However, the deadline for the second draft of my novel looms alongside developing What a Shame into a TV series, and Bergstrom Studio has some really exciting projects on the boil. I have to be honest with myself about my time and energy levels. I am having to press pause for six – eight weeks so I can really get my head down and focus. Of course, if you’re a paid subscriber all payments will be paused too and they’ll only pick up again when I start writing and you start receiving content.

I’ve tried to resist doing this and I’ve really battled myself on it because I enjoy writing these newsletters – they fill my cup. It also feels counter intuitive and like a missed opportunity to pause something that’s growing and getting such a positive response. But my previous experience of severe burnout which you can read more about here and here has meant that I know my limits all too well and have to pay attention to them. It sounds silly doesn’t it? I’m sure all of you with your busy and full lives that are continuously interrupted by avalanches of content won’t even notice. But I certainly will. I’ll miss the weekly interaction with this community; I really value it.

Something to Say was set up as a hobby, but it was also launched as a more affordable way for me to share knowledge and information about writing, getting a book published and the publishing industry at large. It’s important to me that there is an offering for those who don’t have the personal income for 1-2-1 consultations that some agencies like mine offer.  So I will be back, and in the meantime I very much hope you’ll bear with me.

Right now I’m not able to give this newsletter the attention it warrants and I want to come back in a couple of months when I can make it a priority and give it the thought, time and consideration it deserves. And for anyone else out there feeling threadbare or oversubscribed, I hope this is the nudge you needed to put a spinning plate down and push away the fear that if it’s not now, it’s never.

I am going to leave you with two incredible recommendations before I go.

1.

This is the best book I’ve read this year. I’m still reeling from it, it’s an exceptional piece of writing. It drew me in slowly then administered a gut punch on what it is to be maternal and what makes a mother. Many truths were trodden so lightly, delicate metaphors softly tugged at - not least one involving pigeons and a cuckoo - (but they’ll be no spoilers here).

This is a book about choice, about one of life’s most consequential decisions and where a lot of literature falls short by alienating one perspective from another, the book builds through complex emotions and bridges some evasive gaps on the subject of motherhood.

Guadalupe Nettel’s writing has been described as having a ‘surgeons touch’ because of its incisiveness. But the visual that came to mind for me was that of a baker, folding over their mix, carefully combining ingredients of different texture and weight into one relatively smooth substance and hitting them home over and over again - the residue of which left me deeply moved and pleasantly optimistic.

2. 

   This is a documentary about the global hypnosis of masculine power through cinema, and it blew my mind. If the camera is predatory then the culture is predatory. It draws together the direct effects of Hollywood cinema, a sinister framework of misogyny and paternalism that is responsible for the violence we see inflicted on women daily. Whilst I am well-adept with the work of Laura Mulvey and the male gaze and often leave the cinema feeling wounded or angry about the representation of women, this documentary opened my eyes even more. It’s something you can’t unsee and I was disturbed in a way that was confronting – the final note will puncture you.

Let me know if you check either of these out and leave your thoughts in the comments!

See you on the flipside.

Ax

If you’re reading this newsletter I’m guessing you have this problem. Or that you at least relate to it on some level: the cringing, the slight recoil, the feeling of separation and the just-out-of-reachness that surfaces before you utter those words: I am a writer. Even now, when someone asks me what I do I explain eloquently and confidently the studio (my consultancy work with writers), setting up literary agencies (offering writer’s representation), and yet I still stumble over my vernacular to explain that I myself write.

I’ve had a novel published that’s sold really well, I’m developing said novel into a TV show and I’ve been contracted by my publisher to write more novels, some might say that deems me worthy to dangle those words at the end of my tongue. But I’m kinda gonna call bullshit on that; you shouldn’t need to have had your work published to identify as someone who feels more comfortable having words come from your hands than from your mouth. Then again, is that the defining trait of a writer?

I had a conversation with a friend over dinner recently, who stalled over the word, lingering awkwardly, almost simultaneously retracting the statement at the very same time as making it, that she was a writer. It really stopped me in my sardines because I so recognised that motion in thought, that assertion and then the pull of a thread – one that perhaps bears more of a burden in women – as we question how what we just said might sound. But it was the truth, not because she’d published a book or written extensively across media outlets, but because she is a writer. Someone who wants to talk about writing, someone who wants to take herself into uncomfortable spaces to explore her writing, someone looking for a writing community, someone who feeds on books to make sense of existential truths - for me, these are the traits of a writer.

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If you’ve written a novel but you didn’t find an agent though, are you a writer? If you’ve found an agent to represent you but couldn’t secure a publisher, are you a writer? If your book publishes but like so many books it only sells a small number of copies, are you a writer? It’s obvious what follows here… yes. A writer is someone who makes sense of and navigates the world through language, sometimes using what’s not written down - withholding - to create space for a feeling, an experience, or a story.

It’s a recognised benchmark that one is allowed to access such a title as ‘writer’ once they are making money from it. Once it’s ‘paying the mortgage’ or facilitating your lifestyle. No surprises that in the capitalistic western word, money is the stalwart supporter of the cause. Or sometimes the writer hierarchy model is founded in readership; you must obtain ‘x’ number of readers, followers, subscribers before you can legitamately call yourself a writer.

But does a piece of writing garner value from having been read by thousands of readers vs hundreds? If Gabriel García Márquez’s ‘One Hundred Years of solitude’ was only read by a few thousand of us instead of 50 million, would it still be a rich and complex, multidimensional novel? Or what if Shakespeare hadn’t been lorded as one of the greatest writers in the English language, would ‘Hamlet’ still ricochet universal truths through time? There’s perhaps a saccharine line of thought being tapped into here: ‘if my writing helps one person in this world or if my book impacts one person’s life then it will have been worth doing’, but do we really mean that? Or will your inner voice harangue you until you obtain a Sally-Rooney level of impact.

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I asked the internet what qualifies one as a writer, which in its usually schizophrenic fashion offered everything from ‘a college degree in English, communications, or journalism is generally required’ to ‘some writers get a bit gatekeeper-y and upset that everyone seems to call themselves a writer these days’ and then there was a ‘everyone is - the more the merrier’ philosophy.

When it comes to identifying as a writer I keep circling back to the same place: I think the answer is borne out of ‘why’ you write. And of course, that ‘why’ – your purpose or compulsion – is different for each of us. I think it also shifts and changes within us. But I’ll go first: I write to explore trauma, I write to process things that my body and mind can’t make sense of and I write because if I don’t, I am overcome with this feeling, like suffocation or being drowned on the inside. As if I’m filling up with thoughts that could stuff my throat full if I don’t access the relief of writing them down. That is why I am a writer and that is why it forms part of how I identify. So tell me, I’m curious: why do you write?

International Women’s Day (IWD) left me feeling bleak. And I’ve realised that’s nothing new, it’s been uncomfortable for some time now. It’s wormed its way into some self-congratulatory echo chamber where people meet for brand-sponsored networking brunches and post about the strong and brilliant women in their lives or Taylor Swift ‘Fuck the patriarchy’ memes. My best friend joined a zoom meeting on the morning of IWD and the client – meaning to say ‘Happy International Women’s Day’ – accidentally started with: ‘Happy Halloween’. If that doesn’t surmise the emergent futility, I don’t what does. I feel like it’s lost the plot… it’s refocused on the idea that women deserve to be celebrated instead of calling out the political horrors they face all over the world. We’ve missed the memo and what’s snowballed from productive activism and spreading awareness is now a red-letter day. But what is it we’re meant to be celebrating exactly?

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International Women’s Day should be a day of outrage. Outrage that only 35% of MPs are women in the UK; outrage that three women are murdered every week in the UK by a man and women worldwide are killed by a family member every day; outrage that a third of girls are sexually assaulted in our schools; outrage that recent statistics from the OECD found that the UK has the second most expensive childcare system in the world and for the first time in decades, the number of women not returning to work after having a baby is on the rise; outrage that trans women are being increasingly fearmongered, their right to their identity being continually threatened. And yet we seem to be sitting on panels, sipping mojitos, using it as an opportunity to sell our businesses or products.

And I’ve sat on these panels so there’s no judgement, it’s more the unnerving futility of them when people are asked about their career highlights and to give advice about how they got to where they are. Shouldn’t spaces on these panel be reserved for women who are working on the frontlines of women’s rights all year round? What IWD should be about is those women in the world who are facing slavery, forced marriage, human trafficking, those women in the world who are seeing their rapist walk away without a conviction (99% of rapes reported to police in the UK go unconvicted), those women in the world having to feed their children out of food banks and those women in the world who still have no freedom in their lives.

The journalist Terri White wrote a piece called ‘Screw International Women’s Day’ in the New Statesman last week about all the empty rhetoric surrounding IWD: ‘Ploughing money into massages, yoga classes, drinks parties, networking brunches and internal panels (which are primarily aimed at professional, middle-class women) feels like a performative distraction from the real landslide of slurry we’re currently being buried under. The message: many women sink, but some can still scramble their way to an air pocket. And hey, be grateful! You’re the exception!’

A façade has been constructed suggesting change is happening so we might distract women with the powers and the means to act out. We know that we’re seeing regression not progression in a lot of areas of women’s rights, change is only going to come if we stop celebrating ourselves and instead move as a collective to demand and enforce change.

And it’s complicated, right? How do we resolve one woman’s issue (which is that the gender pay gap is failing to improve) with another woman’s (which is that she lives in the most dangerous country in the world for a woman). There can be a gulf between our inequalities and that in itself can segregates us. A few years ago, I published a book by Sue Lloyd Roberts, a formidable journalist and broadcaster, she was the UK's first female video-journalist to report alone from the bleak outposts of the Soviet Union, China and Iran. Her book is called The War on Women and in it she deconstructs the struggles women face through the individual stories of the those she had met throughout her 30-year-long career: those imprisoned in a baby laundry in Dublin; those trafficked and forced into the sex trade in Bosnia; those responsible for taking over their mother’s role as the village female circumciser in The Gambia; those married off in Jaipur at the age of six. Sue makes a case for how all of these issues interconnect and sets out how we need to unite as a force to bargain for real change.

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I’m not saying IWD is a bad idea. I’m certainly not saying it shouldn’t happen. I’m also not saying women shouldn’t have a moment to celebrate their achievements, or that it doesn’t offer any value. I’m simply saying the discourse has gone mainstream and in doing so the messages have been diluted. They’re being swayed into capitalistic gain for brands and corporations and the grass-root intentions are being commodified. Using social media – a capitalist tool – to celebrate ourselves, to me, doesn’t seem like the right port of call. At least not anymore.

Let’s consider the widely different attitude that Latin America brings to IWD. The writer Natalia Albin writes in her piece ‘Don't wish me a Happy Women's Day’ about how IWD in Mexico is a day of protest and commemoration, last year it saw 75,000 women take to the streets in chants condemning patriarchal violence and writing the names of women who have been killed on government buildings. Or perhaps we should look back in time to the 1970s women’s strike in Iceland where women refused to work, cook or look after children for the day, leading to so many companies and institutions coming to a halt that it showed the force of women and ‘completely changed the way of thinking.’ What we need is this level of organised and collective action.

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I’m certainly not putting myself on a pedestal here either, this helplessness I have been feeling around IWD has led to an inertia on my part where I back away because it makes me feel uncomfortable. And that is arguably worse. That’s why I’m writing this piece. For me, I look to those women at the forefront of the issues for guidance. Laura Bates, the British writer and feminist activist provided a concrete list of actions that will have real impact which I found helpful and am sharing here:

DONATE

To an incredible organisation that’s doing the work all year round such as ‘Pregnant then Screwed’

https://www.justgiving.com/themotherhoodplan

PROTEST

Against the proposed new legislation that destroys the right for women to claim asylum.

