Making a living wage as an Artist and Writer is actually pretty hard and yes I am also a Science Communicator but that is kind of just the same thing. Ways I make money vary – I wish I could do it all for free, for the love and stuff but I can’t because you know I need to eat and so do my kids.
I am lucky… I am married and bar a short stint of 3 months where I was the sole earner and completely failed to actually manage to pay for everything… my husbands wages pay for mortgage and car but it doesn’t pay for everything.
And even if I put no money into the house I still need to buy things like a new computer and cameras and art supplies and those can add up surprisingly fast. Yes writing is a cheap hobby… but it does still cost.
Besides which this is no hobby this is my living.
So I run workshops, I used to do a lot of bespoke copy writing for blogs, it ate up all my time. My writing time was often swallowed by me trying to type up menus into webforms for various marketing sites and so on. I sell prints, I used to have adverts on the blogs and make ok money from them but that stopped when the blog bubble burst. I teach people stuff, judge competitions, make and sell zines and story jars and jewellery.
I do lots of scrapping the pennies together stuff… I have merchandise. On of the things I am trying out is Patreon. This is like a rolling Kickstarter or crowd funding campaign. I have used such platfroms before for specific one off projects but this one I hope to be longer lasting. It has worked well for other endeavours and artists.
There are different levels of funding people can opt for – I set it up as a monthly subscription because I tend to put the various blog posts out there for free for everyone and some people like to give money for that. Above the £3 a month range there are a variety of awards and I post previews of work on their first.
I have already used money from the patreon to remove adds from some of the sites/blogs and to buy a new camera though sadly still no new computer!
The launch of Love: A Stranger Dream would have been a lot harder without it and it has sprouted an art project all of it’s own!
So if you feel you would like to support this artist then this might be a good place to start 🙂
February is almost upon us and that can mean only one thing!!! It is WoPo time. WoPo is a Poem a Day Challenge I set up years ago now, there are exercises and bits on writing know how going out on the blog and the Facebook Page through out the year but Feb. is the Poem a Day Challenge and so things really gear up! There are also prompts visual and so on going out on both my personal twitter @Saffy and @TheMonsterBlogs
Previous years I have made stickers and wiggly pets and so on but this year I thought I’d make little illustrated notelets for people to write on with my art work one side. If wanted the resultant poem can be rolled up into a scroll!
So I’ve made these little kits up which I will be leaving at events I go to, to try and inspire people to write! I have also made little flip books to send out to those who have regularly done the challenge. There is a core group that have been doing the challenge from the beginning so that get first dibs on them. These are again free and I’m happy to post anywhere in the world.
Then I have made a super writing support kit for my Patreon supporters – these people give me money and I send them stuff monthly (thankyou so much!!!). I’ve created a hand made book-wallet for the scrolls and thrown in a few extras 🙂
I really hope this will help people get creative 🙂 How I made them will be going on on Salaric Craft.
So if you fancy it join up and get writing though out February!
Food For Thought is my local monthly spoken word event, this months one was lit. standing room only and was live streamed.
I as always crashed into the speaker whilst getting up on the little raised platform but all was well. There was a brilliant mix of poems from conventional to rhyming comedics and pretty much anything else you can think of.
I scattered these illustrated poetry scrolls I’ve made around the room for people to find. It was a great conversation starter as people tracked me down to see if they were my work 🙂
Next month is the Two Year birthday of Food For Thought which is absolutely brilliant! And as I will be in throws of running the WoPo Poem a Day challenge I shall be taking little writing packs to hide around for people to find 🙂
It is pretty much mid winter here in the northern hemisphere, we are shrouded in darkness for most of the day with murky reprieves.
I’ve been writing a little bit here and a little bit there, Christmas tends to bring out two types of poetry in me – kids and dark introspective stuff. This is not surprising, it is also the time I get lots of story ideas – in a similar vein.
Winter can be an extremely productive time… if I can keep momentum and motivation going. The summer I am here there and everywhere with events and looking after allotments and animals and kids etc… winter I am holed up in the house a lot of the time.
So there is plenty of time to write… Christmas I find no problem with even though the time is family time and is generally playing with the kids or watching films or zooming off to meet various family and friends. I get loads of ideas especially for the kids and will dash something off on my phone.
But it is this time… the after time, when there is not the lights and colours and distractions of Christmas but the weather is bitter or damp and you just want to sleep until spring. This is actually when for me there is the most time to do writing – it is also the time when I find writing hard.
