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Learn to Write Like You Mean It

A weekydaily newsletter by Vicky Quinn Fraser: The MicroBook Magician

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Featured Post

Can we get a thread on authors who found success after 40?

Reading time: 0.58 229 words Read this email in your browser Hey Reader, Forbes 30 under 30? Meh. No shade, but energy is easier to come by when your joints don’t sound like the Titanic hitting the iceberg. That’s a lot of pressure for younger folks and can feel like a kick in the teeth for the creakies, which is why when Margo Aaron posted this thread in Threads my heart leapt and kept dancing the fandango and still is. “Can we get a thread on authors who found success after 40?” Oh yes...

about 16 hours ago • 1 min read

Reading time: 2.29 588 words Read this email in your browser Hey Reader, The gremlins in my head are absolutely diabolical. Dome-estic terrorists. (Geddit? My brain is my dome, they are causing terror in it?) Every time I think about writing an article, or just before I go onstage to do stand-up comedy, or whenever I talk about my books, up they ooze to whisper to me about how nobody is interested, how I don’t have anything useful or interesting to say, and how everybody hates my dirty...

1 day ago • 3 min read

Reading time: 7.05 1,683 words Read this email in your browser Hey Reader, “I’m not sure I’m comfortable with ex-convicts cutting keys,” said my elderly neighbour after I told him why I love Timpsons. Timpsons, if didn’t know, is a cobblers, dry-cleaners, key-cutting business based in the UK. It specialises in finding employment for ex-offenders and other marginalised groups. “Why?” I asked him. “Well, because a criminal will have my house key and all my personal details,” he said. We had a...

5 days ago • 7 min read

Reading time: 9.11 2,184 words Read this email in your browser Hey Reader, We all love a good slogan and Laurel Thatcher Ulrich’s famous line “well-behaved women seldom make history” is just perfect for a cute pink tee or a morning coffee mug. It’s become an inspirational quote; a rousing battle cry to disrupt and rebel and be seen. But when Ulrich wrote that line, she was studying diaries and church records, noticing that the daily lives of “ordinary” women — those who complied and behaved...

5 days ago • 9 min read

Reading time: 2.38 631 words Read this email in your browser Hey Reader, I want to make an obscene amount of money. Did you just gasp in horror at my gaucheness? Recoil from my unseemly greed? Wonder if this is the same person who often writes about how much better the world could be if capitalism didn’t reward cruelty? Same. But I’m done pretending. When we’re asked, “Why did you start your business?” we’re supposed to cite all the high-thinking, worthy reasons for doing so. And I did that...

7 days ago • 3 min read

Reading time: 1.30 356 words Read this email in your browser Hey Reader, Orange Moschino kitten heels. Leopard-print denim shorts. Bright red sleeveless top. Mustard-yellow suede biker jacket. Let’s ignore the blisters biting my heels because the walk into Oxford was longer than anticipated, and focus on this question: Who are you? Really? When you let yourself be your fullest YOU? The outfit I wore on Friday for Samantha Harman’s book launch was NOT something I would have worn before I met...

8 days ago • 2 min read

Reading time: 4.34 1,083 words Read this email in your browser Hey Reader, Can you imagine being there when the first photograph was taken? Like holy shitballs batman, what kind of wizardry can make an exact image of my family appear on a piece of paper or metal or glass? BURN THE WITCH! I’m a smart person, and I know in theory how photography works, but I still look at it and go what the actual eff it feels like magic. The word “image” comes from the Latin imago, which also has connotations...

12 days ago • 5 min read

Reading time: 2.34 607 words Read this email in your browser Hey Reader, Aaaaaaand they’re off! Up out of the hole, skedaddle across the flagstones, watch the back end around that corner WOOOOAAHHHHHHHH that was close, nice use of the racing line, around the brick chicane, between the feeder legs, and a big leap into the trough. Another head pops up out of the hole: quick look left and right, all clear, slightly more steady on this run, aaaaaaand into the trough! Dagnammit. We have rats. Not...

14 days ago • 3 min read
Yellow background with text “Why are we letting the algorithms decide which ideas matter?” image of me in a snakeprint dress, sitting down, orange sneakers close to camera.

Reading time: 7.18 (yes it’s a longer one but I promise it’s worth it) 1,135 words Read this email in your browser Hey Reader, The clothes rail behind her was colourful with a hefty dash of leopardprint, and the extremely stylish woman on-screen was arranging them deftly, creating — as if by magic — dozens of extremely cool outfits from just a few items. I was there because I’d decided it was finally time to ditch the jogging bottoms and find out who I was underneath all the baggy t-shirts...

15 days ago • 8 min read

Reading time: 2.09 508 words Read this email in your browser Hey Reader, Many photos on Vinted look like someone screwed the clothes into a ball, kicked them around a playpen for half an hour, then hung them crooked on a hanger in a dingy basement with weird stained-glass windows, then used a potato to snap the pic. That, or they look as-new on a mannequin or supermodel. I can’t compete with the latter and I was sure I could do better than the former, so yesterday I spent a couple of hours...

16 days ago • 2 min read