MockTales and Blogging (by sarah)

My left hand isnot behaving at the moment but we have resurrected Mocktales - this was our fortnightly writing night we just did in the house and invited people to join us so especially with NanoWrimo being no more we decided it was time to bring it back properly. So far we have mainly been blogging. We've been doing MockTales just for us again for a while and have including admin for writing and poetry stuff so if I have a load of slam performance requests I will reply to them or funding for storytelling etc... but mainly I want to write.

Before covid we were having to cap the nights so everyone got a chance to just sit and write but I don't think that is going to be such an issue these days. We have done some weekend ones mixed up with CreativiTeas but nothing like the numbers we used to have.

Anyway this week I did not blog what I did was try and retrieve stuff I had written on a stupid choice of plateform - not the plateforms fault it was never designed for writers and the writings had kind of been accidental. I do have a copy of these writings but it will mean typing it all out again 🙁 Boo! But doable. The result of my search was all my images are still there but the projects with the writings in are not - sigh.

On the plus side there may be a text reading short cut but it is in a silly font that might not be so readable to the reading devices so we shall see.

This has lead me to ponder weather I want to record this story - I am not sure how to do that as my microphone was broken yrs ago now by over enthusastic kids and grandmothers. It is probably fixable but will it still be compatable with my tech? It was bought from Maplin which no longer exists or at least is no longer round the corner!

I need to investigate microphones.

OF course I invited people round and then had a horrendous migraine so spent most ofthe day asleep whacked out on pain killers and not really functioning whilst awake so only after people left did I realise that the bunny supplies where all in soak in the bath and I hadn't emptied the bathroom bin and these things shouldn't really matter but I do fret about these things but the house will never be perfect for visitors so they get a dining room of half taken down halloween decks and a kitchen where weights are being primed to paint them metallic purple to match my living room gym as I battle with the high risk of osteoperosis and so on. And I boiled milk all over the oven just before hand too!

Anyway - I hope you are all enjoying our attempt to put the blogs all back in order! And hope a few more of our writing friends rejoin our little writing parties! Also you might need to tell us you want to know about them as the social media channels we had been using are getting more unrelable and they weren't brilliant to begin with!

Alaric has written a blog post that will go live tomorrow and is now back on working on the novel/series we concieved on our first date - a mash of the two novels we were writing at the time.

We are hoping to really get going again with our writing - for Alaric they would love to write another technical book but the chapters for collections and the book he wrote are now so long ago everything has changed including who the publishing companies are!

But all of that is the grand stuff - for now we are just spending Tuesday nights writing andhaving nice drinks and snacks.

The drinks this time were:

Toffee Apple Matcha Latte made with oat milk and served with a homemade siced apple toffee apple - the toffee needed more sugar

Spiced Pumpkin Pie Sticky Chai - hot with no milk and made about twice as strong as the instructions

Pumpkin Spice Malted Hot Chocolate with pumpkin marshmallows

Didn't mean for them to all be hot brews but it was tipping it down outside!

Mad but Lovely Times! (by sarah)

Things have been pretty mad here! There have been Science Festivals, poetry festival, scare acting and a whole host of other things! Last week saw SMASHfest at Gloucester Library which was super super amazing and Cuddly Science had a fab time.

The Wiggly Pet Press launched the Gloucester Poetry Societies first book Poetry without Pretension at the The Gloucester Poetry Festival and Salaric Art and Craft have been out and about doing Upcycling projects and drawing like fiends!

And of course all three of those things are me plus the acting! This last week alone saw me filmed for TV, interviewed for radio and though I wasn't in the photo Cuddly Science was photographed for the newspaper. I have so many photos and things to share and November is looking pretty exciting too with more acting, Christmas craft workshops, archaeology digs, singing, Diversity, literature and poetry Festivals, craft fayres, community outreach and museum gigs! I am no longer taking bookings for 2017 sorry about that but I really am full!

And that's without all the domestic stuff like my hospital appointments and halloween/fireworks events for kids etc... not to mention Nanowrimo and stuff.

Where to Start? (by sarah)

In 2019 the plan is to launch my scifi epic series but where should I begin it for the reader?

— Sarah Snell-Pym (@Saffy) July 18, 2017

This is the poll I posted to twitter - and here are the options of the slightly more in depth one that I posted to Facebook:

The Beginning/Deep Time

Present Day

Space/Interstellar

The Beginning of Human History

Upload/VR/Singularity

Post Apocalyptic Near Future

Pretty much I've had equal votes for everything plus some pointers on what individuals like ie no excessive flash backs/forwards and no huge storyline dumps etc...

The plan is that in 2019 I will begin rolling out the edited finished versions of stuff in The Punk's Universe for the reader... but I don't know where to begin the story for the reader. There is a hell of a lot of stuff written which I am currently editing and finishing and re-writing and in some cases still desperately researching.

2019 will mark the 10 year anniversary of me starting my first NaNoWriMo - a month long writing challenge. I have taken part in all the writing challenges I possible could since and most of those have been set in the same universe. Initially I thought it was a sci-fi version of the scififantasy story I'd been writing and world building since I was 13. Then I realised that no - it was in fact the same universe and the "magic" was all just the nanotech and the like. It was a pretty strong contender for scifi to begin with because I fail at sustained fantasy worlds ie I can manage maybe a short story and then scifi will start creeping in.

Anyway the issue is that there are 100, 000's of words written and about a 1000 pages of comic book scripted in the universe and only a few short stories of it are out there and this needs to be rectified!

Seriously I have now been writing this for what 2/3rds of my life?

So yeah - ideas, feedback etc... would be useful 🙂

Ta much!

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/).