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Hey Reader,

If a frog eats you alive, don’t just sit there and get digested, like a wimp.

Pick yourself up and start walking.

I’m fully serious.

There’s a species of Japanese water beetle called Regimbartia attenuata — we’re going to call it Reg — that is the natural prey of frogs.

Reg is small, only 4-5mm, so the frogs swallow them whole as a tasty treat.

Now, Reg could simply fold its little legs underneath it and succumb to the digestive juices, but at some point one of its ancestors said

HELL NO

and

THERE MUST BE ANOTHER WAY OUT

and started walking.

Reg walked all the way out of the frog’s stomach, along its intestines — which are, just like our intestines, a very long tangle of squishy tube so probably the equivalent of the Silk Road or the Oregon Trail or something — and out of its bumhole.

Mostly this journey takes around 4 hours, but at least one frog speed-ran it in 6 minutes.

(I’m waiting for some game dev to create the computer game of this please and thank you. I’m imagining all sorts of side quests — like NO, NOT THE APPENDIX — where you can win power ups and treasure, and have to battle ever-encroaching poop bombs or digestive fluids and enraged bacteria. And you get a bonus if you can do it in under 6 minutes.)

The moral of this story is: when it feels like everything is eating you alive, keep going.

You might emerge covered in poo and somewhat bewildered, but you’re still here and you’re ready to rock and roll and create cool stuff and write your damn book because if you can survive that, you can certainly tell us all about it.

After a shower, of course.

If you’re ready to do that, and you want to make serious inroads into your first draft before the end of 2026, I’d love to help you get started.

I have two October spots for my Book Breakthrough: Unlocked session.

Find out more and book here.

And now for the Friday Goodie Bag. Behold my treasures!

Sociopath

Do you know any sociopaths? Maybe you do. I read Patric Gagne’s Sociopath a while ago. It’s a memoir by a woman who has been diagnosed as a sociopath.

It’s SO good, so fascinating, and I related SO hard to her — not the sociopath element, I have no trouble accessing my many and overwhelming emotions — but her constant feeling of being outside of everyone else. Her knowledge that she’s different and somehow unacceptable to “normal” people.

And this, my friend, is exactly why we need more diverse voices to tell their stories. It’s thought that about 3.7% of the population are sociopaths (or to use DSM terminology, have antisocial personality disorder) — that’s a LOT of people, most of whom are not inherently “bad” but just trying to figure out how to move through a world that doesn’t like what they are.

The word “joustle”

Did you know that the suffix -le originally got added to verbs to mean “more than once”? So “jostle” means to joust repeatedly (which cracks me up). Ramble means to roam repeatedly. And sparkle means to emit sparks continuously. What other -le words can you think of?

Scots is a language, not badly spoken English

Follow @misspunnypennie on Instagram immediately, for three reasons:

1. She is an incredible poet.
2. She is a wonderful advocate for feminism and uses her voice to speak out about male violence against women.
3. She is doing a brilliant job of educating us on the Scottish language and words we might find interesting.

​This reel is a great explanation of why many of us don’t think of Scots as a language, and why some believe it’s just “badly spoken English”. Anyone who speaks patois or slang or a local dialect will be familiar with this idea that if it’s not “the queen’s English” then it’s somehow inferior. Discrimination is based on this nonsense.

Language is rich and varied and nobody gets to gatekeep it (not even the French).

The Dull Men’s Club

In a world where everyone is posing with their rented Lambo, making outrageous income claims, and skydiving naked off Everest with ribbons tied to their nipples, I’m super excited about Dustbin Dave, the man who photographs bins. No sarcasm here: I truly find joy in the little things other people find joy in. The Dull Men’s Club is a celebration of the ordinary, the mild, the delightfully mundane — and the stories we find there.

The One Hour Studio

Have you seen the world right now? HAVE YOU SEEN IT? I mean, how could you not? Which begs the question: how on earth can any of us get any art done right now? You might think this is no time for art. There are more important things to do than foster our creativity. There are fires to put out. I would argue: art and creativity are some of the most important things we can do right now. Partly for our own mental wellbeing, and partly because art and creativity are resistance. They’re rebellion. They’re where hope and optimism and good ideas and community come from and we are not going to come out of the other side of all this without those things. Especially community.

​Austin Kleon does this cool thing where he sets a timer and potters around making stuff. If you don’t have an hour — and maybe you don’t, because you geniunely are busy — I bet you have 20 minutes.

Set a timer and make something, even if it’s crap or silly or sentimental. It’ll remind you who you are and why you’re here.

What I’m reading

I’ve almost finished reading The Tunnels by Ian Watson and I’m finding it delightfully silly. It’s an urban fantasy in the vein of Douglas Adams, Neverwhere, and a dash of Pratchett in which many silly things happen for not much reason and it’s absolutely fine.

What I’m writing

Not much at the moment. I am, however, making things. I’m learning carpentry every Wednesday so I can make all the windows in our home, and the staircase, and also all the internal doors and the kitchen cabinets and the library shelves.

This past week I made this practically perfect mortise and tenon joint. Behold.

Word of the week

shambles

Strap in, we’re going on etymology safari.

A singular shamble used to mean a stool, and a money changer’s table. Later on, it came to mean a table for exhibiting meat for sale. And in the early 15th century, it pluralised to mean “a meat market.”

Then it warped into slaughterhouses, which galloped into a figurative use of shambles as a place of terrible slaughter or bloodshed. That’s what it mostly meant for a long time, until the early 20th century, when it softened a little to describe a scene of great destruction, then great disorder and confusion, then simply a mess.

Think about that next time you describe yourself as a shambles.

Quote of the week

I don’t do this very often but I’m going to toot my own horn today because, frankly, business hasn’t been good and I really want to bring in some new clients before the end of the month. If you know someone who’s been meaning to write their book, please tell them that this is what it’s like to work with me.

This is what a wonderful client said about me a little while ago:

If they like this idea, I’d love to book them onto one of my Book Breakthrough: Unlocked sessions this month. It’ll be game-changing for them.

Have a wonderful weekend.

TTFN,

Vicky 🫡

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