Ask the Author: Geoff Gore
Answered Questions (4)
Geoff Gore
My advice for aspiring writers is do it regularly, even if it’s just a hundred or so words three or for times a week. That’s still better than a thousand words once a fortnight.
Why?
Because we don’t live in a perfect world, that’s why. I’d love to sit down without distractions and spend three or four hours dedicated just to writing. You know what it’s like. It takes a little while to get into the zone, then you get truly immersed in your story, your characters, and after a while the writing just flows. The problem is for most of us, this almost never happens. We have to work, look after kids, do ‘stuff’. If you waited until whenever you had just the right time and environment to be dedicated solely to writing, you’d only probably write once or twice a year.
Then there’s the fact that a lot of what you first get down on paper is just dross. There’s an argument that says you need to write for at least an hour or so, to get in the zone and to write through all the truly terrible crap until you get to the good stuff. The problem is, how do you do this regularly enough? Instead, by writing just a little each day you tend to keep the creative muscle more exercised and it takes comparatively less time to get to that good stuff than it would if you go a long time between writing sessions.
Writing is like a marathon. And much like training for a marathon, your creative muscles will respond more easily to consistent exercise every day than to one two hour run each week.
Why?
Because we don’t live in a perfect world, that’s why. I’d love to sit down without distractions and spend three or four hours dedicated just to writing. You know what it’s like. It takes a little while to get into the zone, then you get truly immersed in your story, your characters, and after a while the writing just flows. The problem is for most of us, this almost never happens. We have to work, look after kids, do ‘stuff’. If you waited until whenever you had just the right time and environment to be dedicated solely to writing, you’d only probably write once or twice a year.
Then there’s the fact that a lot of what you first get down on paper is just dross. There’s an argument that says you need to write for at least an hour or so, to get in the zone and to write through all the truly terrible crap until you get to the good stuff. The problem is, how do you do this regularly enough? Instead, by writing just a little each day you tend to keep the creative muscle more exercised and it takes comparatively less time to get to that good stuff than it would if you go a long time between writing sessions.
Writing is like a marathon. And much like training for a marathon, your creative muscles will respond more easily to consistent exercise every day than to one two hour run each week.
Geoff Gore
For me, it’s readers. Finding out that someone has read my books or stories on the other side of the world and, while I started writing for just myself, it’s even better to find someone else has enjoyed them. (Maybe it’s an ego thing too – but who doesn’t like to receive a good review?)
Geoff Gore
I’m currently inching my way toward completion of my first draft for my second novel, tentatively titled ‘A Feeling of Contentment’.
My first, Gabriel’s Trumpet, was an espionage story. I was never quite sure why I decided to try this genre in the first place and being my first I thought I needed to at least try writing some different styles and genres to find my voice. So, with that in mind I started this project. I started out wanting to try a kind of satiric black comedy, but what has ultimately emerged is much more like a serious drama with some black humor thrown in. I’ve found this odd, not least because I felt I’d got myself in trouble with my espionage novel because I didn’t spend enough time plotting it out when I started. (I just basically sat down at my keyboard and started bleeding until something emerged). I went back, periodically reworking the plot holes as I went along. The end result is that I felt like I perhaps rushed the plot of Gabriel’s Trumpet. So much so that I am now also working on a sequel, Gabriel’s Return because I had a lot of unanswered questions about the main characters myself.
Perhaps it’s also reflective of the approach that I have taken to writing A Feeling of Contentment, where, due in part to my own external commitments of full time work, raising young kids, and maybe stretching myself too thinly across too many other projects (in addition to this manuscript I have commenced the sequel to Gabriel’s Trumpet, while still experimenting with genres by starting a crime procedural, that is yet to be titled).
At approaching 100,000 words, A Feeling of Contentment is also by far the largest piece of writing that I have embarked upon. A lengthy edit may see the word count come dramatically back to Earth and also see the genre evolve some more, perhaps back toward where I had originally seen this story moving, although I think it will still be a far more serious drama than I had intended. Watch this space.
