JD Barker's Writing Life

This week at the Writers’ Gym, Dr Rachel Knightley is joined by New York Times and international bestselling thriller writer JD Barker. His work has been broadly described as suspense thrillers, often incorporating elements of horror, crime, mystery, science fiction and the supernatural. He is a frequent collaborator with James Patterson. JD shares the creative exercises and habits that support his writing life and how valuing every contact he made in his early career meant building the creative career he has today.

 

For a writing workout based on JD’s interview with Rachel, scroll down or visit WritersGym.com to download every Writing Workout in the series.

 

Find out more about JD at https://jdbarker.com

 

Join our mailing list at drrachelknightley.substack.com or get in touch at thewritersgym@rachelknightley.com

 

 

Writing Workout based on JD’s interview

 

Warm-up: Creative Stretch

 

“I turn off the Internet when I first start and I don't turn it on until I get my daily word count done… which I'm usually done with by about ten, ten thirty. Then I flip that switch on the internet all the emails start coming in So basically the business side of this that I have to deal with…until three o'clock in the afternoon That's what my quitting bell rings.” JD Barker

 

Take a pen and treat it like a magic wand.

 

Design your ideal writing day. Try writing it in third person, the writer experiencing his/her/their ideal writing day.

 

Tip: If the answer is ‘I don’t know’, dare yourself to fill the line anyway. Then maybe the next. Give it a few minutes – because the flow takes turning the tap on.

 

 

Main Exercise:

 

“Whenever I write, I listen to a thunderstorm soundtrack on noise cancelling headphones. And not only does it drown out everything going on around me, but it's a Pavlov's dog kind of thing. As soon as I hear that noise, my mind immediately snaps into writer mode.” JD Barker

 

- If I could give my focus one gift, what would it be?

 

- If I could give myself one piece of advice about my writing life, what would I offer myself?

 

Read the answers back to yourself. How will you use your personal training tips from you to you this week?

 

Cool-down Exercise:

 

“Years back it was paper notes, know, I scribble it down and put it down somewhere. I learned very early on, like when you wake up at three o'clock in the morning and you get an idea for your book, you'll tell yourself you're going to remember it in the morning and you never remember it in the morning. So I've always written it down.” JD Barker

 

Where in your house could you put a notebook and pen, or post-it notes, where you don’t have them already? What else would make the distance from brain to world a little less far?