I've always had a very strong imagination, ever since I was a kid. As we didn't have a television in the house, I spent most of my time reading books. This started with a series called, 'Captain Underpants,' which was half comic, half children's book. Then I moved on to Harry Potter and so on. By age twelve I had read over five hundred books. During this time I longed to get a gaming console so that I could play games like everyone else but as of now, I am glad that I never did. I doubt I would have read so much that way. 

The natural progression from reading so much fantasy, although I didn't know it was called that at the time, was to plan my own stories and novels. Throughout primary school, I spent my spare time writing stories on the computer and at home planning a novel set in the Stone Age. I only got one hundred pages in, written on lined paper but it served as my first attempt at a novel. 

When I went to high school, I wrote fewer stories as I had other things to worry about, though I did attempt to start several different stories. Then, in 2020, lockdown hit and everything slowed to a crawl. I suddenly had months with nothing to do. At the time I was reading Robert Jordan's 'The Wheel of Time,' and this sparked me to try once again my hand at novel writing. I bought a laptop and learned to touch type within a week by practising over two hours a day. Then, for the first time with the intention of finishing a novel, I began to write. 

Of course, this first attempt didn't get further than about 50,000 words before I realised that I couldn't just wing it entirely. I threw these out and started over completely, finishing my first novel by the end of the summer. Since then, apart from when I was away travelling, I have written or edited every day and have just finished my fourth novel. 

Currently, I am experimenting with shorter fiction, publishing regularly on The Writing Journal, my Substack newsletter. Writing novels was always my dream, but doing it for only one hour a day means that it will take me almost a year to write and polish a novel, and ideally, there would be a six-month gap between both parts. This means that by the time I get feedback, it's not very helpful and I have already moved on to a newer project. My hope is, that with a shorter time between writing and feedback, I can improve faster, and then apply these skills back to my novel writing. 

Despite short stories only being an experiment, I have found a lot of enjoyment in them, enough that, one year from starting the experiment, I plan to hold off on the next novel to continue writing shorter fiction. This year I plan to enter my most recent works into competitions and try and get them published in magazines. 

In the future, I hope that I can publish both my novels and short stories online and in bookstores, but at the moment, I am focusing on improving my craft and building a critique system. If you are interested or like my work, please contact me through my newsletter landing page here.

D A COLTHART - JANUARY 2025