Ian Gouge's Blog, page 41

Yesterday & Today: 1st April

April. Can you believe it?! Yesterday the dominant activity was more work drafting “C”. During that I had another wonderful example of how brilliant the brain is… In terms of the location in which my narrative is set, I was struggling a little with how to make a credible link between the last episode and … Continue reading Yesterday & Today: 1st April →

Yesterday & Today: 31st March

Another tremendous Contextual virtual poetry reading event yesterday with my five readers doing us proud – as they always seem to! We had 23 people attend the hour-long meeting. As ever, there was a range of styles and themes on show. Occasionally I find the admin for these events a little onerous – but the … Continue reading Yesterday & Today: 31st March →

Yesterday & Today: 30th March

It seems that drafting “C” is an unstoppable activity at the moment with yesterday‘s addition work taking the word count over 24k. It’s amazing what happens when you latch onto a story you want to tell, and with characters you find interesting. There is a bizarre – and wonderful! – compulsion about the process; something … Continue reading Yesterday & Today: 30th March →

Yesterday & Today: 29th March

A really good ‘Write-on Ripon’ session yesterday with a significant variety of work read – and some good discussions following on from those. Most enjoyable. I read another short chunk from the draft opening of “C” which seemed to go down well. The group seems to have found a heartbeat with attendees now regularly numbering … Continue reading Yesterday & Today: 29th March →

Yesterday & Today: 28th March

As planned, yesterday saw me start to build out my fourth main character in “C”, an activity which requires another 4-5,000 words drafted to round-out. As well as that, I did a silent, ‘un-acted’ read-through of Crash. Unplanned was the time I spent updating the Coverstory books website to include landing pages for my new … Continue reading Yesterday & Today: 28th March →

Yesterday & Today: 27th March

A very modest day yesterday, as expected, with “C” the focus of what work I was able to fit in. I’ve started writing a little after dinner in the evening – something I normally don’t do – and am finding it a very productive time. Yesterday evening, for example, I drafted 776 words in 30 … Continue reading Yesterday & Today: 27th March →

Yesterday & Today: 26th March

The good news from yesterday was that the eproofs of my upcoming books look ok. There may be a minor font glitch in a couple of places on the back cover of a two of them, but only by getting the physical proof copy next month will I know if that’s really the case (and … Continue reading Yesterday & Today: 26th March →

Culture R.I.P.

We’re all wasting our time. Small-minded cancel culture trumps everything. We might as well burn all the books now – though I think someone tried that ninety years ago… Michelangelo is pornography

Yesterday & Today: 25th March

I managed to spend a fair bit of time working on “C” yesterday. The most gratifying thing is that I feel I am beginning to craft three interesting characters; something to get stuck into. More than that however is the growing desire to tell their stories – which with fiction is often more than half … Continue reading Yesterday & Today: 25th March →

“Bewilderment”

Wonderful? A tour de force? Relentless? Inspiring? You go ahead and choose. If you’ve read Richard Powers’ “Bewilderment” you probably have some other words you’d like to add to the list of superlatives above. Beyond the narrative and how erudite and moving it is, how engrossing the story is, the thing that strikes me most … Continue reading “Bewilderment” →