VOLUNTEER

Volunteer for an organisation that is working on a matter close to your heart.

SIGN

Take a moment to sign those petitions, it can make a difference.

https://www.change.org/p/tampon-tax-ended-where-are-the-price-cuts-droptampontax

READ

We can sometimes feel helpless and overwhelmed by what women are really facing, but reading can better equip us with the information we need and builds confidence.

Here are books I’ve read (some of them I’ve also worked on), that have certainly helped me:

My hope is that next year we can all participate in more radical action on IWD as opposed to mere celebration.

NB: I wrote this piece back in 2017, nine months after I first drank Ayahuasca.

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The strange thing is, I always knew I’d do ayahuasca. Some people say it’s a calling; you’re either summoned or you’re not. I first heard about it from some guy I was dating when I was in university. At the time, my recreational drug use hadn’t extended beyond a few spliffs at a café in Amsterdam and a terrifying ‘whitey’ in my hometown which – after a phone call to my sister, alerting her to the reality that I was probably dying – resolved itself in a curry house. I ordered half the menu and proceeded to suck on the end of the same chip for over half an hour, worrying that my relationship with salvia was well and truly over. I know, I’m a total cliché. I’m sorry.

But ayahuasca was different from most other psychedelic I’d ever heard of. It wasn’t recreational but rather a sacramental process to be respected. A potent, psychoactive, plant-based brew that has healing powers and spirit-enlivening effects, the experience promises a breakdown of the ego. The best explanation I've encountered is in Chris Kilham’s The Ayahuasca Test Pilots Handbook: "A longing, part remembrance of something enduring and part intuition of future revelation."

Ayahuasca translates from the South American Quechua language as "soul vine" or "vine of the dead" and the ceremony has been practised for thousands of years by indigenous people who treasure the plant. The taste of the brown, bitter liquid is so potent and distinctive that just thinking about it brings the flavour to the back of my throat. The shaman who leads the ceremony, and acts as a spiritual guide and protector throughout ­what’s sometimes an eight-hour-long experience, is supposed to have dieted on the plant almost exclusively and sometimes for years in order to fully integrate with its qualities.

At first, I’d understood ayahuasca through sensationalised, fantastical stories that oscillated between facing demons who’d warn you about your impending, premature death and reaching the subliminal in total ecstasy with God. All this while vomiting your guts out as you cry hysterically and possibly shit yourself. I was confounded. I couldn’t get ayahuasca off my mind and over a period of years I found myself intermittently reading around the topic. I was raised in a small, provincial village, in a 500-year-old house with a poltergeist that my parents had a priest exorcise three times (I’m not kidding). So I’d already experienced things I couldn’t explain or rationalise, and I was open to the idea of a spiritual world beyond the realms of human understanding.

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So there I was, a girl who’d never so much as cast eyes on a hallucinogenic let alone tried one, on my way to drink the most powerful, mind-altering brew the world had to offer. I had flown to a country where it was legal to drink Ayahuasca and had done a lot of research in terms of finding an experienced and highly-trained shaman. The group that was joining me on this experience greeted one another in hushed whispers before being told to go upstairs and prepare. I remember feeling hungry. I’d been fasting for a week: no alcohol, vinegar, pork or beef, no dairy, nothing spicy, absolutely no lemon and no sex. I was told this cleanse would maximise my ceremonial experience. I put comfortable clothes on – a series of layers because I was aware ayahuasca altered your body temperature and I was, at that time, concerned about being cold. I was filled with anticipation but I didn’t feel scared.

There were 13 of us partaking in my first ceremony, including the shaman and his assistant who’d later tell me they both believed they’d been practising these ceremonies together for thousands of years, over the course of many lifetimes. We each had a soft, grey mattress, pushed against the back walls to form a circle. Each mattress came with a pillow, a blanket, a purge bucket and 10 mapacho cigarettes (it’s believed the shaman can channel energy through this tobacco and they’re smoked when you’re having a particularly hard time, to achieve realignment). I also took some toilet roll because I was really quite concerned about the shitting bit. The room was almost pitch black, only slightly lit by candles so I could watch as the shaman walked around the room blowing smoke to ensure the space was protected. I listened as he opened the ceremony with a prayer, calling in spirit allies for our endeavour and praying for everyone’s intentions.

It’s important to come to ayahuasca with intentions – to know why you’re there and to understand what you seek. A year on from losing a parent and getting brutally dumped I was overwhelmed with a feeling of being stuck. I felt stagnant. Aware of and striving for a level of happiness that I knew I’d reached before, I felt a physical weight restricting me. As I tried to embrace all the love in my life and feel grateful for my many blessings, toxic vines of unknown pain and trauma wound around my ankles and kept me motionless. I felt unable to grow and develop as a person but was too determined and optimistic to give up and tumble into a pit of despair. I was nowhere girl. And it was fucking suffocating me.

So I sat on that mattress, ready to unload and grieve. Help, was my intention; I was caught and I needed to learn to move again. Mother Ayahuasca is responsive and reactive – like absinthe's green fairy, she leads you on the journey. Resist her and you’ll suffer. Try and outsmart her and you’ll lose. You can call to mind a person or a situation and, like an endless corridor, you can go through doors and experience twinges linked to your past and the source of your pain. Some people have more choice of where they go; some are forced into the rooms she feels they need to see. The one universal truth is that everyone’s experience of the vine is different and unique.

Roughly 45 minutes after drinking the ayahuasca, I felt it. I entered into a synaesthetic spiral of colour and energy, a new universe of otherworldly beings powered by hues and feelings and thoughts that previously seemed beyond my imagination. I sat for a while and tried to slow myself in this world, flitting out of it and into the ceremonial circle, then back into ayahuasca again. I heard my friends start to purge and a deep sickness overcame me.

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I want to rest effortlessly.

It’s my new mantra: I am calling in effortlessness. For me that word was always more associated with some Parisian sense of having everything and being everything without trying. It was akin to looking chic without being considered and pulling off a makeup look that works hard to look like you’re not wearing any. But the only effortlessness I truly care for is in how I rest.

We understand the theory behind why we’re all so overworked, overtired and overstretched but the hardest thing is to maintain a practice of living differently. I don’t want my rest to rely on trips away from my life, on expensive massages or weekly acupuncture, I want it to be formed by new neurological pathways built on small changes in habits that evolve from my day-to-day life. ‘Rest is our new spiritual practice’ the biodynamic psychotherapist, Fiona Arrigo, tells me, ‘it’s allowing the transmission of the new to expand you. Stop feeling bad if you haven’t achieved. Stop feeling bad about going in and unplugging from outsideness.’ Rest is the most drastic thing we can do because it’s where we upgrade ourselves. It’s how we discharge the nasties. It’s how we make sense of how we are feeling and what we need.

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Some people need inspiration and motivation to get shit done, they need to-do lists or help to push themselves and reach their potential. But some of us need support when it comes to letting go, pausing, taking a breath, or just giving ourself permission to stand still. For this, there isn’t so much support. In order to live well I have to cultivate a practice whereby I consciously integrate rest into my day-to-day life by actively asking the question: where am I resting today? We can write a book alongside working full-time, we can hold down a yoga practice whilst making sure the kids are sorted for school, we can get up early to work on our side hustle whilst organising a celebration for our partner’s birthday, and we can make our botox appointment and still find the time to speak on panels about female empowerment. But many of us struggle with the simple task of resting.

My relationship with rest began with needing to take six months sick leave – gorgeously restorative but hardly a long-term solution and invoking of an identity crisis. I then started diarising rest and moments of pause throughout the day. I’d get up and walk away from my laptop instead of melting into six hours of screen time where I’d come back to myself and the discarded crumbed plates surrounding my desk. I’d block out meditation like I block out time for a client meeting. I had to motivate myself to rest like some people motivate themselves to go to the gym: come on, you’ll enjoy it when you get there. And then I discovered there is a fine line between rest and a ‘self-care to-do lists’ comprising of yoga classes, retreats, taking supplements or forcing yourself out of bed to make a therapy appointment. That version of rest often isn’t financially sustainable, it wasn’t for me. There have been times in my life where rest and recovery have masqueraded as another thing I needed to accomplish, into an endless pit where any disposable income got sucked away. But when rest becomes a daunting to-do list or an expensive hobby it can transmute into something else. I’ve had to learn that taking care of myself is something I can do in small everyday acts.

It is choosing ­– in those seeming insignificant moments – to do what will make me feel good. It’s allowing the tea to brew instead of ravishing the bag. It’s having a bath in the middle of the day. It’s leaving your phone at home. It’s stopping for a moment to watch the ducks. It’s eating the last spring roll, slowly, unapologetically. It’s saying no when you don’t feel like it. It’s lying down on your bed and practicing breath work. It’s going for dinner without washing your hair. It’s drinking more water. It’s being silly and allowing for a giggle. It’s making the plate look pretty when you’re the only one eating. It’s leaning in to who’s peaceful and distancing from who isn’t. It’s believing in that hunch and validating your intuition without checking in with a friend. It’s not reading the news every day. It’s going back to sleep after the alarm goes off. It’s in the daily pause. It’s in the conscious breath. It’s in you.

I still get triggered, I still diarise my meditation and then forget to do it, I still occasionally work myself so hard I need to spend a Saturday in bed recovering, I still forget to go for a walk and take breaks. I’m not there yet but I take little steps forward each day and I’m bringing rest it into my consciousness more and more. I will keep asking myself: how did I rest today? And I will keep aspiring to rest as effortlessly as I can fathom.

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It seems these days everyone wants to write a book. That every podcast, brand, content creator, or individual with a story wants to crystallise some part of themselves or their ambition in a printed work. Publishing a book still has its prestige. Of course, there is self-publishing as an option but being backed by a publishing house holds weight because it requires external endorsement and financial investment. But in a multi-platform reality, not everything needs to be a book – some things do belong online or should live as a viral article or on a podcast.

I had dinner with a book editor recently who told me the first question she asks herself when she reads something on submission is: who cares? And in the main the answer is, no one. It leads to her turning the vast majority of what she receives down. There is a gluten of content, a saturation so that what ‘we’ (the reader) care about is being watered down. After all, we can’t care about everything. She told me her new strategy was to publish ‘pointless books’ – the ridiculous, the humorous and the bizarre. Because, she maintained: who cares?

With our dwindling attention spans, reluctance to keep still and our avatar-induced impediment to FOMO or not being culturally in-the-know, we really are disadvantaged when it comes to sitting the fuck down and doing slow, deep work. That’s what writing a book requires of you. I’ve written both my novels alongside running different businesses and working on other projects, all whilst in the throes of moving houses, countries or through grief. Being a writer is to continually practise the discipline. And yet there is this fantasy world around books, a lot of people want to write one for the accolade but I wonder how many are aware that the completion is like anything in life: once obtained it disintegrates in your hands like sugar paper

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The thing about writing is that the external validation is fast and loose i.e., it makes you interesting in conversation for ten-to-fifteen minutes. It brings status and cachet, sure. But the announcements, Sunday Times reviews, awards and updates on exciting book sales come fleetingly. And like anything in life, the bar gets pulled forward and suddenly you’ve entered the next level of the game where there’s more competition and strife.

I wish there were a better analogy, but being a published author is much like being on a roller-coaster: there is a moment where your belly flips, your hands are in the air and the feeling of immortality and freedom booms from your mouth in a high-pitched wail. You could do anything. You could be anyone. You are actually quite good at this roller-coaster stuff. But mainly there’s a lot of: ‘Well this was a fucking mistake,’; and ‘I actually hate rollercoasters so why am I on a fucking roller coaster?’; then there’s the ‘excuse me I’d quite like to get off now’ moment (usually half way through a manuscript when you realise the water rafters looked quite nice all along).  