Therefore I focus on writing challenges – I use these, all and any to galvanise myself into action, to give myself a purpose in the grey gloom of not yet spring.
On the Sat 4th Feb 2017 there is the OK True Believers Comic Book Festival at the Race Course in Cheltenham. This will be it’s third year – it will be my third year there selling zines and poetry booklets and my illustrations plus maybe some steam punk, cyber and fantasy jewellery etc… I have made these little page corners or origami bookmarks.
They are my little muse monsters – the ones that the blogs are based on and that I use in my writing workshops to help kids and adults write. Also because I am me the monsters also appear in some comics I’ve written and a few stories 🙂
Happy New Year and I hope this blog finds you all enjoying the festive season 🙂
2017 is going to be an EPIC year 🙂
So what are my poetry plans?
Well as always there are the poetry writing drives – there are four I shall be undertaking this year.
Month of Poetry – which was started years ago now by a fellow twitterer, it is set in January and I am not sure if any body else still does it but I find it is always a great start to the year. The beginning of the year is generally when I actually write most of my poetry. So the idea is that you write a poem a day for the month. I tend to go with something more along the lines of… I will spend an hour a day working on poetry stuff!
The second in February there is World Poetry Writing Month or WoPo this is actually my own project and I put up writing prompts for others, similar idea to the Month of Poetry – it is a poem a day writing drive to help those who might have found themselves a bit stuck or unsure of a direction to take their work in. There is also a Facebook page.
Thirdly there is National Poetry Writing Month which is an american based poem a day challenge set in April. I often take this one to advance my children’s poetry or work on illustrated and visual poetry stuff.
The forth is a writing kickstarter course run by Sharon Larkin of the Cheltenham Poetry Society and will hopefully see me writing poetry all year round rather than all bunched up at the beginning like normal 🙂
Other than that there are exciting things happening in my home town (technically a city but it’s tiny!). Gloucester has found poetry and is giving it wings – there is now a Gloucester Poetry Society and several open mics and possibly even a festival!!! So that is all very very exciting 🙂
There are more plans – they include getting more zines out there and maybe sort out some of the poetry collections. Submitting poetry which I always forget to do! And last but not least I have several new poetry workshop ideas and crafts which I want to develop and get out there at festivals and events.
Then there is Love: A Stranger Dream my non-linear visual poem in the form of a colouring book. It will be having it’s first birthday which I am hoping to celebrate 🙂
The Cheltenham Poetry festival is gearing up to be awesome once again and I hope to take part in more slams this year.
So yeah I think it is going to be a pretty poetic year!!!
2017 is also a prime year as in 2017 is a prime number so I may do some special maths based poetry just for the lols 😀
I had meant to submit poetry this year – I kind of didn’t but I did take part in The Cheltenham Poetry Festival, Swindon Literature Festival, Wychwood Music Festival, Cornbury Music Festival, Science Show Off, Horoscope Disco, Bristol Mini Makers Faire, the Cheltenham Literature Festival, the Saffron Waldon Maze Festival, the Wilson Gallery’s events. There were more I think but those are the ones I can name straight off! At them I read/performed, run workshops and compared.
I also ran creativity and writing drives through out the year and launched Love: A Stranger Dream as well as producing several zines and booklets.
I discovered more local poetry events near my home and turned down many more things than I went to. I would like to do more but with two school aged children and health issues that can be tricky so I am happy to have done the amount I have 🙂
Besides that is almost a big event every month!
I would like to get Love: A Stranger Dream into the book shops I probably should have organised that but kind of ended up busy with acting and other things 🙂
Other things I did… I produced a short film for Love: A Stranger Dream and a little vid for The Winter’s Heart and launched Within and Without.
So I am proud of what I have achieved poetically in 2016 – I know that it is not the conventional way of doing things but it is getting there – now to see if I can actually afford my Poetry Society membership renewal as I believe that is coming up next year!
I have created this Christmas Activity Booklet, they are all made at home by me and my husband – rock on printer and binding machine!!!
It contains a craft activity tutorial, festive poetry, colouring in, a story and a puzzle. It is one of a series of booklets I am creating at the moment including colouring in and Science, this one is getting a mention here as it contains poetry 🙂
I have created all the visuals and written word for it though Alaric has had to help mightily with the layout and editing. Currently these are not up for internet sale as they are for events I go to in person but next year they probably will be up in my etsy shop 🙂
