Harry - who is thirteen and often wiser and deeper than his years - has told me that I need to focus on writing something 'big'. By this I assume his implication is that working on Writeral, writing poems, and tackling the '100-word challenge' are largely a waste of time. I might argue that - in sequence … Continue reading Advice from a would-be Literary Agent…
From the top of the Guinigi Tower hardly any roads are visible. Instead, all you can see are church towers and the haphazard pattern of terra cotta roofs jostling against each other, misshapen rectangles in an image that might have been a Klee-Cezanne collaboration. Against a wash of umber, peach and magnolia, a green tree-line … Continue reading “Lucca” – 100-word challenge
He couldn’t recall when he had stopped speaking. It had crept up on him, borne from an ever-increasing ability to live life with a single mouse click: like, share, post, love. Anything and everything had become possible - and fast - and without the need for any tangible personal commitment. So when he met Georgia … Continue reading “The Silent Type” – 100-word challenge
The first note of birdsong in the morning. Have you heard it? How it comes suddenly, breaking the silence? Yet it comes softly, nervously, tentatively as if to ask "Now? Am I the first? Are we ready?". Then that small fragment of bravery is taken up, expanded; others join to reply "Yes, Yes, Yes!". And … Continue reading “Dawn Chorus” – 100-word challenge
The second solid memory is a very real episode, and one which is both proven fact and unforgettable not simply because of what happened, but because of one single photograph which, if I close my eyes even now, I can recall vividly. A black-and-white image, perhaps 2 inches square, of a small boy, smartly dressed, … Continue reading “Near Enough” – Snippet 3
He looked too crisp, too coordinated, like someone who had escaped from the front cover of an out-of-date men’s fashion magazine. He seemed to have taken ownership of a complete tonal range and then embarked on a crusade to shade the world accordingly. Nothing clashed; each crease was perfectly sharp. And he walked like a … Continue reading “Male Model” – 100-word challenge
I have always written poetry. I remember from when I was young I had poem framed and put on the wall of the Gosport City Museum, and a masterpiece entitled "Stan, Stan, the Crackpot Man" that had them rolling in the aisles of my year seven English Class… Poetry is great. It allows you to … Continue reading About: “Collected Poems”
It took me maybe three months to draft the whole 120,000 words of "The Big Frog Theory" - known colloquially as "Nev". Largely because of a fantastically positive change in personal circumstances one February about twenty two years ago, I just sat down and started - 'In a Malvern tea-shop he sat, watching the steam … Continue reading About: “The Big Frog Theory”
The boring bits first: this is a big book (172k words, 500 pages), and took a long time to write. Well, not exactly a long time in terms of the physical process of writing those 172k words, but in elapsed time. Many years, in fact. I had the original idea way back and maybe wrote … Continue reading About: “Mirrors”
Write what you know about they say. To a certain extent, if you only do that then you’re writing autobiography all the time. But if you take what you know - however practical, real, physical, emotional etc. - and then extrapolate it, play with it…well, then the world’s your oyster. Lucca is one of my … Continue reading About: “Writing to Gisella”
Ian Gouge - Writer 