To write is to slip through the seams of a sentence, it’s sewing together the fraying tendrils damaged through the destruction of existence, it’s exposing something sometimes repugnant and sometimes true – often both. It makes sense then that it’s hard to sit down and do it. And it makes further sense why it’s so thrilling and indicative of desire.

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And yet, the celebration or validation or even relief that comes with writing books is so tiny, so short-lived in comparison to the hours and months spent poring over character developments in a room with the door firmly pressed closed. Behind that door, it’s just you, the ideas and anxieties and shame and complex intricacies of what made you want to come to the page in the first place. It begs (and also is the answer to the question): why do you write?

It is a feat to quieten the noise, to sit down and be still with yourself. And it is another one entirely to guard against incessant distractions that pull you away from instinctive creativity into the diatribe of capitalistic garb where the intention is often to expose a lack in order for you to purchase against it. Perhaps then, what we’re doing behind that door, or in our beds, or on trains and buses, or in libraries, is excavating the lack ourselves and smoothing on a salve in typed letters and ink. But the price is high when we’re working against our dribbling messes for attention spans.

The world beckons, is compelled to disturb, coming in to undo the stitches we’ve spent hours on in sentence surgery. Leaving someone alone, allowing for that itching feeling as they float away from the matrix and into their own reality is something writers and those who surround them contend with. I have a rule with Mark that he’s not allowed to disturb me, not allowed to come up to my office and knock on the door when I’m writing. He’s not a needy person, and yet sometimes I can hear him wandering up the stairs, lingering on the landing, scratching at his will the other side of the door. Most of the time he resists and takes himself back downstairs and some of the time the door creaks open, just a slither, making narrow shadows on the hopeful part of his face.

I can’t remember the last time I spoke to a writer who wasn’t in some sense at war with themselves in order to just, well, write. And I’ve talked about this war being the very point: the yin to the yang of creativity. I went to see the Irish novelist, essayist and short story writer, Colm Tóibín, speak at an intimate book event in London a few years back and what he said stayed with me: ‘I hate being a writer. I hate the act of writing, it’s dull and boring and excruciating. I don’t want to do it. But I can’t help it, I have to. I have to write; it’s who I am.’

Even if nobody cares, you still sit down, you wrestle and writhe. It’s not about the validation, or the outcome. It’s not about whether you get 2000 words out or 200. It’s not really about publishing deals or dreams of your face on a Bookseller announcement, nor is it for the faraway dream of ‘break-out’ success, not really. You write because it is who you are. It is what you do. You write because you are obligated by your compulsion. You write because you care.

This week the paperback of WHAT A SHAME published, so in today’s newsletter I’m sharing the prologue and another chapter from the beginning of the book. I hope it gives you a small taste of the prose style in the novel and the sorts of themes it explores.

Enjoy… x

There is a pain – so utter –
It swallows substance up –
Then covers the Abyss with Trance – So Memory can step
Around – across – upon it –
As one within a Swoon –
Goes safely – where an open eye – Would drop Him – Bone by Bone.

–Emily Dickinson

Curses are like processions.
They return to the place from which they came.

–Giovanni Ruffini

PROLOGUE

At first there was drama and morbid excitement – all the morose trimmings that come with the early stages of mourning and grief. People came over.They brought pre-cooked food, wrapped and marinating in flavours, flowers from the fancy florist and other small appropriate gifts. They wore black – respectfully – to both of your funerals: dark, smart clothing on a grey day to a brutalist crematorium, and dark, sullen moods to a flat we once shared where remnants of your dead skin were still in the carpet. Now that you’re both gone I’m struggling to decipher which thread of grief belongs to each of you. It’s a wiry tangled mass in my chest, like those metal scourers you use to scrub stubborn pans. Each coarse steel strand is more tightly coiled than the last, and when amassed tightly in your hand it’s soft to touch. Only when a single strand frays loose is it sharp and painful; I think that’s why it’s easier to keep you both matted together.

After your illusive departure, my friends pretended they didn’t have plans for the weeks that followed. They came over with wine. People fussed over me, and when I sat down at a table there always seemed to be a spare seat where you would’ve sat, assigned now for my misery so plain to see, as if it were wearing a large red hat.

At the beginning, grief and tragedy are ripe dinner-party fodder. It’s much easier to empathise with the unpleasantness of a recent tragedy – proximity to the present is the real marrow. Lurking in the corner of your reality, you feel it in the room and the fear is that it could decide to pick you next. In order to preserve yourself, you must hold it up in your hands and acknowledge its very horribleness, tell someone about it in a bid for it to stay far away from you, for as long as possible. Because pain gets us all in the end, doesn’t it? We all must suffer eventually. The only question is: when?

I’m relieved when they stop asking me how I’m feeling, leaving me to indulge myself under a cloak of shame. Much unlike horror, the best way to prevent shame from attaching itself to you is by ignoring it entirely. Better in than out. Break-ups and death are commonplace, and you’re accustomed to the rituals surrounding them. You watch them in films; you read about them in books. The retellings of an old, timeless narrative in which one etches out one’s humanity. You know what to do with the anguish that immediately seeps from an ending – sudden or slow: you have been taught. It’s the ongoing and ebbing sadness that continues afterwards that we all find a little dull. Unworthy of a story, perhaps.

But I am immovable in its dark swamp, stuck. A stuckness so suffocating, a paralysis so ubiquitous that I almost forget to breathe. There’s only so long those who love you can dampen their own happiness out of sensitivity for your misfortunes. Eventually they must resume their lives. So I smiled when they told me they’d met someone; I raised my glass to their promotion and celebrated their new show; I clapped my hands when they got engaged, and I didn’t mention that a diamond was an unethical symbol of male ownership. I kept partaking in their happiness, and the waves of joy that swell from their lives keep me going, making sure that my sadness doesn’t strangle me, the swamp engulfing me entirely as I let out a final loud burp of disdain.

CROW

In the kitchen I make a pot of fresh mint tea to warm myself up. The dark-grey tiles are freezing under my feet and there’s a draught coming from under the back door, which leads to an overgrown garden only ever used for cigarette breaks and house parties. Georgia walks in and watches as I pluck the leaves off the stalks and throw them into the belly of the teapot.

‘Do you want a cig?’ she asks, zipping up her puffer jacket.’

‘Yeah, okay. How is it that you still look so damn sexy in sweats?’ I puzzle at her. Her cashmere joggers bunch up over a pair of trainers and her hair flows over the high collar of her hood.

‘Shut up,’ she responds. ‘Don’t try and butter me up.’

‘Got it.’

‘Maybe you could consider wearing something other than those dungarees at some point in your life.’

‘I don’t know what you’re referring to.’

‘You’ve lived in them for the past three months, Mathilda.’

She says this like I’ve lost my mind, rather than been lazy with my sartorial choices.

‘Well, now I’m not going to wear anything else. No.’ I put my hands into the deep denim pockets and shrug. ‘I’ll wear them just to irk you.’

‘You needn’t use the dungarees for that. I know it’s normal to stop caring about your appearance when you’re going through a break-up but, like, they’re really starting to drag me down.’

I blow on the surface of my tea as she wrestles with the aged lock on the back door.

Georgia and I met at university and our friendship intensified then receded in the years that followed – different goals in terms of our careers, boyfriends who didn’t particularly gel, and a small handful of those other unimportant reasons that push you apart. Despite this, a thick thread was tied around our respective waists, an invisible rope that kept us attached to one other. We were careless with our friendship a lot of the time because we trusted its durability. The rope was tough and hard-wearing, and unlike the many plant metaphors of other relationships, ours didn’t demand a single drop of water. I didn’t have any other friendships like it.

It’s cold in the garden and we huddle together under the outdoor light that has a sensor function. Georgia’s bike is tangled in ivy, and fairy lights dress the wooden trellis that lines the top of a brick wall, separating us from next door’s garden. At the bottom of the long, thin lawn is a large holly bush but it’s too dark to see it now.

Georgia’s tone softens. ‘I just want you to know that we’re all here, if . . . well, if you need to talk.’

I was bored of this conversation. The one where she stresses my heaviness, grappling for a more constructive way of saying: you’re carrying something dark around that neither you nor I can seem to make sense of.

‘And Freddie. Seriously, Mathilda?’

I knew this was coming. ‘Ah, come on, don’t start. What does it matter to you?

‘Of course it matters to me. You’re my friend and I care about you. He’s such a twat.’ She’s irritable. ‘Rebound, yes! But not with Freddie. Why would you go back there?’

‘Because when someone makes you feel like you’re not good enough for them you become completely consumed by the task of disproving their theory.’

She rolls her eyes and sighs.

‘You know what I mean?’

But Georgia has no idea what I mean because she’d decided Henry was the man she’d marry the first day she met him. Which was in sixth form when she was co-educated for the first time. Whilst her peers were unnerved, Georgia has three older brothers and became a lighthouse serving navigational aid in those dangerous penis- filled waters. Her reward was the pick of the litter.

‘How is Freddie, then? Which campaign is his latest ex- girlfriend the face of? Burberry,Yves Saint Lau—’

‘Don’t be an arse.’

She lifts her head in acceptance and looks down at the floor, taking another drag from her Marlboro. We enjoy the quiet for a moment or two and then I say reluctantly, ‘She’s actually the lead in that new Netflix series Ekua likes.’

‘Noooo!’ She laughs, becoming more animated. ‘That period drama?’ And then: ‘There’s something going on with you.’

I roll my eyes.

‘It’s not just the break-up, or your dad.’

‘Look, I’m trying my best to fix things—’

‘Fuck that. You don’t need to “fix” yourself,’ Mathilda.’ She uses her fingers for quote marks, her cigarette wedged between two of them, and I pull a white feather that has escaped from the innards of her jacket.

‘You’re perfect the way you are. You just need to face your shit. He didn’t break up with you because you did something wrong.’

‘Well, that’s useful to note,’ I’m droll.

‘He’s the idiot. I mean, look at you. You look like Julia Roberts, just with a smaller mouth.’

I blow the last of the smoke from my mouth with a titter and put my cigarette out on the brick wall, shivering still in these damp clothes.

‘Why did he break up with me then?’

Her pregnant pause turns into a barren land where no words can propagate.

‘Do you want to come to yoga with me tomorrow?’ I ask, filling it.

‘No, I don’t. Seriously, I came with you last week and the noises that were coming from you made it sound like you were about to give birth and—’

‘Fuck off. The instructor said it was okay to make noises.’

She laughs, then, ‘Yeah, and therein lies my point. The instructor felt the need to come over, tap you on the shoulder and reassure you about that weird racket you were making.’

‘I wasn’t embarrassed,’ I say coolly.

‘Good for you. I was.’

‘I just really want to improve my Crow and I have weak shoulders and skinny wrists.’ I show them to her playfully, careful not to spill my tea. ‘See? I’m at a disadvantage to a lot of people.’

The light above us goes out and I grin at her through the darkness. She waves her hand to provoke the sensor and the light comes on to outline the concern on her face.

‘Do you not think that some of us are just too fucked up? People settle down and find each other, like you and Henry. Or they don’t, and what’s left are the broken people.’

‘You’re not broken.’ She sighs. ‘I’m so tired of the broken- woman narrative. But it’s not just the break-up, is it? There’s something else. There’s always been something . . .’

The comment stings at the back of my throat but I don’t let on. ‘Look, I moved in here because I needed a place to stay, not a judgemental eye unpicking my every Crow,’ I quip, opening the door, and she follows me back into the kitchen where she takes off her coat and heads back to the living room to join the others.

‘You pair are never going to guess who’s in that new period drama,’ she calls out.

