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 …
Money: My Nemesis
Growing up, I was fortunate to live in a family where whilst we weren’t profuse with money, we also didn’t generally struggle to eat. There were periods that were harder, as with all households, but mostly we were comfortable. We didn’t go on holidays or do many extravagant things, but …
Scared to Discover New Things? Me Too
I have plenty of time to watch things, read things, play things. But very often, when something new comes out, I don’t. When everyone around me is getting really hyped up about this new show on Netflix, or a new book, most of the time I don’t watch or read …
Holidays
when I was at school they made us talk about our holidays in French lessons. there was just one problem: I’d only been on holiday once, Disneyland when I was six, and I didn’t remember it. sure, I went to my grandparents each summer for a week so we could …
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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