Sometimes I hate being a Jack (by sarah)

Jack of all trades... master of none.

Over the last two weeks I have been booked for four festivals and half a dozen workshops, I have submitted articles about science, created a little hand drawn poetry book, created a new raft of upcycling projects, been asked to perform, knitted a sparkly bag, and have started work on the art for a comic book I wrote about about 4 yrs ago. I have also written poems, flash fictions, posts on gardening and taken photos of things, harvested potatoes and sold a few boxes of hens eggs and so on.

As great and as wonderful as all this is, I ran out of money last Wednesday as I hadn't noticed it was half way through March and I had not checked if invoices had been paid etc.... I was 40p short for my lunch - they were lovely and let me off. It has also resulted in another booking which is always a good thing but...

I do a hell of a lot of stuff but it is so diffused! If I could focus on one of these things, I would get a profile for that thing but I can't - so for the festivals I am being a performer, events manager, photographer, craft and/or writing or science workshop leader and the writing and craft look the same. I have pictures of kidneys next to pastel rabbits upstairs next too abstracts, I have poems about war and politics and kids books and on and on and on and sometimes I can't think for it all.

It is fun and wonderful to be able to do all this stuff and in some cases to be able to mash it all together and come out with something that is amazing but... I am not brilliant at any of it. I am ok or good at it all (except the guitar playing and singing which I am naff at but do anyway). I know I have moaned about this all before but sometimes it feels like I will never achieve anything because I am doing everything.

The solution is obvious and one that just is not viable for me. I can't give up things because they are not just activities that I do but they are aspects of me. I know some people love the fact I do all of this stuff and it appears in blog posts like this one. But most people are interested in only one aspect of what I do and all the other stuff is annoying noise, risking them being turned away or not seeing the stuff they find relevant.

It is one of the reasons I've ended up with so many blogs - trying to split it out for other people. The issue is really that I don't have a brand or thing to be know for other than say - being the person who can pull some solution out of the hat for an event in crisis etc... That isn't actually that useful a trait as obvious the event will not be telling people they where in crisis so it only works if I've saved the bacon for them in the past and they need something again.

These musings coincide with a confidence crash - last week I was all like - hell! I am MASTER of ALL, but this week I am attempting to remember how to draw characters and am struggling. I know I am capable but I'm not happy with the pictures I've been working on for my college project - and I am also working on the comic book and really want both pieces of work to be fantastic. But I can't even stick to one style of drawing :/ I am surrounded by how to draw books which I am flitting through, drawing bits and bobs. I have an idea of what my projects need to look like and no one else seems to draw in that way but I need to see how to shift the bodies I've designed around, how to map the features to different positions and expressions and it is an incredible amount of work

IF... I had spent all the time since my GCSE's working on my art skills then perhaps I would be of a level I would feel happy about (rather than wondering if I can get the computer to map textures for me and taking swaths of fabric the 'move' in the right way).

I also got the marks back for my science writing and got a good/ok mark and am so angry with myself as there was stupid stuff like - I cut the excess 250 words from a 3000 word assignment and the feed back was that that stuff should have been in there - and then I find out that there is a 10% buffer meaning that I didn't have to cut those words at all and I spent a DAY on that. Missing simple things like that and not having had the time to get it in for a check before submission are stupidnesses and just so typical of me ( *coughs tax returns ).

But at the same time I can see that it is finally all starting to fuse together and be something. All the art, craft, science, environmentalism, music, writing - it is a dirty snow ball that is causing a career avalanche. Part of the issue is I am trying to up my game again - I seem to be doing this every two years at the moment. And the dam goal posts keep shifting - like I thought I would have "made it" poetically when I had performed at the Cheltenham Lit Festival but I've done that and there are other things I have my sights set on now. The fact I once thought there was a "made it" line you could cross makes me laugh now as it just isn't that way - once I thought completing my degree was "making it".

And so the goals keep shifting - I think the main issue for me at the moment is the pain, it is a low level but is niggling away but I can do things so I am trying to ignore it. Muscle fatigue has been interesting this week including not being able to get myself out of bed but again it has been alot worse - however I am avoiding going to the Drs as last 2 times I've been this close to completing post grad stuff, I have gone in with what I thought was minor things, only to end up with stays in hospital and no completion. Also the stronger pain killers stop me thinking and that is the last thing I want at the moment.

I think I just need to remember that ADHD is the Polymath Dream.

Art and Thinking and Stuff (by sarah)

Over the weekend we did lots of household stuff like allotment etc... or rather Alaric did. After submission on Tuesday, I decided that I would have the rest of the week off to work on my own creative projects. So I made a book called Berries and Blood and illustrated it and did curly writing and loved it.

And I am now giving it away over on Turquoise Monster - all you have to do to enter is comment on the post. This is a limited edition - I will only ever make 10 hand written/made/illustrated versions of this collection. There may or may not be print runs.