I laugh and shake my head, topping up the tea in my cup which makes the leaves dance. I look around as if to remind myself where I am. The house has the potential to be breath-taking but it’s rough around the edges. Georgia got it in the usual way a millennial living in London acquires property: her parents bought it for her. Of course, there’s always the death of a relative or the meeting of a wealthy lover to assist in the acquisition of a new home, but I must say those weren’t working out for me either. The crockery in the cupboards is mismatched, a collection of whatever her previous tenants left behind. The art on the walls clashes – a signed and mounted Anthony Burrill sits next to a cheap Picasso print wedged into an Ikea frame. The long pine kitchen table in front of me is better suited to a country house and there are two Swiss cheese plants on the floor – one dying and one thriving – each beholden to their owner’s green-fingered care. I nudge one with my foot, breathing in the inharmonious charm of shared living, comprising clashing styles and jarring tastes, brought together in a way that things are not supposed to be – much like the women who live in them.

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If you’d like to buy a copy it’s available from Amazon and Waterstones and at your local independents. Thanks so much for supporting.

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Perhaps you’re feeling slightly sozzled from Yuletide festivities and New Year’s Eve overindulgences. Or maybe you’re fresh and sparky, focusing in on the year ahead. Like many I get reflective around this time of year: What goals did I hit in 2022? What did I achieve? I used to encapsulate my entire being in heavy concrete milestones, categorising each year by a definable landmark ‘achievement’ that I could anchor myself to. ‘This was the year I wrote a book’; ‘This was the year I started my business’; ‘This was the year I got my own flat and learned to live alone’. Success was compacted, it was always measurable, it was black or white, and signed off by those around me, it was so, well, set in stone.

Something in me seems to have finally shifted though. My hopes are more aligned with what’s good for me rather than what’s expected of me. My expectations more akin to simplicity and looking after myself. I sometimes feel sad for that old version of myself and all she was laden with. I was only worthy of compassion if I’d ‘achieved’ and I only granted myself kindness if I had done something to make that year noteworthy. But success earmarked for those things I’ve learned, is fleeting. It’s gone before it’s really there. Like the strands of thinly stretched-out time, as you move away from those achievements they lose some of their sparkle. Are less significant somehow. Someone will always write a better book, buy a bigger house, or fall wildly in love and suddenly the benchmark gets pushed and you can loose sight of what it is you wanted. We’ve perhaps learned to contextualise comparison, but have we learned to centre our own vision of success? Mine seems to get pulled off balance weekly, a new opportunity teases, the seduction of a something that should appeal still. And I quickly lose grasps of what the whole picture is meant to be about. Our hunger for success can distort.

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So if another year has come and gone and you’ve still not finished that novel, hit that quota or produced that thing you swore you would, go easy on yourself. Because maybe you’ve had your most successful year yet and you’re just looking at the picture through a borrowed lens.

My friend and the writer, Emma Gannon, has recently spoken about how she’s moving away from ‘a big check lists of big intense goals’ and instead is focusing on showing up in smaller ways, daily. Placing a little ceramic turtle on her desk to remind her of the small baby steps and slow moves towards her goals: ‘I stroke its shinny little head as though it’s a good luck charm’. She notes this unhealthy culture of expecting yourself to ‘smash various targets overnight’ and has made a commitment to swim against its tide, gently.

Another writer, Lotte Bowser has talked about placing your humanity over outward facing achievements. She writes: ‘When you look back over this past year, I hope you see something you feel proud of. I’m not just talking about the new house or pay rise or the other goals you might have reached. I hope you feel proud of the way you showed humility, and learned from your mistakes with grace… or the time you chose to be kind over being right.’

How important is this as a metric of success, to consider the kind, thoughtful and considerate things we did? The grace we showed up in. The compassion we offered.

I never think about these moments, if anything I dismiss them as nothing. But when I did try, something happened. I don’t want to be all saccharine here but there was a warmth inside me that spread and offered some sense from it all. When I think about 2022 as being the year my debut novel published, I don’t really feel anything at all. Is that bad? Is there something wrong or broken in me? Perhaps I’m ungrateful. Or clouded. Too distracted to recognise and hold in my hands the weight of an achievement I wanted so badly. But I don’t think so. I am proud of my novel of course, and at times have been blown away by the response it got. But I think I’m learning that these milestones aren’t the sole pit stops for an evolved sense of myself.

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The writer Vicky Spratt wrote a piece on how for the first time in her life she has finally stopped caring about life’s milestones and in doing so is a lot happier in her life. We have this idea that we should be moving alongside our peers in perfect symbiosis, having a baby when they do, getting a pay rise when they do, having a creative resurgence when they do. But how unrealistic is that? And, to Spratt’s point indeed, how dull?

I won’t be so maudlin as to suggest these things don’t count, of course they do. If my novel hadn’t got published, I would feel disappointed about it. And let’s not pretend either that we shouldn’t want these things, or would seem like better people if we didn’t. We are allowed to want to get married, win an award or get a book deal. We exist in a system that categorises us and places us seemingly on different levels based on certain goals and milestones. But in that sense we’re all stuck in the matrix and what’s truly profound, what truly matters and makes us feel, is often quite disassociated from those things.

Our relationship with goals and with milestones is changing because it has to. The old methods don’t serve us anymore. They’ve made us ego-driven and competitive and therefore weak. Times are changing; we’re purging the old systems of power and control and are making room for the new. Fiona Arrigo, the psychotherapist and spiritual healer talks about stress and how there is no place for it in the new world, no house it can fester in, no corner it can feed on itself and insidiously seep in. To her mind, anything that’s attached to stress will be pushed out, pushed away, whether we like it or not. I don’t want the pressure of ‘achieving’, the stress of ‘overnight success’ the harkening for more more more in a Lacanian ‘Desire of the Other’ that will leave me perpetually hungry.

So in 2023 I am not writing lists or marking up goals, or ladening myself with requirements. I am instead, in the inimitable words of Emily Dickinson, ‘out with lanterns looking for myself’. I am on a different course and I am going to continue to try and carve out a new relational path with what it is I want. I want to meet with myself, slow down and get to know her. And her aims seem to be more involved with softness, meditation, doing less with those who mean more, creative fulfilment, self-connection and gentle, quiet bliss.

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I mean it. I’m terrible at it, and if you’re reading this my guess is you are too. It’s like we’re all part of this awful club we invented in our heads, yet none of us actually want to be a member. But we are, aren’t we? We’re card-carrying disciples of its farcical mission, of malaise productivity: to walk the tight rope of being sick whilst still remaining productive in any way we can.

I can’t be bothered to have another conversation about our unhealthy relationship with productivity where our value is tied up and sinks to the bottom of a to-do-list cesspit where Instagram announcements trump valued mental health and wellbeing. As @dudettewithsign eloquently points out: maybe we should start therapy, not a podcast. Perhaps the former should be a prerequisite for a side hustle if you’re a Type A, work-orientated junkie like me. We’re all too familiar with the cause of malaise productivity: capitalist integration of one’s value equalling productivity; the misrepresentation of overnight success; technology advances enabling one to send an email from one’s child bedroom; good old-fashioned catholic guilt. The list goes on, yet knowing and integrating these causes isn’t helping.

credit: @duddettewithasign

Instead I want to relish my stinking anxiety and ignore the scratching at my arms to check emails when my body is in pain, telling me it needs rest. Like a pig in shit I want to roam through my crazed angst which encases me like aspic when I’m sick, instead of continuing to try and work. Malaise productivity tis a madness, but also quite possibly a lost opportunity.

Last week I had a horrible flu virus that’s still lingering now, it was escorted by a heavy period and then later chaperoned by the delights of a water infection. I know, you should have seen me: it was ugly. Mark described my complexion as a shade of green which seemed to be accompanied by an, as yet, unnamed facial rash. I looked how I felt: nasty. I cancelled all my meetings and then oscillated between sitting at my desk typing away emails in a nightie and crying on the sofa because Mark wasn’t “taking how ill I am seriously.” I put an out of office on and yet replied instantly to every email I was sent. I took my laptop to bed with me – a big red burnout flag and very bad behaviour. I took client calls, edited a proposal and when I felt too weak to do that I did my accounts because that didn’t demand my ‘creative brain’ and therefore would be hugely manageable as I haemorrhaged blood, coughed my guts up and yelped whenever I needed to pee. I managed my dizziness by taking occasional breaks where I’d watch an episode of some abhorrent reality TV show which was ruined anyway by my intermittent tab changover so I could refresh emails. I did feel bad for Khloe though, and then pondered whether I should die my hair blonde again. My sister’s feelings on the matter were clear: “No, don’t do that. Calm down. You haven’t let yourself go, you’re just sick”.

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Now I really do want to give myself some credit where credit is due here. I once had a virus that was so obsessed with me it stayed for an entire month, and when it finally went away for a week, the psychopath came back and taunted me for another fortnight. I pretty much worked through the entire thing and wondered why I found myself sat at the bottom of my bed a month later begging a GP for antibiotics over the phone. (Antibiotics don’t work on viral infections). “I’m going to lose my job if I don’t get better,” I said, which wasn’t true because I’d gone to the office almost every day. She insisted the only thing that would lead to my recovery was rest and – this next verbal prescription she repeated – “drink lots of fluids”. I still find myself wondering sometimes: had I taken a solid week off and not checked work emails, would the virus have cleared up straight away?

Credit is due because I did cancel all my meetings last week, which is not something the old me would not have done. And I didn’t leave the house for six days which is growth (also post-Covid it’s apparently considered a selfish act to prioritise your desire to get things done over other people’s health). But I did mysteriously keep finding myself back at my desk which was awash with paracetamol, snotty tissues and, you guessed it: “lots of fluids”. I also found myself migrating work-related issues I felt too tired to deal with over to WhatsApp and converting calls I’d said I wasn’t well enough to take into voicenotes.

No one around me encouraged this or demanded it, no one made me feel guilty or induced this wavering angst whereby I was working – not working – working – not working… and on and on it went until I wasn’t sure if I was representing Khloe Kardashian’s memoir or acquiescing under a feather duvet with a hot water, lemon and ginger. There was anxiety about not getting better for weeks if I didn’t rest and there was anxiety about not working and ending up client-less, broke and desolate. This seems irrational because it is irrational, but with mortgage rates rocketing and a rental crisis on our hands, our sense of stability and home is in flux – the one basic human need everyone deserves assurance of is being taken away. Anyway, these contrasting anxieties battled it out but seemed stuck in a perpetual tie-break that only added to my dizziness.

It’s important to be clear: I’m not referring to long-term or chronic illness, which I’ve also experienced. This is directed at those more fleeting ailments we think we can ‘push through’. And don’t mistake this as a plea for sympathy, rather a plea for other members to come forward and reconsider their approach. Maybe it’s time to say goodbye to our fabricated worst-case scenarios, which are things like *drum roll please* our work load is shunted by a few weeks (oh no!), our clients think – even just for a moment – “what a lazy bitch”, or we get sacked. These scenarios are highly unlikely when taking just two weeks sick leave. Yet for some reason, we can’t do it, can we? We crawl through the chest infection on hands and knees, grasping desperately at some shred of ‘I’m still available’; ‘I haven’t gone anywhere’. Hybrid working holds our hand whilst stabbing us in the back: calling in sick used to mean a physical absence ensuring we left our responsibilities the hell alone instead of having unprecedented access to our virtual in-trays. Who here hasn’t zoomed with the camera off from their sick bed? Raise your hand. Why is that being normalised?

I chatted to a literary agent on the phone recently who told me her back pain had been so bad the previous week she’d “wanted to die”.

‘Did you continue working?’ I asked, curiously.

‘Yeah, I didn’t like take a week off or anything. Although I think that is a thing people do.’

