Tag Archives: June

Big Posts Are Overrated

I haven’t posted anything since February. I’ve wanted to. But I haven’t.

See, posting something to a blog may not seem like a big deal. But when you’re autistic with ADHD? Even small things can seem enormous if they have a lot of stages. Which blog posts do. You have to write the text, find images, upload them, write image descriptions, tag the post… There’s a lot.

But I want to share stuff I’ve made! I’ve done a lot of sewing since February and done some cool cross-stitches and made some cute felt animals with kits from Aldi. So what am I gonna do?

Simple. Whenever I feel up to it, I’m gonna make a post with a photo of one thing I’ve made. The post will be that single picture plus a description of the image, and that’s it.

After all. Big posts are overrated.

~ Penny

Want to get in touch? E-mail me (pennygotch at gmail.com) or leave a comment!

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P.S. Wash your hands, wear a mask, and get your vaccine (unless you’re allergic/immunocompromised).

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Filed under 2021 Posts, Casual Conversation, The Year of Chaotic Creation

Monday 29th June 2015: Countdown to “Dark Heart”

The build-up to the release of “Dark Heart” seems to be going well!

I’ve been publishing one poem per day since last Tuesday and the response has been good for the most part.

I’ll be posting a new poem on Penny Gotch Poetry every day from now until the publication of “Dark Heart” (with double posts on Sundays!). So keep an eye on that Tumblr, my Twitter feed or my Facebook page!

Image © Penny Gotch (http://www.pennygotch.co.uk).

But when is “Dark Heart” coming out, I hear you ask?

Two weeks from today, or Monday 13th July. Put it in your diaries!

The book is all formatted and ready to be uploaded to CreateSpace, so it’s just a matter of waiting until the release date.

But I can’t just leave you with that, so here’s a brand new promo image for the book combining the title and the image I’ll be using in the cover art:

Image © Penny Gotch (http://www.pennygotch.co.uk).

Hope you like it – feel free to share!

~ Penny

Related Post: Tuesday 23rd June 2015: Vids and Blogging and Books, Oh My

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

Solo: Under the Tree

Colab: Personal is Political

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Filed under Post-Grad Posts, Press Release

Tuesday 23rd June 2015: Vids and Blogging and Books, Oh My

Thank you so much for your great response to my Final Year Independent Study videos. I have tentative results for the project: it looks like I have a First, and I couldn’t have done that without you.

Haven’t seen the videos? Not a problem! You can check out the playlist right here.

And every single one has closed captions, so they should be accessible to you even if you’re D/deaf, Hard of Hearing, have auditory processing issues, etc.

I hope you’re also happy to hear that I’m working on five new poetry videos that, together with the ten I’ve made, will be going onto a DVD! I don’t have even a tentative release date for that yet, but I hope to have that available for you before the autumn.

The DVD will come with the ten poetry videos from YouTube, five new poetry videos never before seen, and hopefully a video or two explaining my writing process and giving some trivia about the poems and videos themselves.

But there is something I do have a release date for: my next poetry book!

If you didn’t already know, I self-published a poetry book called “Under the Tree” early last year and put it on Amazon in the late autumn. If you’re interested, you can check it out here.

And I think it’s high time that I followed up with a sequel!

I don’t want to give too much away because I’m not going to be publishing it for another three weeks. But I’m going to share the title with you today: “Dark Heart“.

Image © Penny Gotch (http://www.pennygotch.co.uk).

And here’s another treat for you! I also run a poetry blog called “Penny Gotch’s Poetry” where I give away my works for free.

Yes, you read that correctly: free poetry!

And in the build-up to the publication of “Dark Heart”, I will be posting a new poem there every single day until release day.

That’s 21 poems absolutely free so you can try my work before you buy it.

I hope you enjoy them and I can’t wait to share the new book with you.

~ Penny

Related Post: 01/06/15: “FYIS: Poetry as Performance” Playlist

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

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Filed under FYIS, Post-Grad Posts, Press Release

01/06/15: “FYIS: Poetry as Performance” Playlist

~ Penny

Related Post: 30/05/15: “who am I?”

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

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Monday Writing Goals: 30th June 2014

Hello and welcome to another Writing Goals post!

Image © Penny Gotch.

I have only two goals this week: finish Blue Skye, and start Camp NaNoWriMo!

I’m only doing a half NaNo this time (25k) because I want to finish Blue Skye AND I’m going to Canada for a week this month. So I don’t want to push myself under too much pressure!

