Humans are weird. The things humans do are weird.
Here are some of them...You’ll probably vehemently disagree with some of these. That’s okay; it’s life. We’re allowed to disagree.
Categories
-
Read more
-
Read more
I’ve stopped and started a book I’m writing so many times I’m sick of myself. Do you ever get so sick of yourself you just want to scream and scream and scream until you’re hoarse? Yes, well. Just because I’m a writing coach, doesn’t mean I’m immune from the brain nonsense that flattens us all at some point.
I’m the proverbial cobbler with holes in her shoes.
-
Read more
I’ve started and stopped writing so many times today I’m sick of myself. Do you ever get so sick of yourself you just want to scream and scream and scream until you’re hoarse? Yes, well.
Anyway, I decided to stop overthinking it and instead tell you about a tiny experiment I’ve started, because perhaps it’ll help you too.
-
Read more
Inefficiency, I’ve realised, is where life happens. It’s where we notice things. It’s where we remember we’re alive.
I’m a writer; I already knew that. But it’s easy to forget it when we’re constantly bombarded with ways to make everything more efficient.
-
Read more
Let’s hear it for laziness. All because I couldn’t be arsed to take a run-up.
You never know what you might be able to achieve when you simply cannot be bothered.
This is the kind of positivity you can expect from me in the face of inertia. I’ll find a way. I’ll make it fun. We’ll do the thing.
-
Read more
I know writing a book is scary.
I’ve done a lot of scary things. Made a lot of terrifying decisions — and they were the best decisions I ever made.
You already know you want a book out there with your name on.
Maybe you’ve already started it!
-
Read more
Life is made up of these moments.
These moments are how we will save ourselves and each other.
These moments show us that we are more alike than we are different.
Everything I do is about making connections: with you, with myself, with my clients...
-
Read more
I think a lot about saving the world, but the truth is the world will be just fine without us. It'll thrive, actually. I remember hearing David Attenborough say that not so long ago and it caught me like a punch to the stomach.
It’s not really about saving the world. The planet will bounce forward from everything humanity has done to it.
-
Read more
The biggest lesson I learned from jetting off to Antigua for four days is this:
When an opportunity pops up, grab it with both hands and say thank you.
My friend is cabin crew for BA, and he offered me a trip as his guest. Or as a “cling-on” as we’re called — friends and family who sponge off crew for an extremely cheap flight and basically free room.
-
Read more
I was just a woman, standing in front of a herd of cows, asking them to let me pet their noses.
But THEY saw a weird little neon stranger demanding their attention and their velvet faces with no context or guarantee of safety.
It’s like the difference between plopping into someone’s DMs or flinging an ad into their face, and gently offering them your book to sit with.
-
Read more
Will what I’m doing right now matter at all after I’m gone?
I don’t mean whimsy and silliness here, by the way. Those things matter VERY MUCH.
Nothing has any meaning except the meaning we give it, and while I want to do work that makes people’s lives better, I also want to have a good time with no purpose other than having a good time.
-
Read more
I don’t believe reaching for generative AI to get us through “writer’s block” will help those of us who struggle with executive dysfunction because it doesn’t help us to do the hard thing we want to do; it simply teaches us to reach for the sticking plaster. And please don’t misunderstand me: I’m not talking about the busywork and admin that so many of us struggle with...
-
Read more
It’s actually really easy to change things.
Not the huge things, like stopping orange tyrants from making wars or reversing climate change overnight.
But the small things that lead to the big things — it’s really easy to change those.
Like, people are sad and angry and scared...
-
Read more
George Saunders calls it The Gulp:
“the exciting but harrowing period in the publication of a book when, with the writing all done… the waiting-to-see begins. Will people read it? Will they like it?”
Before they start, everyone thinks that writing the book is the hardest part.
And it is hard. But that’s nothing compared...
-
Read more
Sometimes we just need someone to show us something we can’t quite see ourselves.
My client, this week, told me she’d stalled in writing her book because, in her words, “I don’t want it to be that kind of book.”
She was encountering resistance all over the place and was worried she was “getting it all wrong.”
-
Read more
“What would make it possible?”
And that changed everything.
How about you?
What feels impossible right now, and what might change if instead you asked, “What would make this possible?”
