My artistic life https://shepline.com/2020/02/09/my-artistic-life/ Thoughts inspired by @kiran_mh, @libbypagewrites, @blackwelloxford, and @oxfordshireartweeks
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#amillustrating #amreading #amwritingart #ArtWeeks #books #bookshops #creativity #illustration #OxfordshireArtweeks #reading #writing

First off, I attended two free workshops for Oxfordshire Arweeks which I am participating in this May for the first time. The afternoon gave me some food for thought about how to market myself and my story to attract people to my art.

Later in the afternoon, I high-tailed it across town to Blackwell’s Bookshop to hear Kiran Millwood-Hargrave read from her new novel, The Mercies, and talk in conversation with friend and fellow-author Daisy Johnson. It was one of those events that was inspiring in every way possible and made me want to get back to my writing and finish the *work in progress*. In a small way it even made me begrudge my sketching life for taking up my writing life. Which is silly as I enjoy them both equally, and let’s face it when I wandered downstairs later to the ground floor of the shop an saw the racks of my prints for sale, the pictures have been earning me more of a small living than my writing.

In response to a question from the audience Kiran talked about how if you want to get published you just need to follow ‘the rules’ of the industry and write the book, then approach agents, and then it will happen. She nodded to the fact that some people of course choose to Indie Publish (as I have done) and that that was of course an option and that there is nothing wrong with that, but it wasn’t for her. And it made me think, that I think I do still have a yearning to be published and supported by the publishing machine.

Kiran’s talk definitely inspired me get on with my writing. Today, with Storm Ciara battering the UK, it was definitely a hibernating kind of day. I got stuck into reading Libby Page’s The 24-Hour Café, partly because it is so good, and partly because I can then delve into The Mercies. Then there is Daisy Johnson’s anthology of short stories, Fen.

Now I just have to put my plan into action. Just have to decide whether or not to re-edit Mr Tumnal again. I still can’t quite decide whether I should keep it set in the fictitious city of Wren Hoe on the edge of the Cotswolds, or adapt it to a full-on, if alternative, Oxford, as that is essentially where it is based. I like the Wren motifs and the play on words with Nowhere, but I’m still wondering if it could be better still for being actual Oxford – if an Oxford with trams, and an Edinburgh-style West End.

†My immediate To Read Pile is just the tip of the iceberg to my actual to read pile.

‡This list does not yet include Michelle Harrison’s new novel, A Sprinkle of Sorcery.

Listening to #MauriceAndré playing Handel’s Trumpet Concertos (albeit on CD not over-played cassette) still evokes 35 year old memories of reading Arthur Ransomes Missee Lee and still inspires me creatively. •••
What music and listening format still brings back those first memories for you?
#music #inspiration #creativity #iwasnotacoolkid

Tonight is the last day of a 24-day holiday, and whilst I have read lots it took until New Year’s Eve last night that I actually wrote anything more than a few short sentences. Tonight I’ve written some more and taken The Imaginary Wife to the final section. Now I just need to keep up this momentum, and I will be able to launch my third book at the fourth Hawkesbury Upton Literary Festival in April, at which I am due to appear.

I’m going to also try and keep up the routine of writing in these pages – of journaling my life. This is for me, but if you would like to read them also and draw pleasure from reading about my various creativity endeavours then please do. Subscribe if you like. I’m going to be writing, and editing, but I also greatly enjoyed getting back to my art during Inktober so I intend to do more of that to. And I want to attempt to do an illustration for the cover of the new book and will be documenting my attempts here. Should be fun getting back to my gouache paints!

Now, I’m off to look up a bit of Fairy Queen research and Thomas the Rhymer/Tam Lin ballads for that final showdown…

Ending 2017 how I want to begin 2018 writing pages and pages… #amwriting #MrTumnal #TheImaginaryWife #fairymagic #creativity #words

every single film ever made has been digitally compressed into a huge library, where they can be accessed, taken apart, used, reused – infinitesimally

Mrs Chubbs, Home Movies, 1993

Take Peter Cushing’s appearance in the latest Star Wars film, and the controversy over whether we have the right to have actors play parts that they never could have had any knowledge of. It’s all there in Home Movies…

Something else which is there is the character of Amanda Jones from the 1985 film Some Kind of Wonderful. Who would’ve thought then that she would the seed of the story for the Mr Tumnal follow-up, The Imaginary Wife as just one of the literary and pop-culture references to find and enjoy?