by Chris Harris
I thought I’d have a review of my year.
I won’t be doing an awards ceremony, partly because I’d be the only nominee, and therefore the only winner, which would feel a little vain and unnecessarily narcissistic.
A year ago, my writing life was fairly simple. I was writing about Lewes Football Club for the Rights of Fans football fanzine, and that was more or less it. Then, around Easter, I decided, with no real plan, that I was going to turn writing into a proper aspiration and hobby and escalate the amount of content I was producing.
Since then, things have multiplied.
So, without further ado, I’m going to break this review into two parts. First, I’ll go through the various streams, or platforms, I’ve ended up writing on, and take stock of what’s worked, what hasn’t, and what’s quietly grown without me really noticing. Lots of success. Second, I’ll look at the actual process of writing itself: the discipline, the volume, the attempts to find readers, and the slow, occasionally painful business of trying to get anyone to notice. Lots of fails!
This isn’t a victory lap. It’s more of a stock-take, an honest look at what a year of saying “yes” to writing has actually produced, and what it’s taught me about both the work and myself.
1. Ordinary Lives, Extraordinary Messes (and What Came Next)
The first major strand of my year has been my short story writing.
My first collection, Ordinary Lives, Extraordinary Messes, began just after Easter, although I only really got going properly at the beginning of Autumn. Realistically, it took me around three months to write, and that’s alongside running a busy business, which, all things considered, isn’t too bad going.
The book is now with Louise for editing and proofreading, and I’m gradually receiving the stories back. I’ve also shared them with friends and family, but with a very strict caveat: I didn’t want praise. I wanted to know where it went wrong.
In fairness, the criticism was largely small and slightly pedantic, all of it noteworthy, of course, but the overall feedback was excellent. I have to say, I’m absolutely delighted with the stories themselves.
So, without apology, I’m awarding myself 9/10.
2. Off the back of that, I’ve already started Ordinary Lives, Extraordinary Messes 2.
In the last few weeks I’ve completed somewhere between forty and sixty per cent of three new stories. These feel more highbrow and more intense than the original book, and I hope that reflects what I learned from writing the first collection. If anything, these pieces already feel more confident and more controlled.
I genuinely think this second collection will be better.
As such, I’m giving myself 8/10 — not because it’s finished, but because the quality and consistency so far feel strong.
3. My third book is based on one of the great loves of my life: non-league football.
It’s set around a fictional Sussex non-league club, and it will be my first full novel. The approach I’ve taken, however, is slightly unconventional. Rather than sitting down to write a novel in one go, I’m producing around 2,000 words a week in the form of a structured diary.
If I keep this up, then by the time the season ends for Denham Phoenix FC, I should have around 80,000 words, and, crucially, a novel.
So how has it gone?
Rather brilliantly, if I’m honest.
I’m absolutely delighted with it, and it’s already far better than I ever thought it could be. Whether it ends up being an excellent book remains to be seen — which is why I’m not giving myself top marks — but the process itself has been a revelation.
For now, I’m awarding myself 8/10.
4. The Blogs (AKA: Where All This Writing Actually Lives)
You’re reading this on The Novice Novelist, which, according to ChatGPT, has a likes-per-views ratio of around 60%, when “excellent” is considered to be 20%. So, on that measure alone, it’s basically off the scale.
However, I’m not awarding myself a ten.
Because the simple truth is: the number of people actually reading it is still very small, which is exactly what you’d expect for a new blog. Blogs take a long time to establish themselves, and I know that from experience, because my first main blog didn’t become successful overnight either.
So for The Novice Novelist I’m awarding myself 7.5 out of 10.
5. Next is my football blog, which also includes content from some of my other interests, and that one is pushing 20,000 views in a year. Something The Novice Novelist can only dream of at the moment.
That said, it isn’t perfect. It’s badly set out, badly presented, and it’s lost its way slightly in terms of focus now that it covers other subjects as well.
But as a part-time hobby blog? It’s very successful.
So I’m awarding myself 8 out of 10.
6. The final part of my content output this year is what I’m calling a blogzine.
I now do the fanzine on my own. The person I used to do it with, the one who produced the paper copy and helped with all the humour, cartoons, and general madness, is now busy with a young family and doesn’t have the time.
