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Learn to Write Like You Mean It

Join 500+ writers, creatives, misfits, and weirdos and learn to write like you mean it in 10 minutes a week. Get ONE practical tip, story, or shenanigan every Tuesday + a creative goodie bag on Friday 🖖🏼

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Using AI to write for us is the stupidest way to use it

Reading time: 2.18 545 words Read this email in your browser. Hey Reader, Using AI to write for us is the stupidest way to use it. We have this tool at our disposal that can, on a global scale, help fight climate change, revolutionise medicine, surgery, and diagnostics, leaving doctors free to improve patient care, eliminate poverty. On a more individual level, it can automate boring, time-consuming tasks, reduce admin, transcribe and edit meetings and calls so they make sense… And we’re out...

Reading time: 4.41 1,113 words Read this email in your browser. Hey Reader, Hitting publish on your book is a bit like walking through a wasp convention covered in jam holding a sign that says “please don’t hurt me!” They say writing a book is brave, and it is… But SHARING it is the real hero move when it FEELS like 90% of the internet is screaming abuse into the void like it’s an Olympic sport. Just because something’s loud, doesn’t mean it’s true. I read today that only around 7% of...

Reading time: 2.34 607 words Read this email in your browser. Hey Reader, We’re four days into MicroBook Magic Season 7 and — as always — I’m already deliciously excited and inspired by my writers. Not everything about doing what I do is always roses, but THIS part? The part where I get to learn for the first time what my clients’ ideas are, and how they see the world? Then the part where I get to dive right in? This part is ALWAYS incredible. Let me give you a little taster of the books...

Reading time: 2.06 498 words Read this email in your browser. Hey Reader, You know those dreams where you’re running away from something, only everything is in slow motion and you can’t scream and nothing works and then you wake up just before the monster eats you? That’s how writing has felt for me this year. I have had absolutely nothing to say for myself. I was reading through a bunch of newsletters from one of my favourite writers (Ash Ambirge) and just… wilted. It’s not that I didn’t...

Reading time: 1.46 417 words Read this email in your browser. Hey Reader, 🌤️ An increased sense of self 👀 A new way of looking at the world 🗝️ Realising the true value you have to offer ✨ Seeing — really seeing — your true skills, knowledge, and talent (May also cause giddiness, tears, laughter, rage, delight, and a propensity to panic-eat cheese.) And that’s just the side effects. Because you also get A BOOK. A real live book you can hold in your sweaty little hands! Everyone’s main aim is...

Reading time: 2.00 474 words Read this email in your browser. Hey Reader, What can 763 elephants do? Launch a rocket into space. On July 20, 1969, humanity launched Neil Armstrong and Buzz Aldrin (and some others) into space on Saturn V. To get off the surface of our planet, it took 4,578,000lb of fuel — which weighs the same as 763 elephants. (Aside: I love the thought process here. “How can we visualise that much fuel?” “Elephants.”) There was more fuel than rocket in that rocket. But once...

Reading time: 5.21 1,272 words Read this email in your browser. Hey Reader, “Life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness.” If you’re American, you’ll know these words well — from the Declaration of Independence, drafted by Thomas Jefferson. And if you’re not American, the pursuit of happiness will probably be fairly familiar to you, because it’s embedded in our culture. It’s sold to us thousands of times a day by companies promising that if we’re just a little bit thinner or more beautiful or...

Reading time: 1.28 346 words Read this email in your browser. Hey Reader, A lot of people have done MicroBook Magic now. I think 44 at last count. Sometimes they know what they’re doing and they’re quite happy with their idea, and they just need a place to start with their book. But sometimes they’re not sure that writing a book is even something they could do. They’ve got all these mental blocks in the way. More than once, I’ve had people join and after the first week say, “I know I signed...

Reading time: 1.25 337 words Read this email in your browser. Hey Reader, One assessment or exercise I do with every client is the Burn Book exercise, which a mentor taught me years ago. In the movie Mean Girls, the mean girls have a Burn Book. It’s a notebook in which they write down their unfiltered thoughts about their classmates. You’ve probably guessed, it’s extremely mean and top secret. I do something similar with my clients, except we’re not (usually) mean about anyone or anything....

Reading time: 2.40 634 words Read this email in your browser. Hey Reader, “Nobody accidentally reads your book. They WANT to spend that time with you.” ^^ Boom. BOOM, I say. On Friday afternoon, I was resplendant in the sparkly tiara gifted to me by Samantha Harman at her “The Woman Who” party in Oxford, listening to amazing women talk about who they were becoming. (And boy o boy does Samantha know how to throw a fabulous party) Samantha’s entire premise is helping women become the incredible...