The Moxie Books Blog

What do you need in order to write? It’ll probably be different from what I need. And it might vary from day to day. That’s fine.

Finding out is useful though.

Maybe one of those things is someone to help you get started and show you that you can, in fact, write the book you’ve always wanted to write.

I’m in Oxford right now, the city of dreaming spires, where so many books have been created… mostly by men.

Today, though, I’m talking to a woman whose book is coming out in May.

Samantha Harman is hosting The Gathering and she’s making the topic of her book, Just Get Dressed, the star of the show.

At Higher Voltage in London a couple of weeks ago, I heard Teresa Heath-Wareing speak on the current landscape for entrepreneurs and small business owners.

She had a lot of truths to drop and a lot of optimism to offer.

It’d be easy to think the future looks bleak...

Aaaaaaand January is a wrap!

My good friend Yinka sent her Mighty Movers email (exclusive to those of us who’ve been fortunate to work with her) and it inspired me to start this monthly missive.

I don’t write enough about the incredible things my clients (e.g. Sophie Lee, Samantha Harman and Yinka Ewuola) are doing, and the amazing ways I get to help them.

How many questions is too many questions? This is not rhetorical — I actually need to know, because getting it wrong has painful consequences.

In conversation, we’re supposed to ask questions. We’re supposed to be interested in other people. I know this because I’ve been told many, many times over the years.

You may have heard Laurel Thatcher Ulrich’s quote that “well-behaved women seldom make history” — it’s on mugs and t-shirts and inspirational Instagram posts often.

Perhaps you don’t know, though, that Ulrich was referencing the fact that “good wives” in Puritan towns were never involved in court cases, so their names only survived on gravestones, in family bibles, and possibly in wills.

Coroner’s report stated the cause of death was puffy sleeves underneath a tight cardigan.

My mother made me wear it aged approximately four years, on our summer holiday in Betws-y-Coed. She paired this horror with slippy sandals for picnicking and messing around by the river, thus ensuring my inability to leap from rock to rock like the gazelle I clearly was.

You say “hack” — I see a hatchet covered in gore and Jack Nicholson’s blood-streaked face grinning through a splintered door.

HERE’S YOUR SHORTCUTTTTTTTTTTTTT!!!! he screams.

Run. RUN AWAY.

The shortcut looks so tempting.

A weird thing happens when people start to write, and I’m pretty sure it’s one of the reasons people stop writing shortly thereafter.

We adopt a voice that we think we ought to have.

Everyone does it.

At first, it’s because we’re scared. We think we’re not good enough to write, that nobody will like our work, that we won’t impress.

Post-show blues is a real thing. It’s happened to me many, many times. After a great trapeze performance, after my comedy set in Bristol before Christmas, after I handed in my Masters dissertation.

A bit like Boxing Day used to feel before I realised Boxing Day is one of the BEST days of Christmas.

We do the thing, then… silence.

Flaaaaaaarp. Like a let-down balloon.

“Writing is the most fun you can have by yourself.”

My favourite author, Sir Terry Pratchett, said that, and he’s right.

But writing isn’t a solo sport.

It kind of looks like it is, when you see a book or an article with one person’s name on the front.

But then you turn to the acknowledgements and realise there’s a whoooooole lot of people involved in the creative process.

Fight the power!

I can already hear the zombie-drones of capitalism moaning at us to drain our bank accounts in the pursuit of perfection.

January crawls closer like a B-movie undead torso, imploring us to spend money, transform ourselves into something we’re not and can never be, and perform productivity in the name of the gods of consumerism.

Every year, Joe and I have an advent calendar, because Christmas whimsy is not just for children.

This year, I got marketed at by Task Master and bought their advent calendar and it does not disappoint.

All over the box are 24 doors, as you’d expect. But there’s also a door on the back (start there) and a bunch of random little doors on the sides, too.

Traditionally, I would rather walk into the chicken coop and fall over face first into a pile of hen poo than write a landing page.

Despite my background as a copywriter, writing landing pages is my least favourite thing to do in marketing.

I will always find something more pressing to do, like pluck those weird hairs off my big toe.

“My book is a Trojan horse.”

Last night at The Marketing Meetup in Birmingham, Sophie Blackmore described her book as a Trojan horse and my antennae started tingling.

I hadn’t really thought about books in those words before…

Sophie wrote her book with me this year — It’s Only Bloody Marketing — and it is doing exactly what she wanted it to do.

“Would you like to go climbing?” he asked.

“Climbing? Like, rock climbing?” I said. “I don’t know how.”

“I’ll teach you.”

17 years ago (ish) I met the most handsome guy and we became friends.

When I was at school, I didn’t really have friends. I had a stamp collection.

I hovered on the periphery like a weird little moth, waiting to be invited in — to parties, to sports teams, to life.

The library was my playground and I ate most of my lunches there...

I was on the brink of signing up to yet another thing this morning, despite wanting — NEEDING — to create space to breathe.

Why do I do this?

It’s interesting, and I think the reason is twofold:

Hitting publish on your book is a bit like walking through a wasp convention covered in jam holding a sign that says “please don’t hurt me!”

They say writing a book is brave, and it is…

But SHARING it is the real hero move when it FEELS like 90% of the internet is screaming abuse into the void like it’s an Olympic sport.

The Internet: Wow Stephen King wrote SO MUCH during his early career. That just proves you have to have a passion and follow your dreams and you can do it too.

Stephen King: It was cocaine and booze. I don’t even remember writing Cujo.

Look. It’s really easy to gaze at successful authors and wonder, “How did they do it?” and assume that whatever worked for them, will work for you.

If a frog eats you alive, don’t just sit there and get digested, like a wimp.

Pick yourself up and start walking.

I’m fully serious.

There’s a species of Japanese water beetle called Regimbartia attenuata — we’re going to call it Reg — that is the natural prey of frogs.

Reg is small, only 4-5mm, so the frogs swallow them whole as a tasty treat.

Ten minutes before I did this cool move, I faffed for five minutes, telling myself the stupid story that I CAN’T DO THIS, IT’S TOO SCARY.

(It’s a ham* spring, btw, in case you’re not familiar with gymnastics vernacular).

Funnily enough, before that triumph, I had never tried to do the thing, so how on earth did I know that I wouldn’t be able to do it?

What most people get wrong about writing a book is the idea that every book has to be a massive book, and it doesn’t.

It can be a MicroBook. Under 100 pages, maybe 15k to 25,000 words.

The traditional publishing industry has decreed that there are conventions for how long a book needs to be.

It doesn’t have to be any particular length.

I’ve had a couple of weeks off social media and lordy LORD has it felt good.

For one thing, I feel more like a proper writer again… which is weird considering I’ve done very little actual writing, other than idly planning out a MicroBook called A Short History of Googly Eyes.

Whenever I’m on LinkedIn or wherever, something always pops up to make me feel like shite.

In 410BC, on a warm Tuesday evening at approx 9.15 pm, Socrates’s wife Xanthippe slapped an empty dinner plate down in front of him.

Xanthippe had had enough. She ran the household and raised his kids, and Socrates… well, Socrates refused to bathe or trim his beard, and spent his days loafing around talking shit with his bros.

Last week at the gym I took a tiny beetle step to becoming the type of irritating person who makes the most of every moment.

You know the type — they have to fill every spare second with something productive or what’s the point of them.

Here’s what happened because I know you’re on the edge of your seat.