In other news, I was shortlisted for the “Art in the Underpass” competition, but didn’t win. Even so, I performed my poem Canterbury in Westgate Gardens.

And thanks to my lovely parents, Hugh and Becky Gotch, the performance is now on YouTube, which you can see below!

I hope you enjoy it!

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Filed under Competitions, Monday writing goals, Summer of Writing 2014

Writing Goals: 23rd June 2014

Just a short post today!

I have a sewing project that I need to work on and finish before mid-July, so that is going to get my focus this week along with working on “Blue Skye”.

And that’s it! I’ll see you again on Friday!

P.S. My poetry book “Under the Tree” is still on sale! Message me for more details! pennygotch@gmail.com or @pennygotch on Twitter!

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Filed under Monday writing goals, Summer of Writing 2014

Friday Writing Round-Up: 20th June 2014

Image © Penny Gotch.

I have a confession to make: this hasn’t been a very productive week for me.

Why? I couldn’t say. Some weeks are just like that, I suppose.

I wrote this week’s Her Campus poll, but I haven’t written an article yet, touched “Blue Skye” or “Numbers Up”, or written my “Couch to 5K” article.

I have done more brainstorming on my HG Wells Competition story, though. It’s now called “Gemini” and I have a plot and character names. Baby steps!

As for what else I’ve done this week?

I went to Basildon to do a huge load of shopping, including getting my mum’s birthday presents.

I made some absolute divine Malteser and Mars Bar fridge cake, which is the most decadent thing I’ve ever eaten.

And my parents bought me some awesome new clothes at Blue Water! Sweet!

Oh, and I got to play Pathfinder with a bunch of my American friends over Skype.

Image © Diacritica.

I love my character Telsir and I’m having so much fun with those guys. I just wish it wasn’t at such antisocial hours for a Brit!

And now the weekend is here. I’m going to try to get some more writing done over the next couple of days to make up for the lack of progress this week, but I won’t put too much pressure on myself.

After all, we’re going on the Warner Bros. Harry Potter Studio Tour tomorrow! I can’t wait!

See you all on Monday!

P.S. You can still order a copy of my poetry book “Under the Tree”! It’s just £5.70 and that includes P&P to anywhere in the UK! Drop me an e-mail at pennygotch@gmail.com or send me a Tweet to @pennygotch if you’re interested!

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Filed under Friday Writing Round-Up, Summer of Writing 2014

Launch of “Under the Tree”

Interested by the title? I hope you are! But before that…

My news article for Her Campus about the latest Assassin’s Creed game has gone live!

And here are my writing goals for the week:

Image © Penny Gotch.

  • Start my HG Wells competition story “Gemini”
  • Work on “Blue Skye”
  • Work on “Numbers Up”
  • Write an article about “Couch to 5K”
  • Write a news article for Her Campus

And here’s the big announcement!

I’ve self-published my own poetry book!

Image © Penny Gotch.

“Under the Tree” is my first chapbook collection. Right now, you can only get this in hard copy direct from me. Will it be on Kindle? Yes, but not until the beginning of July.

I’ve ordered 20 copies and 9 have been reserved already. That means there are 11 copies left waiting for a good home!

Each book is 30 pages long and costs £5.70 (including P&P to anywhere in the UK).

Interested?

Let me know! You can contact me in the comments here, on Twitter (@pennygotch) or Facebook, or via e-mail.

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Filed under Book Launch, Monday writing goals

Friday Writing Round-Up: 13th June 2014

It’s Friday again! How did I do with my writing goals?

Image © Penny Gotch.

Well, considering I spent most of the week feeling absolutely dire from a cold, I didn’t do badly.

I have written a news article for Her Campus, which should be going up sometime soon.

And I wrote an article about comparing yourself with other people, which you can read here.

As for the rest of the list, I haven’t started my fortune story, but I been thinking about it and picked a different topic. It should be fun to write.

But “Blue Skye” and my article about “Couch to 5K” remain untouched, alas.

I may get around to working on those this weekend, or they may roll over to next week’s goals. We’ll see.

And as I said at the beginning of this post, I haven’t been up to much this week as I’ve felt so ill.

The most dramatic thing I’ve done is get Pokémon Snap for the Wii and buy myself cider and truffles.

http://instagram.com/p/pJ3tnbxXYP/

But hey, I’m almost back to full health again, and that means more writing on the way!

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Filed under Friday Writing Round-Up, Summer of Writing 2014

Writing Process Blog Tour

Hello and welcome to Week Two of my Summer of Writing 2014!