My first, Gabriel’s Trumpet, was an espionage story. I was never quite sure why I decided to try this genre in the first place and being my first I thought I needed to at least try writing some different styles and genres to find my voice. So, with that in mind I started this project. I started out wanting to try a kind of satiric black comedy, but what has ultimately emerged is much more like a serious drama with some black humor thrown in. I’ve found this odd, not least because I felt I’d got myself in trouble with my espionage novel because I didn’t spend enough time plotting it out when I started. (I just basically sat down at my keyboard and started bleeding until something emerged). I went back, periodically reworking the plot holes as I went along. The end result is that I felt like I perhaps rushed the plot of Gabriel’s Trumpet. So much so that I am now also working on a sequel, Gabriel’s Return because I had a lot of unanswered questions about the main characters myself.
Perhaps it’s also reflective of the approach that I have taken to writing A Feeling of Contentment, where, due in part to my own external commitments of full time work, raising young kids, and maybe stretching myself too thinly across too many other projects (in addition to this manuscript I have commenced the sequel to Gabriel’s Trumpet, while still experimenting with genres by starting a crime procedural, that is yet to be titled).
At approaching 100,000 words, A Feeling of Contentment is also by far the largest piece of writing that I have embarked upon. A lengthy edit may see the word count come dramatically back to Earth and also see the genre evolve some more, perhaps back toward where I had originally seen this story moving, although I think it will still be a far more serious drama than I had intended. Watch this space.
Geoff Gore
Most of my book ideas come from little micro concepts. Sometimes I get the idea for a title that comes from just a couple of words that I think sound interesting together. I start trying to weave around them what a possible plot outline would be for a book with that title.
Other times it’s just an overheard sentence that gets my mind wandering. This was initially the case for a large part of Gabriel’s Trumpet. I was at a bar when I first overheard a heated conversation about the upcoming elections in the United States. One of the participants suddenly blurted out the line about a group of anonymous men in dark suits who sit the incoming President down in a room at the Whitehouse after the fanfare of inauguration day has passed and play him scenes of the Kennedy assignation from angles that no one else had ever seen before. Then they discuss who really runs the country.
Up until that point the story was going to be about a couple of unlikely Italian gangsters. Both cold but one older, nearing the end of his useful life as a stand-over man, experienced and controlled, the other, at the opposite end of his career, eager to please and prove himself, but reckless and impulsive.
The original inspiration for Caesar and Antonio came while I was on holiday in Italy and I passed by a parked black Mercedes with two men inside, that seemed to lurk ominously in a narrow alley waiting for someone to arrive. I wondered long after I’d passed them by, what they were doing there and who they were waiting for? I began to wonder what gangsters did when they weren’t busy being gangsters? Surely they still had the same problems many of us do in our daily lives? I found this amusing and then for extra light relief exaggerated this further by asking myself; what if you didn’t really get along with your work partner despite being forced to spend much of your day together, even if your life could well depend on them? Perhaps these two were thrown together by necessity rather than choice?
Throw in an unlikely, unwitting hero, an ancient prophecy and a mysterious power struggle playing out at some higher level and so the story evolved into what became Gabriel’s Trumpet.
Other times it’s just an overheard sentence that gets my mind wandering. This was initially the case for a large part of Gabriel’s Trumpet. I was at a bar when I first overheard a heated conversation about the upcoming elections in the United States. One of the participants suddenly blurted out the line about a group of anonymous men in dark suits who sit the incoming President down in a room at the Whitehouse after the fanfare of inauguration day has passed and play him scenes of the Kennedy assignation from angles that no one else had ever seen before. Then they discuss who really runs the country.
Up until that point the story was going to be about a couple of unlikely Italian gangsters. Both cold but one older, nearing the end of his useful life as a stand-over man, experienced and controlled, the other, at the opposite end of his career, eager to please and prove himself, but reckless and impulsive.
The original inspiration for Caesar and Antonio came while I was on holiday in Italy and I passed by a parked black Mercedes with two men inside, that seemed to lurk ominously in a narrow alley waiting for someone to arrive. I wondered long after I’d passed them by, what they were doing there and who they were waiting for? I began to wonder what gangsters did when they weren’t busy being gangsters? Surely they still had the same problems many of us do in our daily lives? I found this amusing and then for extra light relief exaggerated this further by asking myself; what if you didn’t really get along with your work partner despite being forced to spend much of your day together, even if your life could well depend on them? Perhaps these two were thrown together by necessity rather than choice?
Throw in an unlikely, unwitting hero, an ancient prophecy and a mysterious power struggle playing out at some higher level and so the story evolved into what became Gabriel’s Trumpet.
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