishing world you are advised to get your name out there even if some of the early stuff is for peanuts or for free (ok thats not entirely true as there appears to be two schools of thought on this but from my personal noising, getting yourself noticed seems far more important than being anal about pennies).

The poor lady who wanted the site - it was such a good idea - but the negativity about the internet in general from the group was horrendous. I live immersed in a world of information sharing and computers so it was a bit sobering to see what middle aged, middle class britian actually thinks!

Sigh - rocks were so much more straight forward :/

Badge (by sarah)

I made a badge for Alaric at the centenary camp - I've finally got around to blogging about it over on Salaric!

He is now wearing this badge continuously on his coat of many pockets :)

Broken Camera (by sarah)

Great - just great - just what we need. The cameras broken - in the same way as before but now its out of warrentee and we dont have enough money to fix it and I can't earn some of the money we were releying on now without it.

So once again we are in the hot water etc... etc... man i think this one has to go under the curse again. :'(

Not even sure if I can up the load the photos that are still on the cards without it. And its probably all my fualt as I think I must have left it in reach of Jean or something for the lense to get jammed :'( :'( :'(