-
Read more
One technology, two futures — and how we’re letting the wrong one win. Imagine putting your head into a box which has six speakers in it. From each speaker comes a different noise: several conversations, music, cutlery clinking, traffic sounds, laughter, footsteps, a dog barking, a child crying. All at full volume...
-
Read more
“What will 85-year-old me say about what I’m doing now?”
Tamu Thomas’s question to us yesterday, at Laura Brunton’s Ignited Woman event.
So I picture myself: grey hair, still in space buns. More wrinkles that get really deep when I smile, and I smile a lot, I hope. Still wearing bright orange sneakers, leopard-print jeans, and a mustard-yellow jumper.
-
Read more
When all seems lost?
Plant a garden. Make music. Paint a picture. Make people laugh.
Create something beautiful because it’s not frivolous, it’s hopeful and it’s action and it’s inspirational.
This is one of the things I talked about with Janine Coombes on her brilliant podcast The Show (Off).
-
Read more
“I’m not sure I’m comfortable with ex-convicts cutting keys,” said my elderly neighbour after I told him why I love Timpsons.
Timpsons, if you didn’t know, is a cobblers, dry-cleaners, key-cutting business based in the UK. It specialises in finding employment for ex-offenders and other marginalised groups.
“Why?” I asked him.
-
Read more
We all love a good slogan and Laurel Thatcher Ulrich’s famous line “well-behaved women seldom make history” is just perfect for a cute pink tee or a morning coffee mug.
It’s become an inspirational quote; a rousing battle cry to disrupt and rebel and be seen.
-
Read more
Can you imagine being there when the first photograph was taken? Like holy shitballs batman, what kind of wizardry can make an exact image of my family appear on a piece of paper or metal or glass? BURN THE WITCH!
I’m a smart person, and I know in theory how photography works, but I still look at it and go what the actual eff it feels like magic.
-
Read more
Everyone talks about the obvious benefits of writing a book (credibility, authority, connection, opportunities, etc.) and they’re all fine and dandy but have you ever considered these FIVE weird things...
-
Read more
The way we’re using AI right now is propaganda on steroids, dressed up as progress. It’s biased by design, as a result of who built it and who was in the room at the time, and because of who it serves.
And we lose the joy of messy creation.
So before you hand over another piece of yourself, ask: what is this really costing me?
-
Read more
This year I started a new tradition with the client edition. No remission.
Every month, I’m celebrating some of my clients.
March is wrapped up in a bow and I wanted to give a huge shout out to my clients.
-
Read more
I have so many books on creativity by so many different people. Books on writing. Books on marketing, on business, on psychology, on physics…
That’s what we do.
We read a book we love, then we look around for more books like that one.
-
Read more
If you want to get pointlessly enraged, scroll social media.
If you want to be challenged and perhaps transformed forever, read a book.
And if you want to discover incredible things about yourself, change your life, and turn your message into a movement, write a book.
-
Read more
Don’t let the possibility of other people thinking you’re anything less than perfect stop you from writing anyway. You’re missing out on something beautiful if you do.
Your voice is magic. Use it.
-
Read more
Silence is the biggest problem of all. The lack of acknowledgement. The lack of visible and audible pushback.
When we stay silent, even though we’re horrified, the perpetrators see acceptance and agreement and encouragement. And the people on the receiving end see a space that is not safe, full of people who tacitly agree with the horrors.
-
Read more
When someone has an idea for a book, it’s very personal to them. It’s important to them on their individual level.
And that is enough.
BUT. That can also stop people from putting their ideas out there in book form, because they think, “Oh well, who would be interested in my little book? In my ideas? They’re important to ME, but why would anyone else care?”
-
Read more
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.
-
Read more
Sophie Lee's book "Beyond Palatable" officially launches in March with a big bash in London but a few days before that she’s running an online marathon called Unapologetic Voices.
Monday, March 2, 2026.
It’s free to attend, there are 35+ incredible speakers — I’m one of them — and I thoroughly recommend you sign up and bookmark the speakers you want to hear.
-
Read more
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.
-
Read more
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...
-
Read more
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.
-
Read more
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.
-
Read more
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.
-
Read more
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.
-
Read more
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.
-
Read more
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.