I spoke to another woman with the flu who made the humorous confession that she was admittedly too ill to walk her child to nursery and yet found herself in the kitchen making ‘unnecessary muffins’ said child would never eat. When I casually mentioned to another friend I was getting mercilessly attacked by mother nature and an AWOL immune system from below the waist, she dropped in: ‘oh they think I’ve got shingles’. She said she’d had it before and would ‘keep an eye on it’. I never got round to asking who they were. I’m assuming a medical professional, or a conscientious loved one. Identifying the cause clearly isn’t the salve because here we still are: Flu Melon, Shingles Melon, Bad-Back Melon and Everything-Below-the-Waist Melon, still partaking in this bleak painting of malaise productivity, a triptych of toxicity, cruelty and inefficiency.

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I think the problem is that we’ve lost respect and appreciation for being sick. Now hear me out! There are things to be discovered from illness, new parts of ourselves to be acquainted with in our untrammelled imagination, new realms in our heart and mind when our perspective is shifted, and perhaps our inner demons can be more easily purged. When I had Covid last summer, it brought up so much shadow work, as if all my wounding and deepest insecurities were pushed to the surface. I found myself accusing Mark of plotting to have an affair (I had a very high fever). He hadn’t left the house in days, the only thing that boy was plotting was my next meal and how to coerce me into the tub. It’s odd but the experience sort of expelled something between us, gave way to a fresh layer of intimacy.

In Virginia Woolf’s ‘On Being Ill’ where she writes about the cultural taboos of illness, she explores sickness as a spiritual awakening, some bridge to undiscovered paths of the soul.

I want to expunge malaise productivity. I want to languish in the bright flowers of my menstrual-induced temperature and remember what it feels like to while away under a duvet on the sofa in front of Disney films. I want to be a little slummock in unwashed sheets and spend time with a pain so natural it’s more real than any ‘I’m sorry to chase you but…’ I want my heart rate to slow down so that it rivals that of a hibernating tortoise, slowly slowly into relaxation as a state of jouissance. I want to stagnate; be so still I can hear the coalition of white blood cells heading forth for battle. I want to fall down and into my malaise, relish it, like that pig in shit.

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There’s a good chance I’m rebranding sickness as productivity and selling it back to myself. Sounds likely, doesn’t it? But what is helpful is just talking about it with one another. A fellow melon said to me: “I want to absolve myself of it, it’s such a waste of feeling, so reductive.” Hearing those words made me settle into myself like the ginger steeping in my mug of fluids and think: it’s okay. It’s okay to stop, to close the laptop and say no when your body is in pain. But it’s a hell of a lot easier when we feel we’re all doing it together. Let’s value the ‘wastes and deserts of the soul’ where true, unrelenting rest feels so god damn good that nothing can compete or mend our bodies so miraculously.

I failed this time, naturally otherwise this piece would be nothing short or an earnest brag or a lecture no one asked for. I failed. But next time I am going to do better.

Join me in saying farewell to malaise productivity.

Adieu.   

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It is with great pleasure that I’m able to share with you today that we’ve awarded our £6000 grant to Marissa Mireles Hinds who is working on her first novel, Sucre. A blend of magic realism and historical fiction, the novel will explore themes of (anti)colonialism, black history, fear of motherhood, Caribbean and African spiritualism, family and identity.

Sucre is a multi-generational saga about the family of Ahan Vita, a fourteen-year-old girl haunted by secrets, magic and a generational curse. During the end of the 18th century, in a small village called Sarakoum, Ahan lives hidden from a coven of witches known as "The Othermen” - colonists and the Portuguese papacy - by her grandmother’s magic and for over fifteen years no one can find it except those who already know where to look.

Marissa is a London-based Afro-Latinx and Caribbean American poet, filmmaker, writer, and founder of film and music collective creative until death and co-founder of babes in development – a safe ideation and growth incubator for black women and non-binary writers, filmmakers and creatives. Her writing has also previously been shortlisted for the RSL Sky Arts Award.

I really want to first thank those businesses and individuals who have helped us fund this grant, without them it would never have been possible:

The Bergstrom Studio Grant is funded by Bergstrom Studio, Brazen, Midas PR, MØRNING, Emma Gannon, Gina Martin, Katherine Ormerod, Laura Bates and Sophia Thakur.

We received hundreds of applications and the standard of submissions was incredibly high. So if you applied, thank you so much, we really enjoyed reading your material.

Marissa told me: "I want to thank everyone who contributed to the grant, the studio and Abigail and Megan for their consideration and for believing in me and the project. I have been working on Sucre over the course of the last ten years; fitting it between my work and my personal life. This grant will allow me to continue my investigations into important historical elements of the slave trade, Caribbean slave narratives and Haitian Revolution on which the historical nature of the book is based, as well as my research into physics, religion, fables and spirituality. With this grant I will be able to focus the first half of next year solely on finishing my novel and travelling to important sites in the Caribbean which will have a great impact on the work.”

As I’ve written before, I know how hard it is to write a book and I know first-hand the sacrifices it takes. To be in a position to support and platform an aspiring novelist brings me so much joy. Thank you so much for being a part of this community and please join me in congratulating Marissa.

So far in this newsletter I’ve spent a lot of time reflecting on the process of writing fiction. And if you want to get your novel published you’ll need to finish writing the book in its entirety; so here’s some advice on “How do you know if your novel draft is actually ready to send to an agent?”. But in today’s newsletter I want to focus on non-fiction, and instead of sharing advice on what should be included, I think it’s better (and a little spicier) to start with those kisses of death that will irritate and irk a prospective agent or publisher, causing their eyes to roll to the back of their head.

In book jacket conversations I always tell my authors to also share the covers that they don’t like because as much as the covers they admire and which signify their tastes are helpful, so are the fonts, imagery and designs of those they hate. One offsets the other and can guide the designer in a more streamlined direction. Much like that, I’m sharing the things that will make an editor balk, an agent cringe and cause a sales person to close the tab on your proposal all together.

Unlike a novel you don’t have the luxury – or perhaps the opportunity – for the reader to fall in love with your book, its quirks and misdemeanours, the elegant charting of character develop and that sudden swoop into a realisation no one saw coming. No, instead you have to make them fall in love with the idea of you, which makes it easier in some regards and much more difficult in others.

Imagine then that the novel is the warts-and-all, enduring relationship whereby the publisher has learned to love all sides and versions of you. Has seen passed the projection of who you want to be, straight into the heart of who you really are. They’ve accepted your foibles and the small irritations you invoke, learning to give context even to your faults and indeed are willing to work through them with you. Well, the non-fiction proposal in comparison then is the beguiling and early game of seduction. It is the art of shimmering possibility, glazed with hope for all that lies ahead. It flirts with the positioning you might birth together; teases the retailers you may go on to secure; and dangles the receptive and hungry readership of those who won’t be able to resist buying a copy. A non-fiction proposal precedes the honeymoon period – it is butterflies in the tummy before you’ve ever even met, excited emails sent back and forth at a publishing house: “Oh my god we have to publish this!” “Agreed. When can we meet the author?”

There will be a newsletter about mastering the art of seduction in a non-fiction proposal, as well as the practicalities and format for how to write one, so do subscribe so you don’t miss out on that.

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But for now, let’s turn our attention to the six immediate turn offs, the gruelling red flags and those grubby overused statements that turn noses up and may stifle an opportunity.

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Huddling away for an entire week with twelve women up in the Spanish mountains of Gaucin might not sound like everyone’s cup of tea. I confess, as an introvert and someone who gets my energy from being alone, there was some trepidation of what I might have to say to these very different women, in different stages of their lives, living in different parts of the world and indeed, who may have come to the retreat for very different reasons. And yet, much like the women’s circles that are run by the same psychotherapist and healer, Fiona Arrigo, there was a synchronicity and a connection which was profoundly moving. Before I go any further, I’d like to bring to the fore that it’s assuredly excruciating to write this piece without at least a sprinkling of cynicism, a peppering of satire or just a light dab of dark humour. But I feel I can only write in sincerity if I am going to describe what happened up on those mountains where my heart was completely, and ever so tenderly, blown open.

There is a hardness that women have had to cultivate to exist and survive within a patriarchy. We wear thick armour, are made to feel as though there is a limited amount of space available for us and that we must achieve certain material accolades to be deserving of that space, leading to a malaise of competition with other women. We are compressed so tightly in a cycle of pressure and stress, pressure and stress; it grinds us down to a capitalist wet dream as we strive to be happier, cleverer, thinner, wittier, better than, more than. And that’s all before we even consider that a woman is killed by a man every three days in the UK alone, meaning we live in a state of unconscious alert for our safety. The hardness makes sense to me, all things considered. But it is a heavy burden, one we not only construct, but need to maintain and carry – it’s a capitalistic programme coded into us. In our modern lives there is so much noise, false information, fabricated competitiveness and we get so lost in it all, tangled up, distracted from ourselves and our intention, often existing in a scarcity mindset.

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My system has been so clogged up from colluding with that which doesn’t align with my value system. This spell of fear and unworthiness has been cast over so many of us and is so deep, we prioritise wanting to achieve and climbing the ladder over our wellbeing and happiness. Sold this message that keeping up, fixing things, keeping going, pushing harder and doing better is all that matters, but perhaps it’s time we reclaimed our own thoughts. As Fiona eloquently put it: ‘Getting it right is not appealing to me. Perfection is a patriarchal disease; its anti-life and its cousin is control.’  Many of us are shackled to patriarchal stories that dehumanise us – stories that guilt us for even desiring the apple, when in fact we should be taking a large fucking bite and establishing our own truths. We all have contracts with the world and this retreat enabled me to consider what I’m in bidding agreements with and whether the terms still serve me.

My intention in hanging up my cynicism was to reconnect with my spirituality. I had, what was for me, a significant spiritual awakening several years ago which was followed by a sacred practise to honour that.  But over the years it’s faded. I met someone, fell in love, bought a flat and my whole self has been very much tied up in the material world and ways of being. I’d forgotten to honour, to hold sacred, to look inwards and I was beginning to lose touch with any sense of my higher self. We discussed our human tendency to corrupt and engineer spirituality which is something I also think about a lot and that makes me hesitant to align myself… yogi bunnies, green juices, self-preoccupied manifestation, charlatan healers and so on. This is something I explored in my novel, What a Shame.

What I was craving was the opportunity to deepen into myself which demanded heart opening, vulnerability, discomfort and a conscious reflection and confronting of the way I’ve been living. It required me to look at the toxicity of the world and the role I play in it: how might I be toxic? I wanted to connect with the softness of what life has to offer, to reconnect with myself as a living breathing organism through meditation, ceremony, group work and breath work (which if you’ve never tried before was mind blowing). Up in those mountains we cultivated a medicine basket together, one of softness, sensuality and breath, a feminine consciousness that we can reach for and use in life. I pondered how receiving I can be, how allowing I can be and how tender I can be. I reminded myself that everything doesn’t have to be an effort, or achieved through strife. Some things arrive with ease when you – as one woman beautifully put it – ‘invite grace to the table’.

We forget that it is possible to exist outside of the matrix and live in more harmony with ourselves, abundantly in our own rhythm and time. And to re-remember we need to ask ourselves this question: what are the master agents of fear that stop me from thriving? It’s about understanding the systems we’ve given away our power to, systems that offer to feed us and yet keep us perpetually hungry. Fiona thinks this hunger comes from a lack of holiness inside and that one of the first things that is taken from our psychic gut is trust. She asked me to look at the patterns I’ve relied on to give me security and stability. Were they real? Did they serve me anymore? Or were they prohibiting me from tapping into something that I know is deeper than what I’ve been taught. I was offered the occasion to pause and look.

