Reading time: 1.38 385 words Read this email in your browser Hey Reader, Thereās this guy called Peter Elbow. Isnāt that a great name? Itās the third brilliant name Iāve encountered in the past week, the other two being Bob Whopper and Jim Bumgardner. The delight Iāve had in these names has been large and ongoing. Anyway, his name isnāt the point. His book is. He wrote a book called Writing Without Teachers and itās a challenge against traditional writing methods, and especially those taught...
2 days agoĀ ā¢Ā 2 min read
Reading time: 4.59 1,067 words Read this email in your browser Hey Reader, Good LORD my windows were filthy. You know how things just deteriorate in your immediate surroundings over time, and you just get used to it, and donāt notice? Until one day, you do? And then you simply HAVE to deal with it immediately or the world will end? That happened to me this morning. Coincidentally, while I was sitting at my desk lamenting the fact I had absolutely NOTHING to write about. Not a sausage. I...
6 days agoĀ ā¢Ā 4 min read
Reading time: 2.17 543 words Read this email in your browser Hey Reader, Do you ever look around you and think My god what have I done? Did that this morning as I stood in the early sunshine with my cup of tea. Iād just walked down the stairs, under the tarpaulin, and out through the gaping hole in the back of the house where the shower room and kitchen used to be. Over the past week, our builders have shifted 1,200 tonnes of earth and reshaped the path in our woodland with it, saving us...
8 days agoĀ ā¢Ā 3 min read
Reading time: 2.31 597 words Read this email in your browser Hey Reader, Last week at the gym I took a tiny beetle step to becoming the type of irritating person who makes the most of every moment. You know the type ā they have to fill every spare second with something productive or whatās the point of them. Standing in line at the post office (does anyone do that anymore???): donāt just stare into space, use that time to read a wanky article from Forbes about the top 5 habits of billionaires...
10 days agoĀ ā¢Ā 3 min read
Reading time: 4.44 1,126 words Read this email in your browser Hey Reader, Thereās a hole behind our house. A big, big hole. A really big huge massive hole. This really doesnāt give you the scale of how huge this hole is I stood with my sheep on the edge and gazed into it, wondering when weād find buried treasure. Because that always happens in books and on TV: you dig a huge hole in the back of your house, and thereās treasure. Or a skeleton. One of the two. But no, in our hole thereās just...
13 days agoĀ ā¢Ā 5 min read
Reading time: 3.14 903 words Read this email in your browser Hey Reader, I spend a lot of time thinking about why people donāt write the books they say they want to write. And Iāve come to the conclusion that, although there are many reasons and circumstances, it often starts with a bunch of lies weāre told about how writing books works. Here are three of my favourites. And when I say āfavouritesā, I mean they are ideas Iād like to take around the back and pang with a shovel. šš¼ Lie 1: You...
15 days agoĀ ā¢Ā 4 min read
Reading time: 0.47 186 words Read this email in your browser Hey Reader, āHow to become an expert: Do more repetitions than anyone else in a narrow field.ā āAlex Hormozi Uggggghhhhhhh THESE QUOTES. Hit the snooze button and roll over. You know the type of writing I mean: slightly toxic, very shareable, pairs beautifully with a pensive selfie and some colours that POP. Theyāre not untrue necessarilyā¦ but GOOD LORD THEY ARE SO DULL. They clog up our social feeds and short-circuit the thinking...
17 days agoĀ ā¢Ā 1 min read
Reading time: 4.47 1,138 words Read this email in your browser Hey Reader, A few years ago, I got lost in an abandoned town near Fethiye, in Turkey: Kayakƶy Ghost Town. I was deliberately lost because I was imagining that I was in a computer game. And also because I wanted to interrupt my usual patterns of needing to know everything in advance. (Because we all know how very possible THAT goal is to achieve.) I didnāt have a map of the town. I turned off my phone data. I was completely alone....
20 days agoĀ ā¢Ā 5 min read
Reading time: 3.46 894 words Read this email in your browser Hey Reader, āYou make it look so easy!ā Thatās when you know youāre really good at something. When someone says that. And I always glow a little bit and puff myself up a little taller. But there is something inherently frustrating in this whole exchange, and nowhere is it more stark than when youāre upside down on a trapeze in front of a couple of hundred people, and the death-defying move you just did got a ripple of applause, but...
22 days agoĀ ā¢Ā 4 min read