Magenta Monster

Look at the image above – what is it off? What is the story behind this little toy monster? Who made it and why? Use the picture to write a story.

I post pictures, photos or images for writers to use to get the creative juices flowing.

I captured this picture on New Years Day in the Forest of Dean – I think the stick looks like a dragon. What does it say to you?

Yes I know we are just at the end of the Month of Poetry but I am preparing for WoPo – the World Poetry Writing Month and not least because I am running the website again this year 🙂

I have been motoring my way through the poetry writing stuff for this month – but I find some times the admin of WoPo prevents the writing. I do not mind though I know several people from last years challenge had their poems published 🙂

The exercises can be used for general writing most of the time so if you like the story starters and picture a story and what have you, that I post on here then you might want to have a little looky. There is also a facebook group and bits will be posted on the Saffy and TheMonsterBlogs and there is the Pinterest Poetry Board, which again can be used for story and prose writing.

Saturday the 7th of February is the True Believers Comic Festival at the Cheltenham race course – this is gearing up to be an absolutely epic event. I have a table and will be there with my books, prints of Snobberlinks and what have you 🙂

I will also be launching my Punk Comic series starting with Bamboozled.

I am very honoured to have been included in the team organising the Gloucestershire round of (Poetry By Heart)[http://www.poetrybyheart.org.uk/] competition. I have been the guest poet and judge at the event in previous years and the school kids have amazed me with their deep understanding of the poetry and how this transfers to the performances themselves. I always come away feeling inspired.

This year it is on January the 29th at the Guildhall in (Gloucester)[http://venues.gloucester.gov.uk/freetime/guildhall/].

It’s my birthday and January is creeping away from me so basically I thought that I would take this weekend as a bit of self imposed writing retreat. I have note books and smelly candles and birthday cake being made for me and I have invited a few other writers to join in with my frenzy of writing 🙂

I am using it mainly to focus on writing poetry for the Month of Poetry MoP and for getting swaths of art work done for various things 🙂

Starting to get uber excited about the Gloucester Guild Hall Poetry By Heart event at the end of the month too!

(I’m 34 for those who want to know)

I have been focusing on actually writing poems for the first part of the Month of Poetry. I know that is kind of the point but I tend to use writing challenges like these to get projects moved along so say when I was doing the Little Books I would set myself time to do the illustrations and editing and stuff.

But this year I am kind of tackling things a little differently – for a start I have currently taken down all my ebooks due to the VAT situation – it all looks very complicated and I’m not brilliant at the admin side of things as it is.

However, I still want to continue with the blogs and I decided when thinking about the New Year stuff that what I would do is actually sort out my poetry blog and type up all the note books and stuff I have. If I can get my poetry blog far enough a head then I am going to start sending poems off again but I do really really want the blog full first.

As for my other collections – I may move over to a donation/give what you want model but I need to see how that will work legally. Anyway the upshot of this is that I am actually spending 30 hours this month writing poetry plus the little bits I jot down when inspiration strikes 🙂

It will all be going on Turquoise Monster with maybe a few bits on here.

It is a New Year, all bright and shiny and full of potential – as always I am shaking up my writing and creative routines which I need to do to keep them fresh and productive 🙂

First off this year maybe quiet laid back or it could be exciting, there are several things both personal and writing wise that are up in the air at the moment so I am going to be mostly going with the flow but that doesn’t mean there can’t be a wish list of writing type things to be done!

So first off there is there is the Poetry By Heart event at the end of January which I am helping to organise at the Gloucester Guild Hall, then there is World Poetry Writing Month in February which I help organise, this year there is also the True Believers Comic Festival where I will be show casing my stuff including the first part of my comic book series, I hope to be going to a couple of conventions (scifi and fantasy mostly), then I have the Cheltenham Poetry Festival and various other events.

I want to take part in script frenzy and National Poetry Writing Month in April and National Picture Book Writing Week in May and Camp Nano in June and have a month of Flash Fiction writing somewhere in there (told you I am obsessed with writing challenges!). But as always this depends on what projects come up!

I also want to sort out a proper portfolio of all the workshops I offer, the Muse Monsters were most popular at the Literature Festival in the autumn. And then there is Cuddly Science and the how-to factual writing so it’s going to be busy busy.

But I am kicking off 2015 in the same way I have kicked off the last few years and that is by taking part in the Australian based Month of Poetry 🙂

I actually started this at midnight! So I am designating a min. of 30 hours this month to Poetry, I tend to post the poetry stuff on Turquoise Monster though ones that have a strong narrative element I do pop on here as well.

There is also Orange Monster for more of my illustrations and artworks. And I now have a mailing list – news letter thingy if you want to keep up with all the goings on weather they be fiction, craft, poetry, song or science which you can sign up to here.

I also have a Facebook page, twitters are Saffy and TheMonsterBlogs. I’m on Google Plus, LinkedIn and Pinterest too if you can be bothered to look me up 🙂

In our household Christmas is one of the most exciting, busy, relaxing, lovely, hectic, glittery times of the year. Many of our traditions come from outside of Christianity though with mixes of faiths on both sides and pagan roots to local and regional festives.

This leads me to this weeks writing – list ten traditions that you can think of. If you don’t celebrate Christmas then you can either substitute in another festival or think about what you know about the midwinter festival.

The traditions can be as local as you like, maybe they are only a few years old, maybe they pre-date Christianity, what ever they are try and do a little research on each one or think about why you chose to adopt it and what it means to you. Now write about each in turn. Just a few sentences.

These sentences could be the start of ten short stories or you may want to fill in the gaps between them and thread them all into one comprehensive narrative – t is up to you 🙂

To help all the other writers out there and because it helps spark the writery part of my own brain I thought I’d share this little exercies:

First write down five words you associate with Christmas.

1) Snow

2) Presents

3) Star

4) Ginger Bread

5) Board Games

Now taking the first word you have to write another word it makes you think of so –

snow, ice

You do this until you have ten words. If you like the easy life then you can simply write connective sentences and see if it forms a story.

Or you can think of the themes and construct a story line and then start writing from the themes rather than the actual words.

Or if you’d like to you can see about linking all the words from the first list with the connecting words you added afterwards – this can be tricky and they have to make sense.

So: Snow, ice, sliding, sledge, santa, presents

Make it more complicated and better for a well rounded story by not allowing any repeats of words.