P. Gotch – Writer | The website and blog for the writer Penny Gotch.

I’m going to be honest: the past few months have not been easy for me. Shortly before I vanished, I made a post about my anxiety (which you can read here). That teamed up with clinical depression and a heavy university workload to knock me for six.

But I’ve returned for two reasons. First, I’m in a better place mentally and feel ready to reconnect with you. I’ve missed talking to you about my writing process, my achievements and my goals.

Image © Imgarcade.com (http://imgarcade.com/1/goal-png/).

And the second is my Final Year Independent Study (FYIS) for university.

I mentioned on my Facebook page that I was going to make a post here about putting some poetry on my poetry Tumblr. I still intend to do that, but first, I’ve got a different poetry project to share with you.

My FYIS is on Poetry as Performance. To make a long story short, I’ve written ten poems and I’m turning them into short YouTube videos. I’ll be uploading and sharing one video per day for the next ten days, starting from tomorrow.

Image © Alan Dean (https://www.flickr.com/photos/alan-dean/4604833079).

You’ll be able to find them on my YouTube account and I’ll also be embedding them here and posting links on Facebook and Twitter.

I’ve had a lot of fun writing these poems and making these videos, and I hope you enjoy watching them as much as I enjoyed creating them.

And if they get a good response, I may go about publishing a cheap DVD with all the videos on it plus a few more exclusive for those who buy. Watch that space!

Thank you for being patient with me, and I hope you enjoy my FYIS work.

~ Penny

Want to get in touch? E-mail me (pennygotch@gmail.com), message me on Facebook, send me a tweet (@pennygotch) or leave a comment!

Available Books

Under the Tree / Personal is Political

1 Comment

Filed under FYIS, Press Release

Tagged as 2015, FYIS, May, poetry, Wednesday, YouTube

January 22, 2015 · 6:59 pm

(Not Quite) Word Count Wednesday: 22nd January 2015

Hello and welcome back to Word Count Wednesday!

… what’s that?

It’s Thursday already?

Oh. Well. Oops. Looks like time got away from me, doesn’t it?

Image © geralt (http://pixabay.com/en/time-time-indicating-agreement-date-430625/).

But that doesn’t matter. What’s important is that I’ve been writing!

But how much have I written?

3,158 words including my homework! Which is an average of about 451 words per day.

And you know what? That isn’t a bad start for a new year, especially when I’m so busy with university work.

Image © Fred the Oyster (http://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Graduation_hat.svg).

It’s important to be gentle when getting back into the swing of things. And now I’m there, I can only write more.

~ Penny

Related Post: Word Count Wednesday: A New Beginning

Want to get in touch? E-mail me (pennygotch@gmail.com), message me on Facebook, send me a tweet (@pennygotch) or leave a comment!

Available Books

Under the Tree / Personal is Political

1 Comment

Filed under Word Count Wednesday

Tagged as 2015, January, Penny Gotch, Thursday, Word Count Wednesday, writing

January 18, 2015 · 10:52 pm

Sunday Scribblings: #FakeItTilYouMakeIt

Base image © Sembazuru (http://www.flickr.com/photos/sembazuru/6974372/). Edited by Penny Gotch (http://www.pennygotch.co.uk).

If you follow me on Instagram, you may have noticed that I post a lot of selfies. And those selfies tend to be tagged with things like #IAmVeryPretty or #IAmCuteToday.

It occurred to me that if you don’t know me, you might assume I’m conceited or big-headed.

I’m not. There’s another reason I tag my photos that way.

So I decided to write an article explaining that and post it on Readwave.

It’s called #FakeItTilYouMakeIt. It currently has 290 reads and 9 likes. And it recently hit the Readwave homepage.

So why am I talking about this? Because it’s the first time this has ever happened for me.

Image © Andre666 (http://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:1NumberOneInCircle.png).

