No More Jobs
Sometimes, after weeks or months of diligently journalling, I sit down to start writing and find myself with absolutely nothing to say. I scour the insides of my mind, cast around the depths of my body and come up empty. I dither around, checking and double checking that I’m not missing anything, but nope —…
Let It Be Easy
Today I accidentally (🤔) got distracted by a Twitter thread that was talking about building a following with content marketing. It was better than I was expecting and reminded me of a fundamental that is easy to forget after years in the marketing world: Make it easy. The role of the writer (or marketer) is to communicate…
Little Shouty
Every day, at 8am and 6pm, a little girl stomps up and down the stairwell in my apartment building, shouting at the top of her lungs. Her grandma (avó in Portuguese) lives above me, and looks after Little Shouty before and after school, which she attends around the corner. Little Shouty sometimes comes home to…
Zinger Vs Boredom
One of the most paradoxical things I experience as a writer is that as I near the end of a project, the material simultaneously becomes much more engaging, and much more boring. It becomes more engaging, because the premise becomes more polished and tightens everything up until it zings through your brain like lightning… and…
Tell Me What You Want, What You Really Really Want
Today I read a beautiful essay from Salman Rushdie, reflecting on the fortieth anniversary of his novel, Midnight’s Children. 40 years is a long time for a book still to be finding new readers and becoming a favourite (as it did instantly for me), and I found it utterly endearing to hear how much joy this fact brings…
You Need More Thinking Time
In the process of working on my new book, I’ve been forced to really quantify my writing habits. It’s a tricky thing to do. Definitions, by their nature, are exclusive: they say, yes, it’s this thing, and no, not that thing. But writing tends to defy this yes/no categorisation. At least in my experience, writing is actually just…
Writing ≠ Suffering
In these emails I talk a lot about writing as a way to deal with your pain, your problems, your past. It’s an incredibly powerful tool for processing difficult or unexpected stuff, and I certainly cling to my journals like my own personal storm buoy when things get tough. But pain and suffering are not…
You’re Allowed To Change Your Mind
It’s hard to change your mind, isn’t it? Humans really don’t like doing it. We love stability, consistency, knowing what to expect — both from ourselves and from others. So when we’re presented with new information, incontrovertible evidence that we were wrong, or even just a novel idea, things get uncomfortable, quickly. Cognitive dissonance —…
What Season Are You In?
Last week when I wrote about warming up, I had a brain wave that I should move my regular journalling habit so that it comes right before writing these emails. In the past, I’ve resisted setting a specific time for journalling — I’ve told you before that I’m rebellious on the inside — but turns out…
Gold In The Junk Pile
Have you ever seen that movie Spirited Away? If you haven’t, please do yourself a favour before the world fully opens up again and watch it. It’s so good. I was thinking about it during a journalling session yesterday, which involved a particularly fruitful disgorging of rubbish that had been accumulating somewhere deep in my brain…