Alaric of course is sad as he hates stuff I've made, going where he can't see it anymore.

I did a bit of hunting for funds I can potentially tape to develop my Sci-Comms idea, dug potatoes out of the pots I planted them in last year and made roasted veg with them. The chickens gave us eggs for boiled egg breaky and yorkshire puds and I felt happy and proud. It is also 6 months since we got them but more on that later!

We took Jeany to do some painting and gluing etc... of her Lord of the Rings Models at The Games Workshop in Gloucester. And I had two stints in coffee shops/bar type places sorting out my Punk comics/graphic novels. I started this project like four or so years ago, I feel sadder I have not moved a head with it more but I spent a good long time sorting out the series time lines and plots and who exactly is appearing in which bits. It is a long and epic story and I am finding it a little daunting though my main focus is just on the first ten page story.

For those of you who are interested here are some of the notes and pages of the story board etc... trying not to give too much away.

It would have been fun to work with someone on this project but basically I can not afford an illustrator and I am capable of doing it myself - even if I do not currently feel that way. I thought about offering a royalty cut but it is a lot of work for no def. money and I can't ask someone to gamble like that. So I have dug my books out and been making notes and plans Jean is obsessed with the project and keeps trying to see what I am writing 🙂

I view this as a good sign as she a) loves stories, b) has turned into a little critic on story structure and polish and c) loves her comic books. She moaned about the art work - I pointed out it was just a story board/script thingy and not the actual art work - I don't think she's convinced!

My main conclusion with this is that I need to learn some digital art techniques - I need this for the sci-comms project as well so it's all good. The comics are based in the world and contains the characters from my on going NaNoWriMo project The Punk In Pink - it is kind of scary just how much story I have based in this world now!

Also this week I made a spring button picture with Mary, the how-too of which is on Salaric Craft.

Again as part of my game design ambitions and science communication stuff I have signed up for the Gamification MOOC as well. Though I will probably only be participating in it rather than doing all the activities within due to time constraints.

It has been a good week and more I have managed this with quiet bad muscle fatigue!

The Writing Saga (by sarah)

Today is all about the writing and the art, I have until 3 o'clock by myself, there are currently no deadlines looming and I don't have a headache. I have a new candle - ancient Egyptian Mummy type thing that I hope is going to inspire.

I have so far spent one hour planning my writing projects, prioritising and the like and finishing the flash fiction I started last night. Then I have spent another half an hour editing and on social media reading and researching and interacting.

One of the things I have discovered on my Science Communication course is that I really do prefer long form writing. I do the flash fiction to get ideas down and as a writing exercise, a form of literary discipline if you will. But I really love my epic stories and as I worked on the science articles and features I got the drip drip in the back of my head that I wanted to investigate more and write a book. To draw graphs and tables and do endless bullet points that I join up (this is how I write essays/factual stuff and is how I wrote my UG dissertation in one night (got a really high mark for it too - of course I had done lab stuff and background research for months).

But you see here's the thing, I took the course for two reasons - one I need both science and art in my life, I am not someone who can exist with just one and I love learning new things. The second was financial, I love the creative industries but they don't tend to pay very well, for most books the royalties are pathetic and if you are not careful it is easy to go into negative money just going to events to promote your book.

The art world is not much better and due to the charity sector can in fact be a lot worse as people sell their paintings for less than material costs! I do a lot of charity work so I am not moaning about that nor charity shops selling second hand things as I feel that is a double bonus for the environment, pocket and charity. But it is disheartening to see something being sold for £5 new and knowing that that doesn't even cover the framing - it's a being priced out of the market thing and really they could be getting a lot more for the charity if they upped the price.

The craft situation is even more dire so lets not even go there. So I looked around and I thought hmmm I could write about science - I always wanted to write and draw science, if I am truthful that is why I wanted a PhD so I could write popular science books. And it's science right? So it wont be all wishy washy with contradicting guidelines and feuds over commas.... WRONG!

So very very wrong.

As I have said myself so many times Science and Art are really similar and the expectations are pretty much the same. You have to do loads of free/volunteer stuff to get known - now I don't mind this when it is a little charity or a community project but when it is a business turning a profit I get hacked off. Also the whole set up is one that means if you do not have a family with enough money to support you whilst you build your experience, you are screwed. It is the glass ceiling of the working class.

All that aside, things are slightly better in science writing than in fiction but not much better than standard copy-writing. You are looking at more mid level earnings for your writing. Having found out how much midlist fiction authors who I thought where doing really well get paid and seeing artists including the top paleo-artists struggling and crunching the numbers - it is not a good picture at all.

In fact what I discovered is that I am actually doing well compared to most people who are attempting this sort of career. Unless you are lucky it is not going to be producing a living wage .