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I had the opportunity to journey within myself and it was a transformative experience - and I don’t use that word lightly - I’ve returned home with tools and wisdom that are making my day-to-day life better. It’s enabled me to reclaim a new way of being. It allowed my nervous system to reset and recalibrate before going back into the reality of my own life. There is no such thing as the pill of immediate change; real change requires taking small and consistent steps forward each day. But I’ve rekindled greater self-awareness and self-honouring. This retreat was about climbing out of the box of what we’ve been told and not expecting anything to be true unless we’ve examined it to make it our own truth first.

It was a week of making new friends, meditation, yoga, hiking, delicious food, massage, craniosacral therapy, reconnecting with nature, cacao ceremony, conscious cinema, quantum energy healing, acupuncture and so much more. I feel truly grateful for the experience and am determined to integrate it.

I have to credit this entire piece to Fiona, it’s made up of her teachings and I’d like to share three of her ‘Grandmother Wisdoms’ because I think they’re useful to reflect on:

1.     Everything Changes and Everything Ends

We need to learn to stop clinging, to stop holding on. We need to get more comfortable with letting go otherwise we live in fear of endings. Everything has a cycle, just as nature has her seasons, we too will have winters and summers in our lives and we need allow them and be accepting. From an end springs a new beginning, whether I like it or not.

2.    Life Doesn’t Owe You Comfort

Under the spell of modern life we freak out when things don’t go how we want them to. We can be brittle and tense. But we need to move away from this auto response of dissatisfaction. Things don’t always go our way. Life isn’t always fair. Pain is part of it, and it’s how we grow. I need to acquaint myself with discomfort and let go of my entitlement.

3.     Romantic Love Might Not Be What You Expect

We give our energy to old notions of romantic love. The idea of a soul mate has been so brutally miss sold to us. You aren’t going to meet the exact man or woman to take all your troubles away. You are going to meet the exact man or woman to mirror some ancestral energy that hasn’t been cleared. You are going to meet the exact man or woman to play out your karma. My partner Mark is the exact person to help me break down my ego – the narrative of prince charming is a myth; he is a unicorn.

I also wanted to share some journaling questions which I’m currently working through myself:

1.     How much do you savour life?

2.     Why do you think you are here?

3.     How kind are you to yourself?

4.     Where do you not treat yourself well?

5.     What are the master agents of fear that stop you from thriving?

6.     What story is running you and what are you giving your power to?

7.     Who would you be if you didn’t have to achieve?

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If you’re interested, here’s some more info about the retreat I went on:

Fiona Arrigo

Women’s Wisdom Retreat

Dominique Stelling

Silvia Venadita

Amanda Rothwell

If there are things that resonate with you in this piece, I’d really like to ask that you share it with just one other person. And I’d love you to leave a comment with your thoughts. I suppose it feels quite vulnerable talking about my spirituality in this space but I really feel something powerful can shift when we come together and reflect. 

Lastly but certainly not least, I want to thank and honour the women who participated in the retreat with me. For your fierce rooting, your deep wisdom, your boundless vulnerability and the power in your softness. Thank you for being on the other side of that door. Thank you for the holding. Thank you for making it safe. You all hold a special place in my heart and have paved a way for the sort of connection I’d usually shy away from or grunt at. I am (even in spite of my more cynical self), ever so truly and sincerely grateful.

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I’ve not talked about my burnout in this newsletter yet, but I have talked about it a lot online and still regularly get asked about it at events. I’ve also written about it in the national press, such as this piece in the Sunday Times. It talks about how I got my burnout and how I recovered. Only the thing is, I’m starting to wonder if it’s that simple, or if ­– like most bad habits in life – I’m going to be circling the exhaustion drain throughout the course of my life.

Briefly, here’s what happened to me: I worked so hard and pushed myself to the limits of my endurance in every way possible until I broke my body so badly that I couldn’t walk my dog or even water my house plants. I spent six months unable to work, which eventually resulted in me having to leave my job permanently. At the time, everything in my life seemed to be going very well: the literary agency I had set up was thriving, I’d been nominated for literary agent of the year at the British Book Awards and I’d just been offered a book deal for my debut novel. I had a great social life, hey, I even had abs. In some sort of desperate urge for flawlessness – and an addiction to the adrenalin of success – I had achieved all that I had wanted, before swiftly crashing and burning into a whole new set of circumstances where suddenly I found myself unemployed, in-between homes and facing a slow and confronting recovery. I was open about this period of my life, sharing this rudderless and painful time and I wrote about living in liminality for ELLE Magazine. 

Recently, presenter and Sunday Times bestselling author Anna Whitehouse, spoke on the Women’s Prize for Fiction podcast about burnout, and something she shared startled me:

“We need to stop glamourising overworking. Please. The absence of sleep, good diet, exercise, relaxation and time with friends and family isn’t something to be applauded. Too many people wear their burnout as a badge of honour. And it needs to change.”

I was horrified at the idea that burnout might be some sort of decorative accolade, a talisman for ascendency, and yet somehow there was something about what she said that felt a little too close to home. In my old life every ticking minute was accounted for from the moment I opened my eyes. I’d combine a walk to the Tube with a client call, and a trip to get a bikini wax with an opportunity to order those Mother’s Day flowers. Each action was multitasked, every half-hour slot blocked out in my diary. I’d get urinary infections regularly because I’d be too busy to go to the toilet; I stopped noticing my swollen bladder — I was distracted. Busyness was a badge of honour and it was the go-to response to the question: ‘How are things?’ There is nothing glamorous about living like this. There is nothing fortifying about maximising your productivity at every turn. It leads to a joyless numbness. And it eventually makes you seriously ill.

And yet, I cannot deny that trajectory, shun the network it helped me build nor trivialise those accolades it afforded me, which led to me setting up my own business where I now have more autonomy and control over my life than I ever have. Burnout is strongly linked and suffered more in minority groups, meaning when you’re in a system of power and you’re in the minority within that structure — be it through class, gender, race, disability or religion — you have to fight and push harder for your seat at the table, to even be heard, and are therefore more likely to burn out. As a gobby girl from Newport, fresh off the National Express, I was a shock to the publishing system and could smell the stench of underestimation that surrounded me. I knew I had to work twice as hard and be three times as good in order to be taken seriously in an ecosystem that’s dominated by men at the top, where nepotism is exalted not shamed and where the vast majority of the workforce have been privately educated. Of course, a lot has and is still changing in publishing; it was a different beast over a decade ago when I first entered it’s belly. It’s interesting then, that when the industry is more diverse than it’s ever been to date, it’s facing industry-wide burnout.

When I announced that my novel was being published a couple of years ago someone commented on my Instagram ­– and although not articulated exactly like this – it basically asked:

“Why are you talking about an achievement like your book and sharing that online when you’ve had burnout and it’s probably been a cause?”

There was a lot more accusation in how this comment was worded and I felt outraged at the time. How dare someone I’ve never even met and who knows nothing about me imply I can’t celebrate or take pride in making one of my dreams come true? A dream I’d worked so hard for and earned off my own back.

But is this a fair question?

At the time I didn’t think so, but now I honestly don’t know. Just this week I remembered that comment and I’ve been thinking a lot about it. Was that me, glamorising my burnout? Not intentionally of course, not consciously certainly, but perhaps evidencing in some way that self-sacrificial energy is the way to success and getting what you want.

Now of course, this dichotomy is complicated. A lot of us have to work hard to achieve things, we aren’t handed them. And hard work can look ugly, can mean relinquishing things that are good for us, things we need to live healthily. I did suffer from severe exhaustion but that doesn’t mean I shouldn’t be able to celebrate my achievements, which were and continue to be hard won. What I do think though, is that we all need to start being a little bit more transparent about the sacrifices those achievements take.

Charlene Gisele, a Cambridge-educated life coach who specialises in burnout prevention and sustainable high-performance, said something in an interview recently that left me humbled: “burnout is overdoing and under being.”

The level to which that resonates makes me feel quite emotional. My business is going well, I have some exciting writing projects in the pipeline and my career feels as though it’s on a successful trajectory once more. But as someone who loves what they do, and as a self-confessed “success” junkie, I have to battle with myself and work incredibly hard to be instead of placing all my value in doing. This battle happens every single day. Sometimes I’m victorious and manage to strike the balance, and other times I completely fail, sliding down the banks of my energy reserves and into the brown muck of exhaustion. Sometimes I feel proud of myself for turning down something that the junkie in me wants, but that I know doesn’t serve me. Other times I feel saddened when I give in and book a two-week holiday because I’m in desperate need of a rest, and not because I want or deserve fun and quality time off.

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*And a “vacation” is not a vacation if you’re working, that’s called remote working, okay folks? But managing my susceptibility to overworking is a process and it’s really fucking hard. I want to be honest about that and tell you how unglamorous it is. This is the thing about success: the end point, or the point at which we can ‘announce’ or share is seductive and positively dazzling, but the late nights, the missing out on fun and not being able to go to that concert or party, the foregoing of trips away, the tension it creates in your relationship because you’re stressed and distracted and the sacrifice of not seeing family isn’t so desirable, is it?

Since my burnout I have significantly changed the way I live. I’ve had a lot of therapy and I’ve put many things in place to ensure I live a life of being and not just doing. I am the Duchess of boundaries, saying ‘no’ pleases me and I take *vacations. I also judge my success on the quality of my input and not the volume of it. I have yellow and red flags in-built, such as taking my laptop to bed because I feel so tired, but I want to keep working. These things electrocute my senses, they scare the shit out of me so I readjust my balance and ensure I don’t get stuck in the sinking mud of severe burnout.

I voicenoted my best friend Lydia this week, in a bind about whether to go to an event. The options were: (i) go out, be shiny, proactive and “do”, be seen and gain points of relevancy or (ii) stay home in bed, order Salvation in Noodles and watch back-to-back episodes of ‘Workin Moms’. My issue with these two options lies within their polarisation. I felt I should go to this event, but actually I was knackered from my working week. Yet the flipside wasn’t cooking a delicious meal to nourish myself, going to yoga and breathing through any stress being stored in my body, or even just do something fun. It was numbing myself out with Deliveroo and Netflix: red flag. I couldn’t remember the last time I’d exercised or cooked a meal.

There is nothing glamorous about working yourself so hard that you start to forget how to relish being. Yet in the same breath, there are setbacks and compromises to be made if we want to achieve things like writing a book, getting promoted, starting a successful business and so on –perhaps we all need to start being more transparent about that. There is no conclusion to this piece, no neatly-tied-up nugget of advice. It’s hard to look at. I am ambitious and I want ample rest; I want to thrive in my career and my personal life. Wanting both those things is harder than just dedicating yourself tirelessly to work. This is a living topic by its very nature and it manifests differently for each of us. All we can do is question ourselves: how far is too far? All we can do is try to be self-aware: what systems can we put in place to protect ourselves?

I’d love to hear your thoughts in the comments:

Is this something you are battling too?

Do you have coping mechanisms in place?

Do you think we should be more transparent about the sacrifices we make for our success?

Please leave your thoughts and stories below, and once again thanks for reading.

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I hope my agent isn’t reading this, Kate, look away. I went on a self-inflicted writing retreat last week and I didn’t write a single syllable. Not one new word of my second novel, deserving of a more capable partner in lexicon. Around halfway through the barren and pointless ‘retreat’ I called my boyfriend Mark, making pained cat-like noises, heavily breathing down the receiver and whimpering about the devastating and irreversible loss of time. It was slipping away from me, faster and more assuredly as the days went by. And I’d achieved the grand total sum of nothing.

Meanwhile my sister was in Greece, doing what any sane person should with their cherished, finite annual leave: sunbathing in 33-degree heat, voraciously reading paperbacks, taking naps with the sand soft under her back and eating so many Greek salads that she’d soon begin to loathe the feeble crumbling mess of feta. I was staying at her place, a quaint sun-lit garden flat with room for quiet and space for inspiration, free from Luca’s endless demands for walks and Mark’s curious pillow talk that mean I rarely get to my laptop on time. My own week’s annual leave would be conducive, laced in productivity and the gorgeous stench of self-aggrandising achievement.