So I’m creating one myself, and it’s going to include around eleven articles, as well as linking in all of my Denham Phoenix FC blogs. Essentially, it’s a curated blog that contains links to all the different articles in one place.
I’ve got no idea if it’ll work, but the content is strong. The centrepiece is a 12,000-word dissertation I wrote about the death of fan ownership at Lewes FC, a review of fifteen years of fan ownership, which, by its nature, has to be long.
But that’s coming along really well. It’s firing on all cylinders.
And for that, I’m giving myself 9 out of 10.
So, in conclusion: the amount of content I’ve produced, and the quality of it, is something I never thought I’d ever be capable of. I’m genuinely pleased and proud of it.
Now we move into Section Two, where we discuss what I do and how I actually create the content.
So let’s cut to the chase with that.
7. The Uncomfortable Bit: Organisation, Social Media and Profile
Oh dear. This is where it all goes a bit downhill.
First up: organisation. I scrape a generous 2/10.
Somehow, taking on an extra twenty-five to thirty hours a week of writing and related endeavours, while still running a business, without actually planning any of it has resulted in the two becoming completely intertwined. The outcome has been total and utter disorganisation.
Help, however, is in hand.
Over the last couple of months I’ve been resetting how I run the business, with the aim that from next year I can be considerably more organised. I’m going to have to be, because next year is when I need to properly focus on finding readers and widening the range of people who see my work.
8. Social Media.
Let’s be honest. It’s a 1/10, full stop.
It’s dreadful, and it’s a direct victim of the disorganisation mentioned above. Social media requires at least a basic level of structure and some sort of tick-box system. Without that, it simply doesn’t happen.
The irony is that the things I actually need to do on social media don’t take very long at all. I just never get around to doing them.
This will have to change.
To give you an idea of how bad it is: I’m on Substack and Medium, and quite a lot of the articles I post don’t even register a single view. So yes — there is a very long way to go here.
Third: content generation.
Here, thankfully, things improve dramatically.
For generating content itself, I’m awarding myself 9 out of 10. As my editor keeps reminding me, my output is prolific and the standard is high, certainly above the industry norm for someone coming with next to zero background, an amateur trying to break in.
This is the one area where I don’t need to reinvent the wheel. I just need to keep doing what I’m already doing.
9. Raising my Profile.
This one is complicated.
Through my football blog, I’ve been contacted and asked to write for two, albeit small, national magazines. I’ve been asked to appear on several podcasts, all of which I’ve declined simply because I don’t have the time. I’ve spent an hour and a half on the phone with a Daily Telegraph football journalist. I’ve contributed to an article in When Saturday Comes, the iconic British football magazine. The biggy, more recently, I was interviewed by 11Freunde, the biggest football magazine in the world, who even sent a professional photographer round.
So, yes, my profile has risen. And it’s done so with surprisingly little deliberate effort.
However, it’s important to note that all of this is connected to The Rights of Fans football fanzine. It doesn’t yet extend to my fiction, or my wider writing ambitions.
That said, it does prove something important: by sticking with writing, and producing good to excellent content regularly, I’ve become regarded, at least in that sphere, as an authority. People have found me, rather than the other way around.
So for this category, I’m giving myself 5 out of 10.
Five for the football work.
Zero for everything else.
Conclusion: The Brutally Honest Summary
So that’s the year in writing terms.
The content itself, the output, the quality, the volume, has surprised me. I never expected to be capable of producing this much work, and certainly not at this standard. Despite the occasional wobble, I’m genuinely proud of what I’ve created.
But the big lesson is obvious: I’ve focused on the part that comes naturally to me. The writing.
I’ve neglected the part that makes it meaningful beyond my own head: the organisation, the visibility, the reader building, and the marketing.
That’s not a moral failing. It’s simply the next skill I have to learn.
Because writing is the enjoyable part. It’s the “sit down and do it” part.
The rest of it, platform-building, social media, admin, systemising, and making time for it, is the real work. I’ve come to realise that it isn’t optional. If I want people to read what I’m creating, and if I want the whole thing to become something more than a private hobby that nobody sees, then I need to treat that part with the same seriousness as the writing itself.
So yes: the year has been prolific. But next year needs to be strategic.
#NonLeagueFootball #FootballFiction #DenhamPhoenixFC #SussexFootball #LewesFC
Welcome to Denham nr Lewes 