We’re excited to introduce you to the always interesting and insightful Jon Minton. We hope you’ll enjoy our conversation with Jon below.
Jon, appreciate you joining us today. Learning the craft is often a unique journey from every creative – we’d love to hear about your journey and if knowing what you know now, you would have done anything differently to speed up the learning process.
I’m completely self-taught as both a programmer and a writer. I struggled in school, making poor grades through high school. High test scores were my only saving grace, and how I finally got accepted into college, but I struggled there and dropped out my first year.
I worked for a software company in 2002 as a technical support tech. My dad worked as a programmer before he retired and he gave me a giant three-ring binder with a how-to guide on VB6 that Microsoft put out. Filled with sample applications to build, I worked through it and learned VB6, the language my employer used to make their applications. That skill got me the job and taught me to learn by doing. Try, fail, post-mortem, fix, and repeat is still my primary mechanism to learn anything new.
In 2002, accessibility to learning tools like that was limited. Microsoft had no free versions of its development tools. They didn’t publish their books online for free. When I got my first programming job I had to pirate copies of their development tools to learn at home. Books and guides as PDFs were on CDs in large binders at my office. I’d have to copy them to CD-Rs and take them home. After 2010, Microsoft embraced open source and published their framework guidelines for free online. It’s a huge help now as I take on more of a mentor role.
The public library has always been a great resource for me, programming books are expensive. Teaching myself to write isn’t different. Now, the Oklahoma Metro Library offers free access to LinkedIn Learning, and the entire online learning community has embraced the practice-makes-perfect and learn-by-doing model. Every writing and programming course I’ve taken online in the last ten years has been a non-lecture, hands-on format.
That evolution in external resources showed me that searching for a mechanism that suits you is worth it. Conforming to what’s available is necessary, but remembering your strengths works better in the long-term.
Teaching myself to write provided a lesson that programming didn’t, which is the power of a community. Writing groups and critique circles naturally integrate community into the author’s journey. When I learned to code, I felt self-taught meant solo learning. I can’t tell you how refreshing it is knowing that is false.
Jon, love having you share your insights with us. Before we ask you more questions, maybe you can take a moment to introduce yourself to our readers who might have missed our earlier conversations?
Last year I published my first novella as part of a horror anthology I was invited to contribute to, which is published every Friday the 13th and revolves around the cursed day. Feast or Famine is available now! https://books2read.com/u/mqqAn6
I have two upcoming releases for this anthology on September and December 13th. I don’t have preorder information yet, but, if you’d like to be notified of these or any of my upcoming releases you can follow me at https://jonmintonbooks.com — all my social links are here too if you’d rather follow me on your favorite social platform.
Last year, CommuterLit.com published my short story Confinement, https://commuterlit.com/2023/11/wednesday-confinement/
Last February, Transitions Research published my first non-fiction article as a part of their series on AI. https://transitionsresearch.org/breaking-things-at-the-speed-of-thought/
Is there mission driving your creative journey?
My goal is to make something that’s recognizably mine inside and out. You don’t get as much opportunity to do that programming, but it’s still there. Other developers knew how I coded and could recognize my code. That’s technically wrong in commercial development where a uniform model brings about efficiency, but I don’t care.
Writing allows the freedom to put your fingerprints on everything, but there are still traps that’ll make you second-guess yourself. Every writer starts as a reader, but even with an infinite amount of books, more books than they could read in a thousand lifetimes, they get to a point where they think, “Wait, why hasn’t anyone written about this?” or “Why am I not seeing this angle to this plot device?” The need to fill that gap, even if it’s only a perception of ego, drives me.
What’s the most rewarding aspect of being a creative in your experience?
Feedback. Good or bad, it all feeds my growth. As a software developer, I worked on line-of-business applications, which aren’t as flashy as a social media app or video game. Developers get a lot of bad feedback in the form of bugs and fixing those hones our skills. I’ve never gotten the public feedback that big public software gets, but working people have told me that my code made their life easier, even if only a little bit, and that’s as cool as it gets.
I have similar goals for my writing. I’m not looking to change the world or set it on fire, but if I can entertain someone, make them scared, laugh, or whatever, that’s my blue ribbon.
Contact Info:
- Website: https://jonmintonbooks.com
- Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/jonmintonbooks
- Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/profile.php?id=100093599783560
- Linkedin: https://www.linkedin.com/in/jonathon-minton-547916a4/
- Twitter: https://twitter.com/jonmintonauthor
Image Credits
I used the DALL-E and Imagen by Google Cloud AI engines for the Christmas Town image. All other images were cobbled together by me using licensed materials from depositphotos.com.