I have always enjoyed the practice writing, and have experimented with this is various mediums over the years…

 

Perhaps my greatest writing accomplishment to date is my children’s book A Flamboyance of Flamingos.

This project was always top of the creative bucket list for me. My idea was a simple one – animals and their collective nouns. Words such as a charm of magpies, a memory of elephants, a dazzle of zebra, such fabulous words you don’t even believe they are correct. (But they are.)

I wrote the story around this idea, talking about animals in their family’s, and little activities that they might do together, and then started to work on the illustrations. These I painted black and white onto A2 sheets of canvas, which I then scanned, and later coloured. The process of creating the images and refining the story is one I slowly chipped away at over 2 years.

Going from concept to creation is where things became more challenging. Printing and publishing is not my area or expertise, and looking back this is where I should have sought more advice and council on the best way to proceed. But being young, foolhardy and passionate – I was determined to produce the book myself, and I set up a Kickstarter campaign to fund the project. 

My Kickstarter page told people about the journey thus far, and offered the chance to become a part of it. Printing is an expensive business, so I was at the mercy of my community, asking people to make a pledge in order to make the book happen.

I designed an additional colouring in book, I created a series of limited edition prints, signed and numbered, and framed the original artworks. Backers could select the amount they wanted to pledge for, and what treasures they would receive in return. I had an amazing response from friends and family, and the creative community online. We made our budget and successfully went into production.

A Flamboyance of Flamingos was a real labour of love, and a piece of work that I am so proud of. Our launch party invited as many children as we could fit in the store, and it was chaos. We had a colouring competition, a book reading, and all the original artworks framed on display as an exhibition.

 

In my youth and University days I was a thespian, and dreamed of a life on the stage, so early writing projects including plays.

After moving to Sydney I wrote my first solely written piece The allure of disgrace. A purge of sexually charged generation Y frustration through a playful Beckettian round of 20 questions. The allure of disgrace, looks at the loneliness of love and the absurdity of life, in general. The play was shown at the Sydney Fringe Festival 2010.

The work was a response to Samuel Beckett’s Waiting for Godot, I play I had studied and revied in university. That play blew my young mind, and I wanted to respond to it. I thought it would be an interesting take for a young woman, from a different time and country; a different world, to respond with her own experience.

It was one of those moments where you start working on something, not having any idea how it’s going to turn out, but it just flows out of you, until you suddenly realise what it is. For me, it became about love. A love I had been waiting for, and hanging on to, only to find it had never been there. Writing became a therapeutic exercise, and gave me some perspective and distance; it provided the closure that I had needed for so long.

Arts Hub said of the work;

“The Allure of Disgrace is a bravely written and excellently performed play which marks a very successful playwriting debut for Sophie Stone and provides audiences with a thought-provoking perspective on many of the questions that we all ask ourselves today. It is sure to be one of the highlights of this year’s Sydney Fringe theatre offerings.”

 

 While it received some good reviews, in reality it played out to a very small crowd, and all too soon was over. I felt as though I had worked so hard yet had nothing to show for it. After a time I decided the effort put in should not be in vein, and that I would adapt this script into a short film, something that has been in the works now for some years as I continue to tinker with the script. Watch this space