Tag: all this and video recording

Here is the News/The Great Social Media Experiment/Writing as Therapy

Beautiful Day

Everybody I know is glued to CNN. Suddenly all proper work seems to have stopped mattering, except before we started here two events were booked on Zoom to attend next week, both to help me focus on creative practice and work out WTF I do about making money going forward. The second one, let’s be honest, is the one that matters most and I will be taking copious notes. It isn’t just about throwing stuff out and hoping someone cares any more.

NaNo has reminded me that I am a very capable fiction writer, who can create a compelling narrative with drama and human interest, and maybe once this is done that Amazon publishing account needs to be used more than it has been of late. There will be a poetry book in the next few weeks, sure, but maybe some of my other work deserves a platform too. A growing body of quality output grants potentially more ways to bring in some cash.

The video projects are also the gifts that keeps on giving, and hopefully if I keep chipping away at things, we might have a realistic chance at making that successful too. It requires me to be ruthless as well as artistic, which is a combination that is already providing some fascinating results. This weekend I launch a weekly VLOG on the YouTube Channel. It will be interesting to see how people respond to this and whether there is any traction in ‘educational’ content.

Watch this Space.

2020 Content/Art/Poetry Projects/Internet of Words/Video Content/Video Projects

Moving Pictures

So here we are, moving very much into video when I had assumed that audio would be the first step forward in my AV experience. I’m not lucky enough to own anything particularly sophisticated with which to produce video content either. It is all very much being made up as I go along. However, what the last two weeks has amply demonstrated is how easy it is, with rudimentary knowledge of working practices, to produce something hugely professional.

Therefore, the world is pretty much mine to exploit as I now choose. The only limit is my imagination and the raw materials available to me. I’ve set a notional target of one sub two-minute video a week, which means Twitter and Instagram are both available as advertising media. We’ll start slow, because I know if I go too big too early it just makes continuation and continuity impossible to sustain. Picking 24 poems from the vastness of my own output is the least of my worries. The possibilities are, quite frankly, infinite.

Recording live video, as it transpires, is not nearly as problematic as might be the case either. Of course, it would be lovely to be able to afford state-of-the-art equipment or the opportunity to learn new techniques but allowing these things to hold back my progress when so many techniques and possibilities are easily available to me would be foolish. The process, undoubtedly, is more important right now. It is learning about myself as a writer, a photographer and ultimately as an artist, bringing all these elements together.

General Writing Post/Internet of Words/Patreon/Precarious Epithet/Writing Projects

Back to Life

Now the excitement of NEW CONTENT has died down, and there’s an undoubted sense of being better organised, it is time to look at finishing off a ton of stuff that’s been left hanging or simply not completed. That includes the EX/WHI restart, a ton of back end archiving and deciding what of my various pieces of historical fanfic get the nod for publication. After that? Well, that’s a very good question.

Next week is when I begin May planning, which seemed reasonably impossible back in March which is now officially about a decade ago in perceived brain time. Tomorrow I have a photography project to finish for Patreon, which will be archived here and you’ll be able to see at the beginning of next month. I’ve decided to do these every four weeks, as long as it is practical for me to take pictures.

I’m looking forward to the day I can plan trips to places further than a walk away.

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I’ve produced some unexpected results from what had been originally planned as a fairly static project: it appears that Precarious Epithet is the gift that may well end up giving far more than just the content that composes it. It has also been an interesting test run for the possibility that, should I pull together enough patrons, that the production of the LANzine could end up being bi-weekly.

If that does happen, it will undoubtedly me useful to be able to disseminate older issues to a wider audience, with Patreon becoming the test bed for this original content. That dream, however, is some way away, but there’s already confidence that I can keep the wheels of production whirling for the foreseeable future. We can also diversify too, into photography-only projects and poetry with multimedia accompaniment…

Suddenly, there are a lot of options that were no previously available to me. It is going to take a while to get my head around all of those, but not only will it happen, but you can guarantee potential is about to be grasped with both hands.

The future remains mine to embrace and improve.

Patreon/Photography/Poetry/Precarious Epithet/Short Stories/Writing Projects

Ready for the Floor

This is all really rather unexpected.

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It was planned for ‘stuff’ to happen on Sunday, and it did. That means at 11.30am tomorrow the inaugural Precarious Epithet will be available to download, as a 10 page .PDF, via this website. I’m insanely pleased with it, as it happens, because nobody else had anything else to do with its construction and content than me. Just me, THAT’S ALL. This is a first step into a wider universe, and I love it.

Going forward, similar content will be produced via Patreon. I make no bones about this: getting paid for this stuff really does matter a lot. I received my first ‘wage’ via the content platform this morning and although it won’t make me rich, this is a decent foundation. The motivation exists to keep working, and outputting, whilst improving skills across multiple disciplines.

This is the learning process that keeps on giving.

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As my son loved to say after he’d perform a magic trick, as a kid, prepare to BE AMAZED at the content emerging in the following months. The groove has undoubtedly been reacquired. Time to set sights distinctly forward, and make hay whilst I am effectively stuck indoors apart from a mandated walk every day where BOY AM I TAKING A LOT OF PICTURES and yeah, here we are.

