When I was in my teens, I wrote a novel. It just came to me, as a fully-formed idea, and I wrote it over a few days, in a room full of people who probably thought I was doing my coursework. I didn’t do anything with it, and I didn’t know, or even care much, if it was any good. I just, at the time, had to write it.
When I thought of it, over the following years, I thought it probably wasn’t worth reading, but that certain parts probably had something, and that the overall idea was a good one.
Then covid happened, and the lockdowns.
During the spring lockdown, my friend told me he was reading through all his old diaries, and that gave me the idea of re-reading my novel. I decided, that if it was worthwhile, I would edit it, and maybe post it on a blog. What I found was that there were good parts, and parts that contained far too much description, and unnecessarily long exchanges of conversation. I read through, and chopped these out.
A little while after I had started this process, my friend Joe and I embarked on a project; a blog called SHSO (short for ‘Something Happened Somewhere Once’), showcasing daily a piece of art, music, or writing. I began to serialise my edited story on this blog. Then lockdown ended, life resumed, and it was put to one side again.