As planned, yesterday I was able to publish a new episode to my Walkingthrufire podcast. This time it was a short story called “Smoking in the Park” which is included in my new collection, An Irregular Piece of Sky, to be published later this year – one way or another!
I learned two things from the exercise: firstly, it’s impossible to read a thirty-minute story without stumbling once or twice; and secondly, even though I’ve edited the story at least three times, I was still able to find a couple of typos as I read. Once more round the block then..!
You can find the story here.
In addition to project work, I also spent some time in the world of competitions, both identifying new ones and entering ones already known to me – like my annual run at the Guernsey poetry competition!
On the whole however, I have to report that it was a vaguely unsatisfying day.
Today needs to see something of a response. Probably a bit more time committed to live projects… One of the current challenges however, is that much of what I’m doing is waiting and editing, revisiting existing work. (I’m sure I’ve mentioned the waiting..!) I have withdrawal symptoms, feeling an increasing need to get my teeth into a meaningful piece of new fiction. Yet this isn’t the kind of thing that can be rushed, otherwise effort will be spent on what’s likely to ultimately prove ‘the wrong thing’.
So a bit more thinking about that too, working on current ideas.
Oh, and I’ve already had my agent rejection for the day – though it was a rather nice email (boilerplate or not).
By the way, when I finish a reading a book, I post a little review on this website. Yesterday it was Julian Barnes’ Elizabeth Finch. Not his finest hour in my opinion. Reading List.
#amwriting #writing #wrtingdiary
Ian Gouge - Writer 