Writing retreats are expensive, but also – out of my criminal desire for productivity – I didn’t want to waste two days travelling back and forth my parents’ caravan in Devon (where I usually write, an ode to which I shall share one day). Travelling takes time, navigating myself takes time, but my sisters flat is a mere 15-minute walk from my own. I packed up. I was beaming with intention and naïve hopes for a better story and more convincing characters. My novel was 20,000 words in length at the time and I set myself a target of writing at least another 10,000 words, knowing I’d be slightly miffed if I didn’t get closer to 15,000. And then, nothing. Well, if I’m being honest there was some activity, I managed to in fact pare back my book, judiciously reducing the word count to 18,000 words.

Overwhelming silence wrapped itself around me, panic set in and the audacity of the blank white screen showed no mercy for my efforts. This was followed by a catastrophic disintegration of faith in the idea and blistering delusions of myself as a writer. I watched the ‘Time Travellers Wife’ on Sky, enjoying the luxury amenities on offer. I wandered around, looked inside my sister’s wardrobe and tried some things on, I’ve a wedding coming up. Then I went to bed for a nap and slept for three solid hours, waking to darkness and the cruel reality of yet another wasted day. Time evaporating like those 2000 words from my novel. But where had it gone? I made some beans on toast. I watched another episode and lamented that I wasn’t Audrey Niffenegger. It was awful.  

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I’d gifted myself a week to enjoy writing, to take steps forward with this story, but I had failed. Time is my most precious asset, nothing else compares, is quite as relieving or valuable to me. It cuts deep when it’s wasted, and by wasted I mean not used to its full and utmost potential. I fought the inertia, tried everything I could to coax some words out, any words, but in the end I stopped bothering to even open my laptop.

On the last day of my ‘retreat’ I finally acquiesced. I completely let go of my frustration and it didn’t matter that my pocket of new words was empty. I made peace with the most infertile juncture of my writing career to date and possibly the worst week of annual leave ever taken. Maybe I’d needed to rest. I’d needed to not have lavish staycation plans and to be alone in my procrastination. Indeed, time made a petulant student out of me. I could neither control nor master it, bleeding minutes dry with bountiful creativity was not in my arsenal. I needed no plan or destination; my lesson was in the ambling loss of time where nothing happened and I accomplished nada.

Come the end of the week, I realised that was fine. Better than fine, it might even be admirable. Although uncomfortable and at times, painstaking, it refuelled a part of me I struggle to nourish. I let go. And when I finally did, I sat down with a note pad and started scribbling, pulling apart storylines and going into the pasts and motivations of my characters. I spanned out into my ideas, solidifying plot points and etched out a narrative arch where storylines threaded in or were axed out. I returned to my trusty school-day ‘bubble diagram’ and locked up my sister’s flat with a folded sheet of A4 paper in my back pocket. It wasn’t an invaluable piece of work, but it was the sum of my efforts, evidence of some unconscious Tetris in my mind where things had shifted or broken down.

Writing a novel isn’t linear, it holds and responds to no metric and challenges us in ways we can’t prepare for. We are so attuned to instant gratification and thrive off an undeviating sense of productivity which really only tells half the story when it comes to creativity. Sometimes moving forward with your writing means letting go, means doing nothing, means acquiescing to that which you’re trying to write over and around. Don’t get me wrong, I’m still pissed at my 18,000 words and the reverse progress, but I’ve made peace with those steps back and have some sense of their integrity in this weird and thankless process of finishing a first draft.   

Writing a novel never looks or feels how we expect it to. So don’t fight yourself, allow the process to play out, be patient, trust and when it feels really fucking hopeless know that sometimes it’s meant to be just that.

I know the real sacrifices it takes to write a book. People often ask me: ‘did you always want to write a novel?’. It’s a fair question. One that I’ve sat with and given a lot of thought. I think the assumption is that writing my own book was always the dream I held for myself, but in truth, I’m not the sort of person who dreams for things that aren’t possible. At the stage in my career when my book published, it made perfect sense. All I did was talk about books, recommend them, hold them up in front of my face, and my whole existence – let alone job – was seemingly tied up in the magic of literature, dressed in a garment of words. But where I came from, people like me didn’t write books. Before I got my first job in publishing, I’d never known a published author or anyone who had ever written a book (with the exception of the academics who taught me when I eventually got to university). Those people just weren’t on my radar, they weren’t in my life. They were super human, people who were immortalised on bookshelves and interviewed on television.

It was a big enough leap to hop off the National Express and land my first job in publishing as a publicity assistant (sidenote: it was less of a ‘land’ and more of a year-long slap in the face, suffering gruelling rejection after rejection) More on that another time. But seriously, getting my foot in the door to serve coffee in meetings to a novelist was dream enough come true. Being present in editorial meetings and getting to listen to those clever, educated people was a luxury I never thought reality would afford me. Putting pen to paper, that was never a consideration. Not for years to come. I nearly didn’t take the first editorial role offered to me because I didn’t think I was good enough. Even a senior male editor encouraged me to really go away and “think seriously if it was the right role for me”. Turns out it was, and I commissioned my first book within six months of taking the job (Everyday Sexism by Laura Bates), breaking (I’m told) a company record. And it was only through becoming a good editor that I ever thought I’d be a decent agent, and only through being a successful agent that I ever thought I had something to say, something worth putting in a book.

In actuality, it took for me to have a physical space of my own (my first one bed flat in London which I rented age 30 for £1250+bills which nearly crippled me) and a decent income that I could support myself on without running out of money at the end of every month. You see how the space and the disposable income don’t really run hand-in-hand? And then there was the final ingredient to finding my own bollocks to start writing: a career in publishing with unprecedented exposure to writers, the process and how it all really works. Without these three things, I would never have written a novel. I know that for a fact.

And it’s not just about space and money. The sacrifices you have to make to write a novel are endless. You jeopardise relationships with those you love most because you need to be alone to write; you have so much less time available to you and there’s less opportunity for rest which means you sacrifice your health and wellbeing because something has to give; you often tread back through previous trauma or difficult emotional experiences to use as the raw materials to construct characters or storylines; and you sacrifice immediate gratification – writing is about the long game and you will have days where the whole thing feels utterly hopeless.

I started Something to Say because I want to reach more people and make advice and guidance around publishing and writing more accessible, not to mention demystifying some of the idiosyncrasies of the industry and how it ticks. You are a paid subscriber, and in paying for your subscription, you’re helping me support those who aren’t in a position to pay, but who still deserve more access to information and the industry. I’d love to hear more from you though, especially if you’re writing something and especially if there are specific things you’re interested in and would like me to write about.  So please leave your thoughts and questions in the comment box.

I wanted to let you know first that Bergstrom Studio is launching a grant next week, which will be open for submissions for a month, and I wanted to give you a head start in case you plan to apply. You’re the first to be receiving this information and can apply now before the grant officially opens on Monday.

When I first started thinking about setting up my own business, the visual and image that kept coming back to me was of a community for writers to connect and grow together. I knew I wanted to support and encourage both published authors and aspiring writers to find their voices. When I launched Bergstrom Studio I made the commitment to spend our first year fundraising and to donate some of our profits after the first year of business to this grant. It’s to help support an underrepresented writer in the UK, someone who is working on or wanting to start writing their first novel. I know writing a book takes sacrifices but I also know that so many writers don't have those privileges to sacrifice in the first place. Many aspiring writers are on the back foot and not as visible or afforded the opportunities that others receive. I'm hopeful this money will make a huge difference to someone out there who has the talent and deserves the chance to pursue their potential. I know it would have made a huge difference to me.

We are giving a £6000 grant to support someone working on their debut novel. This is no-strings-attached financial support, the money might be used to cover time to write, childcare, a physical space to write, it may subsidise income or rent.

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The Grant Criteria:

-       UK RESIDENT

-       FIRST NOVEL (i.e. you have never had a novel published)  

-       UNDERREPRESENTED VOICE

-       UNAGENTED

To apply, please send the below as three separate attachments to thegrant@bergstromstudio.co.uk

1). A 600x word synopsis of your book
2). The first two chapters of the book (or a maximum of 5000 words of material from your novel).
3). A personal statement about you and why your voice is underrepresented (a maximum of 1000x words)

Please do let me know if any of you decide to apply!

The Bergstrom Studio Grant is funded by Bergstrom Studio, Brazen, Midas PR, MØRNING, Emma Gannon, Gina Martin, Katherine Ormerod, Laura Bates and Sophia Thakur.

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The idea of humans gathering around the fire pit is tale as old as time, and yet the circle format is still employed every single day. Quakers hold their meetings in circles; children are educated in circles, gathering on the floor to learn their ABCs; AA meetings are held in circles; and notice too then the next time your family are in crisis how you naturally congregate in a circle to create a setting where difficult matters can be deconstructed. A circle is a closed line that divides the plane into two regions: the exterior and the interior. There are those who are in and those who aren’t. And when you’re on the inside of that protected space – metaphorically or not – something special can happen.

I first became interested in women’s circles when researching for my novel, I wanted to explore them as an environment for self-recovery, an avenue for healing. The first one I ever attempted was with my sisters. We met for a spa weekend in West Wales, I think swimming, eating warm welsh cakes and taking a break from doom scrolling was on their agenda, not the “woo woo” bag of crystals I whipped from my pocket and suggest we place at the centre of the table before divulging our repressed psychological innards. I was perhaps a tad overzealous. And they reluctant, if not suspicious. What did I want them to say? And was there really a need to construct such a formal temenos? But it was undoubtedly a healing experience for all of us; we created a space to voice things that previously we’d felt we could not say. Worse even, things we’d not been conscious of ourselves until we formed a container to put them in.

Such a gathering is ancient and transcends many cultures, the purpose of women’s circles is plentiful: spiritual practices; menstruation traditions; to enhance support; as lunar calendar celebrations, the list goes on. They span and are sacred to many religions, practised since the 5th and 6th centuries, from Native American tribes to Wiccan paganism, Christianity, Judaism and so on. But it’s probably fair to say they fell out of favour in Western culture, this lack of coming together as women is linked to a detachment from feminine power in a patriarchy that has revered masculine traits and ways of being and is seeking – now more than ever - to repress and control women and their bodies.

I am also part of an international women’s circle organised by the psychotherapist and mentor, Fiona Arrigo, which I’ve been joining virtually for over a year now. We meet monthly on a Saturday, and I’ll level with you: getting my arse there isn’t always easy. I’ll groan at my alarm clock and crash my head back into the pillow with a burning reluctance, eventually forcing unwilling limbs into the closest available clothing. Tired and wishing I’d just taken the morning to rest, once I show up we talk, meditate, sometimes we do Qigong, other times we put music on and dance our arses off. (Yes, I can hear myself). The idea was at first terrifying to me too, and I can’t yet bring myself to shake about on screen, instead opting for a relatively fearless jig with my camera off. But watching those much braver women dance about fills me with an abundance of joy that’s hard to put to words, yet I want to try and share a piece of it with you here. A women’s circle after all is a place for transparency, in the eyes of other women we can’t hide. And it always ends up being the most restorative part of my weekend.

It feels important to mention that hanging out in a large group of women is far from my ideal set-up. The thought actually makes my colon convulse. I’ve had complicated experiences within this dynamic (I think many of us have). Perhaps for me it started with the bullying I experienced at school – teenage girls can be the cruellest – and it can still be daunting to be in a room full of adult women to this day. There’s a whole other newsletter in unpicking the reasons why – the internalised misogyny marking other women out as the competition in a world that tells us space is finite might be a good place to start. The women I meet with in my circle are from all over the world, and be it substance-abuse recovery, going through a divorce, battling with the process of writing a book or even just feeling lonely – our problems, very much like our physical selves, at first seem miles apart. And yet, and yet, the conversation always leads to a synchronicity that surprises me. At the root of our struggle is a bridge. At the bottom of our narratives a collective feeling, and even though it shape shifts within us too quickly to name, in these circles we’re able to connect through it. I think the feeling is imbedded in our suppression, attached to a mutual pain from suffering and restriction that’s been so regularly and readily inflicted.

