The Moxie Books Blog

Aaaaaaand January is a wrap!

My good friend Yinka sent her Mighty Movers email (exclusive to those of us who’ve been fortunate to work with her) and it inspired me to start this monthly missive.

I don’t write enough about the incredible things my clients (e.g. Sophie Lee, Samantha Harman and Yinka Ewuola) are doing, and the amazing ways I get to help them.

How many questions is too many questions? This is not rhetorical — I actually need to know, because getting it wrong has painful consequences.

In conversation, we’re supposed to ask questions. We’re supposed to be interested in other people. I know this because I’ve been told many, many times over the years.

You may have heard Laurel Thatcher Ulrich’s quote that “well-behaved women seldom make history” — it’s on mugs and t-shirts and inspirational Instagram posts often.

Perhaps you don’t know, though, that Ulrich was referencing the fact that “good wives” in Puritan towns were never involved in court cases, so their names only survived on gravestones, in family bibles, and possibly in wills.

Coroner’s report stated the cause of death was puffy sleeves underneath a tight cardigan.

My mother made me wear it aged approximately four years, on our summer holiday in Betws-y-Coed. She paired this horror with slippy sandals for picnicking and messing around by the river, thus ensuring my inability to leap from rock to rock like the gazelle I clearly was.

You say “hack” — I see a hatchet covered in gore and Jack Nicholson’s blood-streaked face grinning through a splintered door.

HERE’S YOUR SHORTCUTTTTTTTTTTTTT!!!! he screams.

Run. RUN AWAY.

The shortcut looks so tempting.

A weird thing happens when people start to write, and I’m pretty sure it’s one of the reasons people stop writing shortly thereafter.

We adopt a voice that we think we ought to have.

Everyone does it.

At first, it’s because we’re scared. We think we’re not good enough to write, that nobody will like our work, that we won’t impress.

Post-show blues is a real thing. It’s happened to me many, many times. After a great trapeze performance, after my comedy set in Bristol before Christmas, after I handed in my Masters dissertation.

A bit like Boxing Day used to feel before I realised Boxing Day is one of the BEST days of Christmas.

We do the thing, then… silence.

Flaaaaaaarp. Like a let-down balloon.

“Writing is the most fun you can have by yourself.”

My favourite author, Sir Terry Pratchett, said that, and he’s right.

But writing isn’t a solo sport.

It kind of looks like it is, when you see a book or an article with one person’s name on the front.

But then you turn to the acknowledgements and realise there’s a whoooooole lot of people involved in the creative process.

Fight the power!

I can already hear the zombie-drones of capitalism moaning at us to drain our bank accounts in the pursuit of perfection.

January crawls closer like a B-movie undead torso, imploring us to spend money, transform ourselves into something we’re not and can never be, and perform productivity in the name of the gods of consumerism.

Every year, Joe and I have an advent calendar, because Christmas whimsy is not just for children.

This year, I got marketed at by Task Master and bought their advent calendar and it does not disappoint.

All over the box are 24 doors, as you’d expect. But there’s also a door on the back (start there) and a bunch of random little doors on the sides, too.

Traditionally, I would rather walk into the chicken coop and fall over face first into a pile of hen poo than write a landing page.

Despite my background as a copywriter, writing landing pages is my least favourite thing to do in marketing.

I will always find something more pressing to do, like pluck those weird hairs off my big toe.

“My book is a Trojan horse.”

Last night at The Marketing Meetup in Birmingham, Sophie Blackmore described her book as a Trojan horse and my antennae started tingling.

I hadn’t really thought about books in those words before…

Sophie wrote her book with me this year — It’s Only Bloody Marketing — and it is doing exactly what she wanted it to do.