Wherever you are on your book writing adventure, you’ll find what you need here…
What to do if you’re just starting out on your Author Adventure: planning, preparation, and dealing with your Inner Dickhead
It’s actually really easy to change things.
Not the huge things, like stopping orange tyrants from making wars or reversing climate change overnight.
But the small things that lead to the big things — it’s really easy to change those.
Like, people are sad and angry and scared...
George Saunders calls it The Gulp:
“the exciting but harrowing period in the publication of a book when, with the writing all done… the waiting-to-see begins. Will people read it? Will they like it?”
Before they start, everyone thinks that writing the book is the hardest part.
And it is hard. But that’s nothing compared...
Sometimes we just need someone to show us something we can’t quite see ourselves.
My client, this week, told me she’d stalled in writing her book because, in her words, “I don’t want it to be that kind of book.”
She was encountering resistance all over the place and was worried she was “getting it all wrong.”
“What would make it possible?”
And that changed everything.
How about you?
What feels impossible right now, and what might change if instead you asked, “What would make this possible?”
One technology, two futures — and how we’re letting the wrong one win. Imagine putting your head into a box which has six speakers in it. From each speaker comes a different noise: several conversations, music, cutlery clinking, traffic sounds, laughter, footsteps, a dog barking, a child crying. All at full volume...
“What will 85-year-old me say about what I’m doing now?”
Tamu Thomas’s question to us yesterday, at Laura Brunton’s Ignited Woman event.
So I picture myself: grey hair, still in space buns. More wrinkles that get really deep when I smile, and I smile a lot, I hope. Still wearing bright orange sneakers, leopard-print jeans, and a mustard-yellow jumper.
When all seems lost?
Plant a garden. Make music. Paint a picture. Make people laugh.
Create something beautiful because it’s not frivolous, it’s hopeful and it’s action and it’s inspirational.
This is one of the things I talked about with Janine Coombes on her brilliant podcast The Show (Off).
“I’m not sure I’m comfortable with ex-convicts cutting keys,” said my elderly neighbour after I told him why I love Timpsons.
Timpsons, if you didn’t know, is a cobblers, dry-cleaners, key-cutting business based in the UK. It specialises in finding employment for ex-offenders and other marginalised groups.
“Why?” I asked him.
We all love a good slogan and Laurel Thatcher Ulrich’s famous line “well-behaved women seldom make history” is just perfect for a cute pink tee or a morning coffee mug.
It’s become an inspirational quote; a rousing battle cry to disrupt and rebel and be seen.
Can you imagine being there when the first photograph was taken? Like holy shitballs batman, what kind of wizardry can make an exact image of my family appear on a piece of paper or metal or glass? BURN THE WITCH!
I’m a smart person, and I know in theory how photography works, but I still look at it and go what the actual eff it feels like magic.
Everyone talks about the obvious benefits of writing a book (credibility, authority, connection, opportunities, etc.) and they’re all fine and dandy but have you ever considered these FIVE weird things...
The way we’re using AI right now is propaganda on steroids, dressed up as progress. It’s biased by design, as a result of who built it and who was in the room at the time, and because of who it serves.
And we lose the joy of messy creation.
So before you hand over another piece of yourself, ask: what is this really costing me?
