I remember I wrote a two page essay in fourth class that started with “My Name: Joseph Donnellan. My Mission: ” and the mission was something to do with going into space to get information for NASA. I ended up flying into a load of black holes and landing in different dimensions.
The next writing memory I have was in secondary school when Mrs. Carolan was correcting an essay one Monday and she said, “The first four pages were excellent, really, really engaging, and then it just ended in a paragraph, like you got bored. That seems to happen with a lot of your essays.”
She was right, I hit the word count and I was done. I didn’t take much pride in my school work.
When I was 17, I entered a competition in HotPress Magazine and was one of the 16 runners up. I got a prize of 100 euro. It’s not an impressive feat or an impressive prize but it is still the only money I’ve ever made from writing and was legitimized by some of the famous judges who may or may not have read my less than stellar piece.
I have been farting about with various blogs ever since, trying to write and share more often. Much like my essays for Mrs. Carolan, I get bored and end the whole thing often – but this time feels different!
When I use an ! it usually means I mean business!
I’m hoping to write a little fiction this year with the end goal of writing a novel. This will be my testing ground.
I welcome feedback, engagement and conversation. To avoid the bots, I will break up my Gmail but I’m sure you’ll figure out how to construct it – joe.donnellan26
Audio Blog
I have been slowly recording all of my blog posts for people to listen to. Find them on your podcast app of choice:
Email Updates
If you do enjoy it, please sign up for my newsletter. It is currently so infrequent that it doesn’t exist, but you will be notified about every new post.
This is how things were done before algorithms ruled the world, and, dammit, I want that internet back!
Support
I write for myself and don’t need money, but it is more fun to share the work. Hosting a website costs a lot more money than I remember it costing years ago when I started this.
I am above begging but I’m not too proud to accept small donations. Full disclosure, I don’t drink coffee. Your money will likely go towards overpriced pints of underwhelming Guinness.
