Reading time: 5.53

1,398 words

Hey Reader,

Yesterday, I finished reading How To Stop Time by Matt Haig and I adored it. Last week, I finished his book The Humans. I’ve just reserved everything else he’s written at my local library.

A couple of years ago, I read There Are Rivers In The Sky by Elif Shafak and immediately bought everything else she’d ever written.

Last year, I read The Long Way to a Small, Angry Planet by Becky Chambers, then read everything else she’s written, then I went in search of authors who write similar books to her.

I do that with nonfiction, too. I have so many books on creativity by so many different people. Books on writing. Books on marketing, on business, on psychology, on physics…

That’s what we do.

We read a book we love, then we look around for more books like that one.

Publishers’ book proposals are so bizarre to me because they all contain a variation on the same question:

Other books on writing are not competing for my readers’ attention. They’re alternative points of view that may be very helpful.

Competition scares us.

I had a conversation yesterday with a new client. It’s a conversation I’ve had many, many times with other clients over the years.

They were worried because someone else had just published a book on the same topic, with a very similar title to my client’s working title. They had a wobble.

I get it. I understand.

We are trained by capitalism, by white supremacy, by patriarchy, to believe that we’re always in competition with each other.

Especially if we’re women.

This idea that there’s only room for one or two of us at the table that straight white men have hogged for centuries needs to get in the bin.

“Oh, we already have a book on money mindset by a woman.”

“Oh, we have a Black author for marketing already.”

Bullshit.

There are 9 billion people on this planet. There are plenty of eyeballs to go around, in business and in readers.

Our books are complementary.

It’s BEAUTIFUL to have lots of books on the same subject by all types of different people! That way, we get an idea of what the world might really be like, and we’ll find someone who sees things the same way as we do. And people who see things differently and that’s exciting.

I love James Clear’s Atomic Habits. But I’m waiting for a similar book by someone who doesn’t look like him and think like him. A book on habits and productivity by a single mum with three kids?

Yes please. What a fresh perspective.

If there are multiple books on your subject, that’s a good thing. It means there’s an appetite for that type of book. People want more of them, especially if they are in an area that traditionally has been starved of research and literature, like women’s health. Or industry book by people who have traditionally been excluded.

Another client of mine is a Black man writing about being a jeweller. There aren’t many people who look like him, who’ve had his background, doing what he does. That’s awesome.

Do not let the voices of scarcity convince you that the world doesn’t need another book on your subject.

It does.

It needs your voice and your unique perspective because someone somewhere is crying out for it.

If you’re done listening to those ghosts, and you’re ready to start — I have two spots left in March for my Book Blueprint Sessions. Reply if you want one.

And now it’s time for the Friday Goodie Bag! Take a peep…

These pebbling penguins at Edinburgh Zoo

Penguins, like autistic people, collect pretty pebbles and trinkets from nature and present them to their mates. Joe has a lot of pebbles that I’ve given him over the years. I love that he keeps all of them. These Gentoo penguins are just entering breeding season, so it’s gifting time! Edinburgh Zoo has teamed up with Edinburgh Children’s Hospital Charity, and the kids in the hospital have been painting pebbles for the penguins. This warmed my heart and I hope it warms yours too. (By the way, Sal is a shining light of hope on LinkedIn so give him a follow.)

This video from women that sums up how I feel a lot at the moment

CAUTION: this video contains swears. But it’s funny. An oldie that you may have seen before, but in an age where we’re back to young women shrinking themselves down to nothing and where “removing buccal cheek fat is the worst decision a woman can make” I think it’s never been more relevant. Which is just… le sigh. But also… le laugh.

These Norwegian shitmakers

I was on a lot of trains last week, and I had — I confess — a little temper tantrum at one point. Quietly, so nobody else would be inconvenienced. I was very overwhelmed and stressed and about to lose my mind at the loud drunk obnoxious group on the train.

(Side note: this isn’t just annoying for autistic people, it’s painful. It feels like violence. It feels like going mad.)

But I have noise-cancelling headphones for this type of thing because I don’t expect the rest of the world to bend over for me. However, the enshittification of everything means that we can’t just download a couple of music tracks now and play them on a loop, we have to stream every fucking thing. Which doesn’t work when the train wifi and mobile signal is also shitty. So it kept stopping. And I got more and more upset.

Anyway, this video by Norwegians sums up the enshittification of everything and it made me laugh amid my meltdown because it’s just so true.

Flavor Flav being the BEST for hypeing women AGAIN

In an age where the r*pist-in-chief can freely hold the US presidency and mock women Olympians and encourage male Olympians to be generally shitty humans, Flavor Flav is the man we all need. He threw a party for the women’s hockey team while the men’s team got sad burgers in the tainted Oval Office.

This Quebec woman who hired a hearse to roll around town

In 1871, a Canadian woman chose to mock death by hiring a hearse for a day and using it to lounge around smoking a pipe and sightseeing. Weird, wonderful women have always been around. I doff my hat to this one, and I think we should all take that energy into the weekend.

What I’m reading

I’ve just finished Matt Haig’s How To Stop Time and I LOVED it. Fully recommend. I’m just about to start The Creative Curve so I’ll report back on that next week. It’s been a while since I’ve read a book on creativity and this has been in my tsundoku for a while now.

What I’m writing

I’m putting together the reader journey for my book. I’m still not sure what shape it’s going to be yet. Nor, specifically, why I’m writing it. I mean, I know why I want to write it; just not quite where I want to take it yet, and what I want it to do.

Word of the week

Enshittification

I just love this word. It’s so beautifully evocative of much of modern life. Not all of it, OF COURSE, but too much of it.

Quote of the week

I love Montaigne’s writing. It hasn’t all aged brilliantly, but he was writing in the 1500s so that’s understandable. However, I find it a great comfort and also often very funny. This quote, which Matt Haig quoted in his book, hit me hard.

I’m afraid a lot at the moment. Afraid of losing people and pets I love, afraid of where the world is going, afraid of time. And that’s such a waste! So I’m actively marching towards joy and focusing on the amazing work I get to do, and gradually I am getting better.

I hope you, too, are getting better. There is so much beauty and good around, let’s grab it and keep it safe.

TTFN,

Vicky 🫡

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