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681 words

Hey Reader,

“What’s that smell?!”

Joe comes skidding into the SadKitchen, spluttering and coughing, because I am cooking dinner but it’s all “suspiciously quiet” apparently — I don’t know am I supposed to be doing Dinner, the Musical?

Anyway I ruined the rice, the dinner, and the pan on the stove but thankfully I was sitting on the floor at the time so I didn’t get choked by the smoke drifting at about shoulder height around the SadKitchen and into the rest of the house.

Why was I on the floor?

Well, everyone knows that rice just gets on with it and looks after itself, and I’d opened a cupboard to find something

no I cannot remember what, and we’ll just gloss over that

and had noticed that the baking cupboard was an absolute state. So I decided to organise it. There was stuff in there from a previous decade and nobody wants weevils in their flour.

So when Joe came in and fought his way through the carnage, he found me on the floor happily chucking out ancient baking ingredients, scrubbing the sticky glacé cherry goo off the shelf, and generally creating a glorious little baking corner.

Sadly, the rice paid the price.

What I needed was someone to keep me on task, or at least some kind of a reminder to say jeebus woman you’re destroying another pan get up!

Which means I understand completely that sometimes we start something (say, writing a book) and then get distracted by something else (perhaps a sudden urge to learn to play the bugle) and before we know it, we’ve got a few bits of book abandoned in a drawer and we can play God Rest Ye Merry Gentlemen to toddler standard.

WHICH MEANS that if you want to write a book but you find yourself accidentally rearranging a cupboard or learning to play the bugle, I am your gal.

Seriously.

The struggle is real. I have struggled it. I GET IT.

And I have spent my several decades on this here planet figuring out how to work around my brain bees and use my strengths to create the things I want to create.

(To date: 4 books, 1 audiobook, 400+ episodes of a podcast, multiple emails a week since 2014, 13 ghostwritten books, 60+ 12-page printed newsletters, 2 zines, and a partridge in a pear tree)

What I’m saying is: I can help you because I understand and I will never ever make you feel like shit for not being “perfect” whatever that means.

There’s a bunch of ways to work with me but right now, I’ve opened the doors to the Creative Playground for June and I’m inviting in 5 people.

Would you like to be one of them?

The Creative Playground is a small, cosy collective of people who want to build a writing practice. Maybe they’re writing a book (some are) or maybe they want to write regular blogs, social media posts, or emails.

This is the place to do it.

Every weekday, you can come to as many Power Hour sessions as you like (there’s one at 7am and one at 12 noon). We set our intentions, then set a timer and write for an hour, then come back and celebrate what we did.

There’s time and space to ask questions, face challenges, and share wins.

And once a month I run a workshop on a particular writing or publishing topic, which is included in your membership (it usually costs £25).

I also hold a creative campfire session once a month, which is a hot-seat style Q&A coaching session — bring a question or challenge you’re working on, and we’ll figure it out together. It’s not just my brain you get to pick, the group is wise and clever and generous.

All this for just £50 + VAT per month — and you can try us out for the first week for just £1.

Join us here and I’ll make sure your word rice never gets ruined:

TTFN,

Vicky