At the height of my depression, I didn’t really have bad days, because everything was so awful that I could hardly compare each day to the one before. They were the same, neither better nor worse than one another. The more I recovered – slowly, over a decade – the …
On Friendship, and Learning To Be Vulnerable
I’ll let you in on a secret: I don’t really know how friendship works. Growing up, I was always the third, fifth, seventh wheel of friendship groups. I think I had opportunities to have closer friendships than I did, but I never managed to capitalise on them. I never knew …
The Other Thing About Agent Applications…
The shopping bags are too heavy. I’ve overestimated, again, how much I can carry. I didn’t think my list for this week was even that long, but either I bought extra things or I just didn’t think about how heavy everything I was buying was. The first bit of the …
Cycles
There’s a week in the month – you know the one I mean – where it feels like exhaustion is my middle name. It’s not always been like this but these past years I drag myself through this week wanting to scream. I only just got up! Why am I …
Depression, Bad Days, and the Dangers of Absolutism
At the height of my depression, I didn’t really have bad days, because everything was so awful that I could hardly compare each day to the one before. They were the same, neither better nor worse than one another. The more I recovered – slowly, over a decade – the …
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Road to Getting Published: Applying to Literary Agencies
So you wrote a novel. You’re pretty happy with the manuscript as it stands, and the next step is to find someone to publish it. But how do you do that? Well today, I’m going to outline the first steps I’m personally taking in seeking to get Oracle published traditionally. …
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Independence
Let us sing for the ones who are so self-reliant we cannot accept someone lending a hand; whose rejection of help goes beyond just defiance – who need to do everything just like we planned. We’ll work independently without a care, but put us in groups and the tension will …
When Things Aren’t Working: How to Problem Solve in Isolation
For the past few months I have been very conscious of a problem: the things I am working on aren’t growing. The blog has been static but stable at a particular level of views and interest for some time, my Patreon hasn’t grown a great deal, and my social media …
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How to Listen To Your Own Advice
I like to think that I’m quite good at giving advice to people. After all, that’s what this blog does a lot of the time. Want to know what I’m super, super bad at? Listening to my own advice. This week, I’m going to try and do that more. My …
Isolation
shut everything out because some of it’s bad and you’ll never let in the things that are good. the things that are good cannot come into your life until you open the door of your mind and your heart. your mind and your heart are not really at war; they’re …
Why Writing’s A Great Job – And Why It Sucks
No job, even your dream job, is perfect. For all of the things that are brilliant about it, there will be another thing that sucks. I think sometimes we’re not as honest as we could be about this. We’re afraid that admitting there are problems will be the same as …