Turquoise Monster

My friend sent me a link to some Tamil love poetry

A large chunk of the poetry that I write is science or technology related, this started off as a personal interest thing but has been growing and I now have enough poems that I want to start putting them together into collections 🙂

I scour publications such as New Scientist and Astronomy Now and various videos from research institutes etc… I then collect notes and write essays and stories. The poems tend to build up in my head and then tumble out at random times!

Increasingly I am finding myself being asked to perform or create work for science and technology events and projects. This makes me really happy as it’s kind of a merging of my two worlds… science and art.

We all get rejections, it is however a harsh thing when you get your first, even worse when you do not hear anything and you are wondering how long you should be waiting, hoping, fearing…

They say older poets and researchers tend to get more things published and more grants and funding but when you look at this closely it is not really a talent thing at all – no it is pragmatism. Basically they have given up with hanging around for those rejections, they no longer see each project as THE PROJECT, as the shining star. That does not mean they are not proud of their projects just that they have many and apply to many.

Infact they apply to about 10 times the amount of things that young/beginners apply/submit to. So basically you have to just keep submitting, keep getting the rejections but some rejections are easier than others.

Getting a nasty rejection can spur you on in anger to submit the work else where – use that to your advantage, a nice rejection can leave you feeling like you just missed it or that it was a slightly wrong call on your part and that publication is just not right for your work and so you feel empowered to send it else where.

But that leaves the meh rejections, the ones with no whys and/or a blanket form. This are demoralising, these crush the soul… they crush even the established. But they have a secret strategy – it is… send 10 things out for every rejection you get back and this does work for many others find they need to hone what they are writing to one publication or group of publications and that is fine too because acceptance of a piece of work is not the end of the story nor is it always the good wonderful thing you expect it to be.

So acceptances can be a mine field of their own with publishing companies going bust, changing hands, receiving budget cuts. Your work may suddenly be a “back burner project” or worse “shelved” and often there is nothing in the contract to deal with this. a) try and make sure you have severance covered in any contract but be aware that there are legal ways around this b) eggs and baskets… really really try not to have only one project I know this is difficult if you are cramming the creativity in between full time jobs and families etc… c) some projects may work best as self publishing so research the markets.

Then there is the time lag of acceptance and anything actually in print… and another plus a threat or two of legal action in order to get yourself paid your dues…

But the moral is we all get rejected and taken on and so on and you have to just keep at it, keep trying and you will get there but there is no easy street or get rich quick. Get rich slow yes but not instant fame and kudos.

Good luck go write, edit, submit… GO! GO! GO!

I have too much mind
and not enough brain
Together these two facts
make me insane
manic laughter

It can be hard fitting in time for the writing challenges but one of things I find is that I sort of end up binge writing which is interesting. I spend time looking through photos and observing things and sometimes researching and it sort of all backlogs in my brain until I get a chance or insomnia strikes.

It is Easter Sunday and I thought it was about time I put Sarah Snell-Pym’s Easter Collection out there in digital audio format – ie downloadable tracks. I’ve been giving and selling copies of it on CD for the last two years though this year is the first time I’ve put them online for sale.

There is a Face Book event and I’ll be giving away some stickers and things and maybe a hard copy – CD’s etc…

The whole Album is free to download for the next week though I have priced individual tracks at £1.

Dystopia watching,
the future is now,
it happened slowly…
number and file,
blood and bile

Dear Mr Grove

This is an amazingly harrowing spoken word / performance poem about our education system here in the UK by Jess Green.

A new month has snuck up and begun on me – this sadly means I missed a couple of deadlines for poems and stories and that, that I wanted to submit. But it also means I am in a month of exciting challenges.

Number one is Screnzy or Script Frenzy which is a spin off of NaNoWriMo (National Novel Writing Month), the idea is that you write a 100 page script in a month. I have been focusing on comic book or graphic novel scripts and so that is what I will be focusing on again this year. You can follow the progress more closely on Purple Monster. I will also be doing the script for my puppet show, which is part of my course work – I basically plan to spend 30 hours working on these types of project – priority has to go to my Ada Lovelace script as I have a deadline at the end of the month. (Ada is the science part! and has drawings to go with! Though I may also be running some science camp activities over Easter).

Number two is NaPoWrimo, this is another poetry writing challenge – again the idea is that you write a poem a day but I plan to spend 30 hours on poetry stuff in general this month.

Number three is that I hope to release The Little Book of Easter Poetry audio for download – I will probably rope this in with the NaPo stuff. I also want to do some work on my game design stuff but I will have to see how things go especially as I am starting the month off event managing and comparing at the Jordans Cheltenham Poetry Festival 🙂

I found this amazing video – I hate labels and this poem is very powerful.