2024.
The future. Only it’s not the future, it is today. I blinked and seven years has passed.
A brief history then, as I have just deleted all my previous blog posts:
When it comes to being creative - whether that’s writing, painting, or writing songs - I’m very much in the camp of waiting for inspiration to hit then working feverishly on your project in a fit of passion. The trouble with that of course, is that life gets in the way and fits of passion become fewer and farther between, then before you know it a year has passed and you haven’t done anything. If I was going to progress, I needed to stop being so pretentious and write every day, even when I wasn’t inspired.
The first written notes I can find about the novel I’m writing - ‘The State Of Youth Today’ - were dated Thursday, October 22nd, 2015, but I’m sure that I was working on it before then. Either way, we’re coming up to ten years - for context, that’s shorter than The Beatles’ whole recording career.
I finally finished the first draft in May 2023.
I know that all the greats say you have to “learn the rules before you can break them”, and when I finished my first draft I knew that when it comes to writing a novel, I had learned none of the rules, so I did something I thought I would never do - join a writing community.
Although it’s something I have always been passionate about, the thought of sitting around with other writers talking about writing seemed too ‘chin-strokey’ for my liking, but I wanted advice, I wanted feedback, and I didn’t want to get conned going to someone private.
I found the Writing Room: Link Here and signed up to have my first 10,000 words, my synopsis and my Agents’ letter read over. Boy oh Boy, what a revelation. I learned so much about what I needed to do to get my novel into shape (add 20,000 words to my novel for a start), and got some great feedback.
At this current moment in time - January 7th, 2024 - I have about 5,000 words to go to hit the magic number of 70,000 (the typical length of a novel - who knew) so I thought now would be a good time to start my blog again as I finally have some tangible experience to share with you if you are in a similar situation to me.
In the next couple of months I will finish my novel and be on the hunt for an agent. I will write a blog post at least every other week to document how I’m doing, and will be open to any questions.
I’m on Instagram as jonleebarneswriter
Let’s go get it.