☼ A Place In The Spotlight ☼ with M.C.V. EGAN: Hole Punch by Garth Simmons Genre: SciFi, Fantasy, Humor Anthology

“Working in an office. Pah! How am I supposed to be creative while working in an office?”

Most offices have a stationary cupboard fulls of essential art supplies. Who needs arts funding when you have an office stationary cupboard?

“But what if I'm a writer rather than a visual artist?”

That's even easier, you simply have to write your writing in an email and send it to yourself. This is one suggestion. You have to find a way to write subtly. 95% of my book, Hole Punch, was written while working in a data entry position. The office is the best place for writers to write.

“But what would my manager think if s/he found out?”

Don't tell your manager. Writing is even more potent when it begins as an act of stealth. If you look busy in the office then you'll be seen as a good worker. Also, you won't get any extra work; which means you get more time to work on your writing. It gets even easier once you've written your first draft. By then you should have picked up all the necessary skills of evasion.

“I followed your advice and now I've been sacked.”

That's your fault. I told you before that it's up to you to do this properly. I'm demostrable proof that this works! I spent an entire year writing Hole Punch in my spare time in the office.

“Spare time? I thought you said you wrote instead of working?”

No, I didn't.

Yes, you did, you said that you did at work.

Yes, I said I did it at work not instead of work. You still need to complete your actual work duties.

Oh.

If you want to try it again then my advice would be that once you get a new job then you work hard at the actual job for a month. Establish trust and get a feel of the job. Then, once you have management's trust, you can spend at least half an hour a day writing.

Because of the virus most of the jobs are working from home now.

That should make it even easier to write while working an office job. Unfortunately, there are no more stationary cupboards for visual artists to steal their art supplies from.

Hole Punch

by Garth Simmons

Genre: SciFi, Fantasy, Humor Anthology

HOLE PUNCH is:

The height of the Earth Empire – where War Bricks flatten alien civilisations.
Yorkshire 1985 – where a child's mind is patched together with trauma.
Ancient Greece – where Socrates discovers a carnal method of time-travel.
Mars 2348 – where crime and terror haunt the Martian Habitation Domes.
The Mistake's skull – where Muscle Society achieves self-destruction.
Delaware Dost – where mindfulness prevails and hierarchy is understood.
The End of Everything – where convert concepts welcome refugees into the folds of theory.
All these places (and many more!) reside within the tangled text of Hole Punch.

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Garth Simmons was born in 1981 in Doncaster, South Yorkshire, UK in 1981. He’s a visual artist who’s made paintings, installations, animations and pattern designs. He has had exhibits everywhere from Scarborough to Los Angeles. His pattern designs were in the Golden Globes and Fashion Times and he likes to remind people of this. Writing has always been a feature of his artwork. He would write directly onto his artwork, or by collaging “stream of consciousness” notes.

In 2015, whilst working in a data entry position for Siemens, he began writing short stories as Facebook posts. At first they were daydreams of outrageous acts he could commit whilst at work (if he were professionally or ethically allowed). Later they were stories in other settings. Some dark memoirs of times in various school settings and learning programmes (for those who are “not on the right level”).

These stories resonated with his social media followers. He was encouraged to put them into a collection and seek out publication. While putting these stories into a contextual order he realised they formed a larger narrative. A tapestry of recurring themes, settings and characters. They made up a larger biographical webwork and subjective statement on the world. A hole punched through this fabric, hence the title Hole Punch.

Since completing Hole Punch, he has been working on three long-form novels. Also he has an actual short story collection comprised of several 10’000 word stories. He also does a podcast called Slanderhour and has an EP in the works. His philosophy is that “the more things you make, the more you enjoy your own company”.

Apart from creativity, he loves cats, mochas, wearing blazers, arthouse films and many ropey science fiction series.

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