Writing My First Book. A Diary. Week 12: A Bizarre, Brilliant Few Weeks in the Life of a Writer Who Never Expected Any of This

by Chris Harris

It has been a truly bizarre couple of weeks,  the kind you don’t ever plan for yet has unfolded as if they were always meant to happen. Out of nowhere, my football blog and I found ourselves being interviewed by Eleven Freunde, which, for the uninitiated (a group that included me until about two weeks ago), is the most widely read football culture magazine on the planet, boasting a million readers every single month. Yes, little old me.

This sudden attention has absolutely nothing to do with this new writing blog of mine. It’s tied instead to my other long running football blog,  the one that grew slowly, organically, and quietly over the years until it somehow ended up on the radar of national journalists and international magazines.

I’m not showing off, this is relevant to my book, when the time eventually comes to knock on the doors of agents and publishers, moments like this will matter. They show that I’m not someone who has written just one “the book we all think we’ve got inside us.” They show that I’m committed, prolific disciplined output, and that something about the way I construct stories has already led to a two hour interview with a major publication… followed, absurdly, by a 45-minute photo session the next day. Only a few weeks after my blog was a centrepiece in the once massive, but still popular When Saturday Comes and an interview with the Daily Telgraph.

If nothing else, it proves that I know how to get my name out there, and that I’m here for the long haul.

Meanwhile, editing on the first book continues at full tilt. Louise and I are swapping Google Docs back and forth, trying to keep eight interlinked stories in some sort of coherent order. It’s occasionally chaotic, but we’re in no rush. These things take the time they take. And as if juggling a book somehow wasn’t enough, I’ve also begun releasing a weekly story, or column, or bulletin, or whatever you want to call it — set in Denham, the fictional village where the short-story collection is based. Based on the lives and loves of Denham Phoenix FC.

These pieces, usually between 1,500 and 2,000 words, sit somewhere between a blog post and a traditional short story, which means they don’t require the forensic editing of “proper” fiction. This is liberating. It allows me to build out the world of Denham and its inhabitants, a world I may eventually spin into my first full-length novel, without the paralysis that comes from overthinking. And thanks to Louise, I’ve now discovered my Grammarly had been stuck on American settings, which explains one or two oddities. Every day is a school day.

I’m posting these weekly stories on Substack and Medium. Right now, I’m getting next to no engagement, which I expected entirely. I’m under no illusions: this is a long game. I’ll probably need a year of consistent output before any real traction arrives. Over Christmas, when I finally sit down properly, it’ll be time to consult Google, YouTube, and AI to figure out how to grow readership without having to spend my life on social media, which I can’t abide.

And because I seem to be incapable of doing one thing at a time, I’m also entering my first short story competition on Reedsy Prompts this week. They release five prompts weekly, and I chose the one about receiving an unwarranted, unsolicited gift. Naturally, I set the whole piece in Denham. If you read the book when it comes out, you’ll meet Martin, the landlord of The Red Lion, and his daughter Lottie. The competition entry revolves around them. Maybe it’ll get noticed; maybe it won’t. I genuinely have no idea how any of this works.

Anyway, it is her if you’d like to read it!

#WritingABook #ContentCreation #NoviceNovelist #WritingFiction #WritingForDummies