I’ve been posting on Readwave for almost a year now. I’ve submitted articles, poems and stories. And they’ve all found a good number of readers.

But none of my articles have been on the homepage before.

I’ve written about bullying. I’ve written about annoying television adverts. And I’ve written about comparing myself with other people.

But if I could only have one article go the distance, I’m so glad that it’s #FakeItTilYouMakeIt.

I believe that everyone deserves to feel happy about the way they look. Good self-esteem and body positivity are vital in a world that tells us we’re ugly so they can then sell us things.

And the thought that my journey towards self-acceptance is helping others is so heartwarming to me.

Image © Nemo (http://pixabay.com/en/hearts-valentine-love-romance-37308/).

So thank you for reading, sharing and liking #FakeItTilYouMakeIt. It means the world to me.

And remember: you’re beautiful.

~ Penny

Related Post: Sunday Scribblings: Life Can Be Tough

Want to get in touch? E-mail me (pennygotch@gmail.com), message me on Facebook, send me a tweet (@pennygotch) or leave a comment!

Available Books

Under the Tree / Personal is Political

Word Count Wednesday: A New Beginning

It’s been a while since I did a Word Count Wednesday, hasn’t it?

Base image © Docbaba (http://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Word_Count_h_500.svg). Edited by Penny Gotch (http://www.pennygotch.co.uk).

I think it’s been a little over two months!

Not that I haven’t been posting. Promoting “Personal is Political” rather took over on Wednesdays and that pushed the word count aspect to one side.

But I want to come back to it because I found that it was an interesting experiment.

Image © PublicDomainPictures (http://pixabay.com/en/experiment-chemistry-liquid-217201/).

Plus I may not have as much time to write for pleasure this term as I did last term.

My tutor’s going to set writing tasks for me every Thursday. And part of my grade is dependent on me completing them in a satisfactory manner. That takes priority over writing for fun.

So making a note of how much I’m writing for university homework will remind me that I am making progress and I am still creating.

Image © robinams (http://pixabay.com/en/macbook-pro-keyboard-apple-inc-338619/).

As I said in my last post, life has become pretty stressful for me recently. I’ve got a lot going on and that’s tough to manage.

But things like Word Count Wednesday work as little reminders that for all that life is difficult, I’m still getting things done. I’m still accomplishing things.

It doesn’t matter how slowly you move as long as you don’t stop. And it doesn’t matter if somebody else is getting to their destination faster than you’re getting to yours.

Working at your own pace doesn’t mean you’ve failed. Taking time doesn’t mean you’ve failed. Struggling doesn’t mean you’ve failed.

And I need to remember that.

~ Penny

P.S. My piece on selfies made it to the recommended page of Readwave! Why not give #FakeItTilYouMake it a look if you haven’t already?

Related Post: Word Count Wednesday: 19th November 2014

Want to get in touch? E-mail me (pennygotch@gmail.com), message me on Facebook, send me a tweet (@pennygotch) or leave a comment!

Available Books

Under the Tree / Personal is Political

1 Comment

Filed under Word Count Wednesday

Tagged as 2015, failure, Penny Gotch, progress, struggling, university, Wednesday, Word Count Wednesday, writing

January 11, 2015 · 10:00 am

Sunday Scribblings: Life Can Be Tough

Base image © Sembazuru (http://www.flickr.com/photos/sembazuru/6974372/). Edited by Penny Gotch (http://www.pennygotch.co.uk).

Life isn’t easy.

As much as we like to pretend that there’s some simple solution to everything, there really isn’t.

Unpleasant things happen to us, or we make bad decisions, or things just get too complicated for us to cope with.

Sometimes, life can be tough.

And you might think that’s not true for a writer. After all, we have it easy, don’t we?

Don’t we spend all day sitting around, making up fantasies in our heads? Aren’t we lucky to do what we love for a living? Shouldn’t we be grateful for what we have?

Yes and no.

Most writers don’t spend all their time writing. I know I don’t.