Having said this I am actually really happy with my career or haze of careers, I now know that the sci comms stuff is going to suffer the same sort of issues my fiction and copy writing does and the art and craft for that matter - I don't have one thing to focus on. I can't, it isn't going to happen so I will probably float along being the one people can call when others let them down. The sensible thing would be to pick one thing within either sci or art or craft or writing but I can even narrow it down to which field.

On the other hand I am still selling copies of The Little Book of Spoogy Poetry, not many that is true, but I still don't actually have it up on Amazon or anything and it is a seasonal book - I wasn't expecting to sell anymore until October! I am also being booked for tones of events - a mix of performances and events management and coverage and workshops (both craft and writing and science).

I am fusing stuff together, I am having fun, I am finding I am being paid for things which is always good.

There are going to be ebook releases this year, I'm applying for various schemes, there is audio stuff waiting to go out, I am being invited to judge competitions and running creative communities. To up the game I have used the last of my current money to get my old laptop looked at, the data appears to be fine but is ouch to retrieve. This means the novel that was lost will hopefully no longer be lost and I can try my hand at getting it published. And I've joined The Poetry Society, The British Science Fiction Association and just to be confusing the British Science Writers Association, which is already proving useful.

International Womens’ Day (by sarah)

It's International Womens' Day and I sort of didn't make it to the festival in London nor meet up with friends or celebrate another's birthday or any of the other things we had planned due to homework and sick kids.

I'm kind of in two minds about this sort of thing - part of me wants to say it is not needed and is just highlighting the divide but then I look in the history books, and notice the names that are not there, the ones we did not learn about in school, and the pay gap in this country between men and women, and watch the news and see girls being stoned to death for having opinions and I think... yeah this is needed to highlight those things.

I've been grumpy with the feminism stuff lately - for a start for me it is the wrong word and in general words ending in isms cause schisms. But I'd always said I was a feminist then recently I've seen talks being shut down because there was no female speakers even though the speakers and bored, were not chosen as such but came from people putting themselves forward - the issue there is that the women need to feel empowered to put themselves forward and that needs to be pointed out but not in a way that results in the shutting down of the whole event - due to the main backer pulling out for fear of public backlash. It was a pointless waste.

But that was just a bit of over kill and I understood where it had come from. However now what I am seeing is something far more insipid and down right nasty. And that is a sort of, 'your not a woman or not a woman exactly like me therefore your opinion is not valid.'

I have seen this applied to men, people of different ethnic origins/religions and economic classes and sexualities and orientations. And it makes me sad, angry and sick - how dare you say someone can not have a voice because they are not the same as you - you can disagree and debate with them yes but not crush them beneath your heels for not conforming to what you think a woman or feminists should be. This is mostly women to other women.

This attitude has highlighted for me exactly why International Womens' Day is important still, the term woman covers just over half the human population and within that there is a beautiful range of diversity and natures and stories to explore, not to mention potentials to be fostered.

Rant over... for those of you still reading I have a little favour to ask...

For next year I wish to release a little e-book of poems about inspirational women but I don't want to just use the ones I can think of so if people could nominate in the comment fields below - maybe with a link to wikipeadia though just a name is fine - that would be fab!

I've done poems for various events around International Womens' Day before and just want to create a little collection.

Thankyou!

Graphic Novel/Comic Here We Come! (by sarah)

As anyone who follows me on social networks will have seen, I have been promoting a kick starter for a Comic Book Convention in Cheltenham. Today is their last day - they have reached their funding goal and are ready to roll but there is still time to book a ticket today and get all the fun extras 🙂

For the kick starter click here.

I am quiet excited about this - the convention will happen next year and there will be a comic book/graphic novel show casing on my stall 🙂 There will be The Little Books and prints of my art work and stuff like that, but the thing I am really excited about is the graphic novel/comic book I have been working on for the last few years.

The whole series started as The Punk In Pink and was a seat of your pants writing madness I did for NaNoWriMo. I started the graphic novel in the April after my first NaNo as part of a script writing challenge run by the same people - I decided to go for a graphic novel script but as always found that doing a straight story board worked much better for me than scripts. The novels started off in the middle of the story where as the comic starts at the beginning of Punk's story or as she is known then Punku.

Since then the stories have grown and there are three stories series plus the graphic novel work and short stories and flash fictions set in the same universe which I have been posting on Magenta Monster.

Anyway - basically I am going to be working on getting the art work sorted for the first 'comic book' Revolations which is the first part of Babbel (which is the story arch and will make up the nice hard back graphic novel type thingy).

I will be doing my own Sponsume (like a kickstarter - I did one for my sci-art thing a couple of years ago), to raise money for the initial printing run. I know a few of you are desperate for me to do more wiggly pet stories but I'm not sure it is fair to do two such projects at once but I am open to suggestions!