The circle establishes a very different style of communication: much unlike a rectangular board meeting, it assigns value to every individual equally and moves us into a safe non-hierarchical set-up in which everyone present has the opportunity to speak without interruption. A women’s circle isn’t just a physical thing, I find it helpful to think of it as an emotional or psychological space. A circle is a temenos, which is the Greek word for a sacred precinct. Or if psychology is more your thing, temenos was one of Carl Jung’s favourite expressions and related to the magic circle which acted as a safe space for psychological work to take place.

I have carried out women’s circles with close friends too, on a Tuesday night in lieu of bookclub or the more classic dinner party format. And I’ve discovered things about them that I’ve never seen or noticed before. It has stimulated the deepest self-compassion whilst also making me more considerate of those around me. After all, we’re all going through something almost all of the time. Women have been socialised to be caregivers, it’s ingrained in us as daughter, friend, wife, mother and yet caring for ourselves falls to the bottom of the pile. Wait, is it even in the pile? Maybe, coming together with other women is exactly what we need to nourish and replenish ourselves, to access a mode of rest we otherwise struggle to allow for. Maybe we can find some encouragement in a political and social climate that keeps knocking us to our knees. Maybe it will remind us that we deserve to be intact and not slowly and continuously broken down by the problematic narratives and often dangerous realities that surround us.

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You might like to have a go at creating your own little temenos, if so, instinct is the real guide but respect and confidentiality are essential. You can find lots of information about this online, but here are some quick-fire ideas to get you going:

1.     Suggest it to those you think might be interested and don’t be embarrassed – most people are on the market for true connection.

2.     You can hold the circle in all different kinds of spaces – in your living room, sat on a blanket in the garden, around the kitchen table. But a private setting is best.

3.     Set an intention, start by holding hands (don’t cringe, stay with me) and state why you wanted to bring these women together: to connect; to share how you’re all feeling; to check in with one another in a more considered way etc.

4.     Let go of hands and take it in turns to speak, each individual should have their moment to talk into the circle for as long as they need. No interruptions! No reassurances, or words of encouragement. And if the person needs to let some emotions out, let them, don’t limit them by comforting or soothing (at least not until the end of the ceremony).

5.     You will know when a person is done talking and then the next person can start. When everyone has had their turn, you can open the circle out into group conversation and dialogue.

6.     Don’t worry if you feel like you have nothing to say! You might just be surprised by what comes out when you allow yourself the space.

With what we’re facing at the moment creating space for ourselves as women is more invaluable than ever. But equally I see no reason why these circles need to be limited to women only and think they can offer a lot of people community and support.

If you do try your own circle, please let me know how it goes and share in the comments below.

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This is is me, sat in my living room writing the ‘About Page’ for my Substack, carving up into succinct slices what it is I have to offer a person with my writing just mere weeks before launching. I sent it to my best friend Lydia with the message:

“Setting up her Substack and outlining her offering”

As someone who has built a career (and a business no less) from championing and supporting other people’s writing, it might sound odd to hear that putting my own out into the world feels like a terrifying onslaught on the self. It might also explain the use of the third person in my caption. It’s hard to examine being so bad at something that you’re so great at doing for other people. It’s a conundrum, or rather juxtaposition, that I would suggest many of us come up against.

Ask yourself this: what are you bloody great at doing for other people that you’re shit at doing for yourself? It could be making a cup of tea, or finding the time to steep in a hot bath – you just don’t think you’re worthy of the extra stewing time, do you? Perhaps you shout from the high heavens about how great someone else’s work is or enable them to feel sexy and confident before a first date – yet you crumble into an insecure mess and give way to internal doubts when you’re under the heat. Or maybe you’re great at giving other people orgasms but very rarely take the time to give yourself that rumbling warmth. Whatever it is, that thing you’re so terrible at doing for yourself is likely one of those things you’re really in need of the most.

So, because I don’t advocate for my own writing, this Substack is going to live and breathe this lesson of helping others advocate for theirs. It is of course my job as a literary agent to pitch and sell-in books, I am responsible for getting editors and publishers excited about the vision or direction for a project. I am the first person they talk to about the material, the author and all the potential that lies therein. Good literary agents are, among many things, great sales people. I’m brilliant at selling other people’s books, fact. I’m fearless in my belief in writers and a dedicated catalyst to the journey of a book being published and the ongoing career of an author. (Because as much as it’s good to know what you’re bad at it’s also essential you acknowledge what you’re good at, yes?).

And this is what I am bad at: I am a terrible sponsor of my own writing.

At a dinner with Mark’s (my partner’s) closest friends, he dropped into conversation that my novel was being published. There were “oohs” and “wowees”, words of congratulations and support from every angle of the table, then I was asked to describe what my novel was about, and I fell short. I fell into the pomegranate salad, flat on my face. He laughed at my fawn-like freeze pose: “Babe… this is what you do for a living?” But I could not do it. My novel sounded like a floppy, wet fish in desperate need of some seasoning and a plot. How was it that I could build whole entire worlds for other people’s stories and yet gawked awkwardly like a gnome with a flaccid rod when trying to offer up my own? It’s important to note that there are no gill-bearing creatures in What a Shame, it’s just a terrible metaphor being employed by a terrible bastion of their own capabilities. And I want to get better at putting my writing out into the world. I have to.

In Julia Cameron’s ‘The Artist’s Way’ I stumbled across a disturbing ideology, or tribe, that of ‘the shadow artist’. These are the people who apparently gather around creatives or artists, they are the facilitators, the catalysts and the surrounding systems that enable and allow for the creative and their work to be done. The idea of a ‘shadow artist’ through this lens seems derogatory to me, next to the high-all-mighty and perspicacious creative, but I don’t think that’s fair or true. Some choose this role. Not everyone wants to be centre stage or have their essence held up and criticised. Indeed, one could say that the shadow artists are happier that the artists themselves – but I’m not here to make sweeping generalisations. My point is merely that we are all capable of creativity, of bringing artistic value into our lives and into the lives of others. But not all of us want to be defined by that purpose.

What shook me to attention and resonated most though, was this: Cameron writes, ‘very often audacity, not talent, makes one person an artist and another a shadow artist – hiding in the shadows, afraid to step out and expose the dream to the light, fearful that it will disintegrate to the touch.’

Many writers are too afraid to put their work in a public forum, fearful that once it misses its mark or its moment, the dream will cease to be, crumbling into nothingness. Or they are used to having a heavy editing process and a lot of eyes across their work before pressing post. I have this fear, and yet I am constantly motivating others to overcome it and put themselves out there because I believe they have something to offer, something important to say. You see, I am both an artist and a shadow artist. Collaborating with a writer as engineer and enabler is a set-up in which I thrive, I go into flow state and feel my most happy, accomplished. But I am also a writer and published author in my own right which makes me feel fulfilled and challenged and sometimes afraid. I need and want to be both.

Many of us fear taking up space. Whenever I work with a writer, one of the most common things they say to me is this: ‘But why would anyone care about what I have to say about it?’ I have never worked with a person who felt intuitively brazen about their work, with no questions to be asked about the idea of being an “artist” and who indeed is deserving of other people’s time and attention. Because that’s what we’re asking for when we share our work with another person, their time. And it’s the most precious asset of the modern world. To put your writing out there is to deem yourself worthy of other people’s twenty-four slithers of the day, and you are. That’s what ‘Something to Say’ is here to remind you.

What most writers need and deserve is some reassurance and sponsorship from the shadows – from external sources like friends, editors, agents, managers, family, yes – but also from within themselves. So I am fusing my roles as artist and shadow artist with a list: ‘10 Reasons Why I Didn’t Want to Start a Substack’. I’m bringing it out of the shadows of my mind and sprinkling on it a little bit of recklessness and nerve, in the hope that it might support other writers – which is what ‘Something to Say’ is all about. There is enough space for us all to say something that matters, something that titillates, or something that gives someone the courage to be that little bit more audacious.

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10 REASONS I DIDN’T WANT TO START A SUBSTACK

1. “NO ONE WILL CARE WHAT I HAVE TO SAY”

When writers say this to me, I always respond in the same way: only you have your lived experience and only you can write about this subject or story from your unique frame of reference. Everyone has or will experience grief in their lifetime but no two pieces of writing on grief are the same. You have something to offer through your personal lens, allow other people the opportunity to look through it and show them how you see it, how you felt it. People do care about the stories and perspectives they’ve not yet discovered. 

2. “PEOPLE MIGHT NOT LIKE IT”

Correct. Some people won’t. Lots of people won’t in fact. They won’t connect with what you have to say, or your approach to the subject. But some will. Some might find it funny, or useful or invigorating. You might help some people on their journey to getting published – why do you have to help EVERYONE to deem it valuable? Everyone liking it is a certified impossibility.

Another tip I give authors who are worried about their work being critiqued and reviewed is to go to their favourite author’s Goodreads page and see what “people” have to say.

People on Sally Rooney: ‘my reactions fluctuated between boredom, periodic cringing and occasional spark of recognition and relatability — which unfortunately ended up buried under the awkward bits’

People on Sheila Heti: ‘I don’t think this is as inventive or profound as some people do’ and ‘pop philosophy must be stopped this is so dumb!’

You ain’t ever gonna be everyone’s cup of coco, kid.

3. “I DON’T KNOW WHAT TO CALL IT”

We fixed this one already.

(But seriously… don’t wait for the perfect name or brand to strike. A brand – like anything in life - evolves over time).

4. “IT’S A LITTLE SELF INDULGENT”

So are selfies, hen parties, voicenotes, deliverooing burgers to one’s frontdoor, yoga retreats, making a podcast with your best mate and lots of other activities. Since when has self-indulgence been the bar you hold for partaking in something?  And really, if you’re honest with yourself, is this about self-indulgence or self-doubt?

5. “IT WILL BE EMBARRASSING IF NOBODY SUBSCRIBES”

Two people have already subscribed and you’ve not written anything yet. And if no one else does then no one will bother to notice. People are more focused on what they’re doing, not what you’re doing.

6. “I DON’T HAVE THE TIME”

This is valid. We are all time poor and idea rich. Where does one find the balance? Ultimately it comes down to what you enjoy doing in your spare time and from where you get your bliss. If you will genuinely enjoy writing these pieces and building a community of writers, follow your joy. Rest. Then follow your joy some more.

If not, don’t bother giving it your precious little time. Do something else, like a beetle fighting, or amateur dramatics.

7. “I MIGHT START WITH SOMETHING TO SAY AND THEN RUN OUT OF THINGS TO SAY”

Like everything in life, you get out what you put in. And honestly… in your 33 years, when have you ever not had something you want to say? Be it about the fertile ground of liminality or why Luca cries when you touch his ears.

8. “I KNOW CLEVERER, FUNNIER AND MORE INTERESTING PEOPLE”

True. True. True. But in the words of Cameron, it’s very often audacity not talent that gets things going – hence why the world is run by men.

9. “I’M SCARED I’LL SAY SOMETHING WRONG”

You probably will. When Andy Warhol said ‘in the future, everyone will be world-famous for 15 minutes’ we didn’t clock that a large proportion of that fame would be down to trolling. But not speaking out of fear is wrong, being willing and open to learn is essential for growth and necessary for curiosity.

10. “I KEEP THINKING OF REASONS NOT TO”

You’ve run out of reasons boo – launch your bloody substack