This week, I won’t just be posting writing goals. I’m also participating in the Writing Process Blog Tour!

But more on that in a moment. First, my goals for the week:

 

  • Write a news article about E3 for Her Campus
  • Start my “fortune” story for the HG Wells Competition
  • Write an article about “Couch to 5K”
  • Write an article about comparing oneself with others
  • Work on “Blue Skye”

 

And now for the Writing Process Blog Tour!

Back at the end of May, the lovely Danny Rhodes sent me an e-mail asking if I wanted to be involved in the Writing Process Blog Tour.

I have to answer four questions about the way I write, then tag three other bloggers to do the same thing next week.

Danny Rhodes was my lecturer for my Fiction module in my first year of university. He’s recently published a new novel called “Fan”, which is based on his own experiences as a witness of the Hillsborough Disaster.

You can find his participation post here on his blog.

And now it’s my turn!

What am I currently working on?

The shorter answer is what I’m NOT currently working on! I’m one of those writers who has the terrible tendency to try to write a thousand things at once, fretting away at each of them in turn until I finally get sick of it and knuckle down to finish something.

My main work-in-progress is my first novel, “Blue Skye”. It’s a young adult story about a teenage girl called Skye who befriends a grouchy middle-aged ghost. I re-wrote it for last year’s NaNoWriMo, but although I broke the 50k word-count, I haven’t finished it yet. Which I really need to do before I tackle Camp NaNoWriMo this summer…

My other primary work-in-progress is a short story called “Numbers Up”, which is going to be about personal redemption after death.

How does my work differ from others of its genre?

By being written by me. Which sounds awfully big-headed, but that’s not what I’m trying to get at.

When I write, my words, thoughts and ideas are filtered through my personal experiences and everything I’ve known and lived through. Nobody else has had a life exactly like mine, and therefore nobody else writes exactly like me.

After all, what’s the point of writing if you don’t tell a story that only you can tell?

Why do I write what I do?

Because you can’t run around telling people what to do and killing them on a whim in real life without getting arrested.

Sorry, I’m being facetious.

No, the reason that I write what I do is because… well, it’s what I do. Ideas come to me from everywhere and I write them because I am a writer and if I didn’t, I would probably lose my mind.

I write what I want to write, and what I need to write.

How does my writing process work?

This varies depending on whether it’s NaNoWriMo or not.

If it isn’t NaNoWriMo, I occasionally pick up the piece of writing, forcing myself to put down a few words here and there, taking frequent breaks and generally taking forever to get anywhere.

If it is NaNoWriMo, you’ll find me writing silly light-hearted scene summaries on paper then banging them out in desperation like a chimp with a typewriter.

And now I must pass on the baton! Sadly, I could only find two people, but as those two people are bloody fantastic, I feel no shame.

Melissa Holden

Image © Melissa Holden.

Bio:

Melissa Holden self-published author/poet/blogger from Kent, is an undergraduate at Canterbury Christ Church University (Creative and Professional Writing BA Hons). As well as studying at university, Melissa is also an Editor for CCCU Her Campus and a Theme Editor for Readwave.com

When she isn’t writing novels or poetry, Melissa blogs on WordPress and helps other authors promote their careers.

Melissa Holden’s works:

“The Snow Killer”

“From Me, With Love”

“The Little Things: A Book of Haiku

“52 Writing Prompts”

Social Media:

Twitter: @melissaholden94

Facebook page: MelissaHoldenWriter

Writing blog: melissaholden.wordpress.com

Personal blog: thelifeofa19yearoldauthor.wordpress.com

Lorna Holland

Image © Lorna Holland.

Lorna Holland is a 20 year old creative and professional writing student at Canterbury Christ Church University. Originally from Northamptonshire, she now splits her time between Northants and Kent. Lorna writes a little bit of everything, but her main passions are YA fiction and magazine journalism. She keeps a regularly updated blog and has an increasing social media presence. Her work has been published by My Student Style, and she regularly contributes to HerCampus CCCU and Kettle Magazine. She also writes a YA story called Missing Secrets for Jukepop Serials, which is released a chapter at a time. Aside from writing, Lorna loves books, bands, and TV shows.

Learn more about Lorna on her blog: www.lornaholland.blogspot.com

You can also follow her on Twitter: @themaxdog

And find her on Facebook: www.facebook.com/lornahollandwriter

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Filed under Monday writing goals, Summer of Writing 2014