Welcome!
Hello and welcome to that bit where I try and explain the *essence* of my writing in a quippy sentence
Welcome to Divine Accidents - I’m Jessie Jones. Most of you will know me because, let’s be honest, the only people visiting this at the moment are my family, partner, friends, and myself in an obsessive dedication to seeking out my own typos. But, thank you nonetheless.
I’ve been writing and editing, in a variety of forms, since 2013 and have started to grow my essay and journalistic output over the past three years via independent publications like Radical Art Review and Lunate.
So, why am I doing this now?
I am not everywhere as a writer. My features, opinion pieces, book reviews, film reviews, commentaries, and polemics do not have tendrils all over the internet like most writers want from their work.
It’s easier than ever to be published now when there’s such a breadth of independent platforms, whether that’s magazines that have moved entirely online, democratizing their output a little more as a result, or online zines which have proliferated massively since lockdown.
We live in an age where if it’s a Reddit thread, people want to know. You can write about anything. That can be incredibly freeing but it can also be stifling. It can drown out your voice when you work full time and don’t feel you’ve got the Instagram or Twitter/X bonefides (or, let’s be honest, the desire to spend more than I already do on the platform), to shout about your writing 24/7 and use it to grease some palms.
So, I’m starting a Substack. It will hold me accountable, give me a space to put my writing, and remind me exactly why I do it: enjoyment. I’m making a conscious effort to write for the joy of it this year. It’s an outlet that I’ve used since I was a child and the increasing marketisation of it, the dedication I’ve had to being published and financially compensated for that publication, has kind of sucked the joy out of it.
So, here, I can write about whatever I want. I can blab about the stuff that I enjoy without fear of its relevance, financial viability, or mass appeal. Hopefully you’ll all like it, of course, and find something to latch on to and benefit from. As I think all writers do, I indeed hope you finish reading something of mine and are better off as a result.
But, if not, I’ve found a place to write about all the wonderful exhibitions I’ve seen, films I’ve watched, books I’ve read, philosophical and existential epiphanies I’ve had (usually on a long and beautiful walk that I can post pictures of), and critically inflected rants I share with my partner.
Apologies for all of that feeling like a gross humble brag and I hope you enjoy.
Tell ya mates.