Welcome to the New Normal [TM]

#Narrating2020/#Soundtracking2020/Art/Poetry Projects/Episodic Fiction/General Writing Post/Internet of Words/Mental health Champion/Social Media Asides/Video Projects/Writing Projects

Love What You Do

I’ve learnt a lot in the past year. Most of that’s come in the form of just how much time things take to work out the way you want them. Therefore, planning early and often has become the watch phrase. It means I’ve cheekily skipped last week’s episodic fiction to ensure the next part of the story is told properly, and in the way it needs to be. Most of you won’t notice the changes happening, of course, but for me they are life savers.

That means February’s mostly planned. Paper Hearts is gonna be my Instagram project: bit of poetry, some photography, nothing too fancy. Some days, just gonna be words. I like the idea of not being totally focussed on imagery this time. However, there has to be a LOT of work on the other parts of my equation, and now there’s no immediate timescale around certain projects, this can all be achieved in a far less stressful environment.

February also has some things to look forward to on top of the scheduled.

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It’s Time to Talk day on February 6th (effectively two weeks from now) and there will be many words in my various places online during that period. I’ve also booked a creative writing workshop for the following week, so there’s something more to talk about than my own projects. Plus, there is the aborted from this month Video Content that will finally see the light of day.

Also, we get a SUPER BONUS FREE DAY on the 29th that isn’t normally there at all and it would be a foolish woman who did not plan something special for that. So I will, except as of right now I am not entirely certain what this thing will be. It’s going to be clever and massive and may actually involve tea (both beverage and mealtime) now I come to think of it and OH YES THAT’S A BRILLIANT IDEA…

Better go write this down whilst I remember it…

2020 Content/Internet of Words/Photography/Poetry/Social Media Asides/Video Projects/Writing Projects

Things to Make and Do

Promising myself I’d try video for the first time this year as a delivery medium for poetry was, on reflection, a bit of an ask. Production techniques aren’t frightening, however: I learnt how to storyboard at college, made films and have edited across various media. The programmes may have changed a bit in thirty years but honestly, most of the effort comes in ideas and content, not in the bits that pull processes together.

Having the idea is where it all starts and end, and we have one now.

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An old poem could have been recycled, something that’s already been written, but to be honest I wanted summat new and to start from scratch. That poem’s now in the final stages of polish, storyboarding has begun and assuming that by Sunday everything falls into some kind of workable order, next week is all about filming and faffing. I think there’ll be some ‘live’ work too…

Then, like it or not, I just have to put in the hours


I know how this works, what I’m looking for and where it needs to go. I get how Fair Use works. Let’s see if we can put the two together and make something interesting.

I’ll see you here next week for an update.

#Narrating2020/#Soundtracking2020/2020 Content/Video Content/Writing Projects

To Be Free

I have a new notebook for 2020. It’s sole task is to help me keep track of the content I’m producing, and in the bottom right hand corner of that first page is a blue PostIt Note. The message on that is simple: One Video in January. I’ve borrowed a microphone from my husband, dug out the old webcam. There’s even a storyboard in progress. Everything is prepared. There is no escaping the inevitable.

The main reason for doing this is to find alternate means of expressing myself as an artist, which is what this ends up being. There might be some vlogging, I dunno, it will all depend on how well my first few bits of stuff are received. I have some form with video as well, but if honest an awful lot has changed in the two decades since that was a Thing. Needless to say, those principles are still largely sound.

 

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I can do the whole visual media thing too. It isn’t hard: my skill in graphic design came from being a reasonable mimic, and as all are is by definition derivative? Really, how hard can it be? The plan, such as it is, to have something up by January 24th. Might be sooner, definitely won’t be later. Having said it now, that’s it, there’s no looking back. Things will happen.

Watch this Space.

Art/Poetry Projects/General Writing Post/Here is the News/Short Stories/Writing Projects

Ride on Time

This week, I will mostly writing short stories.

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The plan today was simple: see if I could kick-start my brain into spouting forth some ideas. As of 18.00 this evening, there’s actually EIGHT stories in the folder designated for my output, an increase of two since my 15.00 update. However, only one of those isn’t speculative fiction, and in this particular case (considering whose contest I am entering to) it’s probably a good idea not to go down that route first of all. However at this rate, I’ll have multiple entries for any number of sci-fi sites…

How does this work for me? Well, it depends on the initial idea: some right now are two paragraphs of a narrative that is then sketched in as notes underneath. One is fully fledged, beginning to end with spots of dialogue that occurred to me whilst writing. The story we’ll be concentrating on has beginning and end, plus a very distinct structure, so the plan for that going forward is to complete the framework and then go back to add depth.

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The stuff that doesn’t get immediately used is already being earmarked as short story material for Twitter going forward, so everything is likely to appear at some point on the website. However, if anything leaps out at me as being superlative it will be earmarked for commercial gain ahead of anything else because we are already halfway into March and these website upkeep bills are not going to pay themselves.

Content really isn’t my biggest concern right now, what mattered most of all were strong, compelling ideas. Without sounding like this is easy (really isn’t) adding depth to narratives considerably less stressful than making sure your story’s believable and immersive. The sweet spot, of course, is you idea combination of that and a little something special which makes your work leap off the page and grab your reader by the brain.

In my chosen story, that’s already woven into the fabric of the narrative.

beautiful

I’m not gonna lie: I could not be happier. Tomorrow, hopefully, the rest of the meat is added to the bones and there’ll be a tentative first draft to play about with. At the same time some video gets recorded, am planning to start small at home. All of this will come to fruition for April, and then we can start getting some pennies in the bank. Let’s just hope the rest of this week is as productive as the start…

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