Making things up since 1837. Contact me at gordonwrotesomething [at] gordondarroch.com
The best companion for a New Year's Day walk is a hangover. The new year wears the grubby overcoat of the old; nothing fits properly any more, whether it's last week's trousers trousers or the day of the week. Everywhere bears the scars of the festivities: empty bottles linger in hedges, withered trees loiter behind … Continue reading Chippings from the quarry # 1: the habit of a lifetime
The other day when I logged into Twitter I noticed an odd thing. The number of people I follow had gone down by one. I'm used to my follower count bobbing up and down from day to day (at just over the 200 mark, since you ask), but someone disappearing out of my feed is … Continue reading The Pragmatics of Twitter
There’s a lot of terrible advice for writers out there at the moment. In fact, if I’d have to single out one thing as a deterrent to people thinking of starting to write, it’s have to be the mosaic of arcane and arbitrary rules scrawled on the Writers’ Club toilet walls. So it was refreshing … Continue reading Risk taking
Latterly every writer who ever lifted a pen seems to have published their laundry list of do's and don'ts for fellow scribes. Even so, the list by Lance Boyle that I'm privileged to host on this website is quite unlike any other. Lance is a man who needs no introduction, so rather than bore you … Continue reading Ten unmissable rules for writers
If you've yet to see the cinematic masterpiece that is Toy Story 3, I recommend you do two things. First, don't read beyond this paragraph, because I'm about to give away the ending. And second, dash down to your nearest cinema, if it's not too late, or put the DVD on pre-order, if it is, … Continue reading Put the Gun Down, Martin
I wasn’t sure at first whether to class the outcome of The Whittaker Prize 2010 as ‘success’ or ‘failure’. There’s a prevailing school of thought that urges people to adopt a ‘glass half-full’ mindset and ‘accentuate the positive’. But it’s always been one of my guiding principles to distrust a prevailing opinion, and besides I … Continue reading Whitt and wisdom
Is it me, or is spam email the latest avant-garde art form? I ask because an unsolicited email landed in my inbox this morning with the above title and the following text. in as great purse great needed bought the word alone and deal great and great me others alone person luncheon porter the word … Continue reading paid me great me
I'm delighted to have a story, Living With Cancer in the April edition of Eclectic Flash. Delighted on two fronts: firstly, because it's a beautifully produced magazine, available either as a PDF or print edition, which has evidently been the product of much care, effort, and no little flair by people who want to make … Continue reading Flash news (sorry)
A story of mine, The Mute Saint, is included in the fifth annual New Writing Dundee anthology, to be published next month. I posted this on Facebook and The Write Idea forum a few weeks ago, but wanted to hold off here until the link was up (and set up a gratuitous second plug into … Continue reading Saints alive and kicking in Dundee
All writers know that deflating feeling when reality turns out to be more warped and twisted than anything their imaginations can cook up. Yesterday I wrote a detailed entry about the violation of the word experience. Then this morning I went shopping in Marks & Spencer and found this on a pack of shrink-wrapped apples: … Continue reading Bad apples