I am reading Brené Brown at the moment – rereading, to be honest – and it has got me thinking a lot about her key topics of shame, fear and the ‘hustle of worthiness’. How they apply to freelance and creative lives in general, and to my own experiences, as a working-class woman with a […]
Tag Archives: advice
“Be a disciplined half-ass” I don’t have a life motto, but if I did, this quote from Elizabeth Gilbert’s book on creativity Big Magic might be a good candidate. At first, it seems an odd thing to lay claim to. Surely, in the words of that other sage, Ron Swanson, we should avoid being a […]
It’s my birthday this week, and so I have been delightfully inundated with gifts. (This year has been especially bountiful, since my lovely friends have also sent housewarming gifts, or bought me things which combine both. You guys!) Among these have been a fair amount of champagne, which is always welcome, and the usual magnificent […]
I’ve written before on topics like kindness, and asking for help, many of those pieces based on my own experience of coping with losing my mum and being homeless all at the same time. I like to think I have learned from those experiences: that I have seen the best in people and, if I […]
Envy and professional jealousy are an occupational hazard for writers – as, indeed, for any creative. The arts are an insecure business; most creatives are wracked with self-doubt, and it can feel like you are in constant competition for a dwindling reserve of paid gigs, audience attention and market presence. You put your heart and […]
This year, so far, has probably been the least productive of my life. Hell, even that time I was homeless I managed to write a book, but 2017 has felt like one long anxiety attack, where any impulse to create has been buried under a deluge of apathy and stress. Some of this has been […]
I’ve written a lot about writing advice – the good and the bad – but if there is one piece of ‘accepted wisdom’ I’d like to see killed by fire, it’s ‘writers must write every day’. It comes packaged in many forms – ‘real writers write every day’, you are told, as if being a […]
Dark Dates 