Learn to Write Like You Mean It

L’Oréal, poetry, and dandelions 🌼 [Good Friday Bag]

Reading time: 4.37 Read this email in your browser. Hey Reader, Overheard on the internet: “I don’t have anything new or interesting or unique to say — who’d read my book?” Oh my love. My sweet, sweet grasshopper. Come hither. Sit. Stay awhile. What you just said about not being interesting or novel — what you’re likely thinking when you consider writing a book — simply isn’t true. You DO have something new to say. You ARE interesting. Your take IS unique. (Assuming, of course, you’re not...

3 days ago • 5 min read

The council of unfinished drafts will see you now 👀

Reading time: 3.14 Read this email in your browser. Hey Reader, The council of unfinished drafts will see you now. They are disappointed, but this is exactly what they expected. Endless drawers, real and digital, filled with ideas that never grew legs, first chapters that withered and died, and the dusty remnants of writerly enthusiasm. I know this, because I gave up counting my unfinished drafts a very long time ago. They are legion: a swashbuckling pirate romance I created an entire world...

4 days ago • 4 min read

What is a book, when you get right down to it?

Reading time: 2.18 Read this email in your browser. Hey Reader, “A library isn’t just a collection of books — it’s a collection of things people needed to say. Or, better, a collection of things people desired to say.” Of all the things I’ve read this week, this quote stopped my heart for a moment or two. Ailene Cuthbertson, author of The Faring Light Letters, writes a beautiful newsletter which you should definitely subscribe to, and this week she wrote about the trials and adventures of...

5 days ago • 3 min read

Writing a book but stuck in a rut? 🤯

Reading time: 3.11 Read this email in your browser. Hey Reader, If you’re writing a book but you’re stuck in a rut, lemme ask you this: what have you tried so far? Maybe you’ve taken a course. Read a book. Bought a blueprint. Paid for one of those “write your bestseller in a weekend” bros… and been burned. So, when you see my MicroBook Magic program, you’re a little… sceptical. I get it. You’re smart to be sceptical — a lot of coaches and writing programs are full of crap. Or well-intentioned...

6 days ago • 3 min read

I tried to fit him into a “book box” and it completely backfired

Reading time: 2.25 Read this email in your browser. Hey Reader, When he came to me for book coaching, I was really excited — he was full of energy and had a message and a GREAT story. (This guy is really well known in his industry now, you might recognise his name if I mentioned it) I lined up all my pens and pencils and rulers and rules about “how a book should be written” and “what a book coach should do” and we got started and… …it did NOT go well. He wasn’t following my plan. He wasn’t...

7 days ago • 3 min read

Two patterns I’ve noticed in my most successful authors [Friday Goodie Bag]

Reading time: 3.41 Read this email in your browser. Hey Reader, Two patterns I’ve noticed in my most successful authors (and one secret to their success) ➡️ 1. They allow (at least elements of) the writing process to be fun. Why so serious? ➡️ 2. They burrow through their discomfort to get the substance underneath. People don’t want a surface level book; they want depth. They don’t want our “ooh what will people think of me” prose; they want our down-and-dirty truths. The secret? 🔥Write the...

10 days ago • 4 min read

Are you annihilating melons? 🍈🍈

Reading time: 2.23 Read this email in your browser. Hey Reader, What with the impending zombie (or otherwise) apocalypse, I’ve been obsessing over growing my own vegetables. Again. And pickling things. Only, last year I killed a lot of tomato plants and annihilated a melon. My tomato plants weren’t as productive as they could have been because WHO THE FUCK KNOWS WHAT “PINCHING OUT TOMATOES” MEANS? Not me. I’m not a gardener with 583 years’ allotment experience, and every single “instruction”...

11 days ago • 3 min read

Imagine if we LISTENED to each other

Reading time: 2.35 Read this email in your browser. Hey Reader, Remember that time before we all sold our souls to the digital algorithms? When you’d have to be where you said you’d be on time because you couldn’t text your mate to say you were running late? (So in my case, I’d just be either 3 hours early or arriving 10 minutes late with my hair on fire) Where if you disagreed with something in the papers you’d write a thoughtful response. And if you disagreed with someone in person, you’d...

12 days ago • 3 min read

George Orwell’s MicroBook “Politics and the English Language” in front of Whiskey, a little grey cat, who is reading it.

If it’s good enough for George Orwell…

Reading time: 1.26 Read this email in your browser. Hey Reader, Did you know GEORGE ORWELL WROTE A MICROBOOK (lots actually) AND PENGUIN PUBLISHED IT If it’s good enough for Orwell and Penguin, it’s good enough for me. It’s called Politics and the English Language and it’s an essay by — yes — that George Orwell, of 1984 and Animal Farm fame. It was published by Penguin as a Great Ideas pamphlet. Look: George Orwell wrote a MicroBook and Whiskey approves of it A MicroBook is a PROPER BOOK....

13 days ago • 2 min read

Sharon Blue’s testimonial. Photo of a white woman with long red hair smiling. On the right, white text on yellow: 5 stars. Vicky’s encouragement and belief in her authors was what kept me going even when I felt completely out of my element. The simple way

“Can’t write and never will”

Reading time: 2.44 Read this email in your browser. Hey Reader, I didn’t know, until after we’d finished MicroBook Magic Season 2, that Sharon wasn’t just struggling with her own doubts. When she was in college, double majoring in English and Pysch, an English professor told her she “can’t write, and never will.” As an aside: it boggles me why some people go into teaching. Who would say that to a young person? And WHY? But this isn’t about that low-quality professor. It’s about Sharon....

14 days ago • 3 min read