✨Emily Buchanan Wants You to Trust Your Intuition; & Hattie Williams on the Perils of Waiting for that "Big, Original, Mind-Blowing, High-Concept Idea"✨

Also inside: Stella Hayward on the importance of protecting the joy of writing; and setting your subconscious up for success in Part Two of Christopher J. Yates' essay

Happy Tuesday, writing friends!

Are you by any chance teetering on writing’s window ledge right now, considering giving up on your WIP in favour of doing something much easier (“Like, literally anything,” to quote Hattie Williams’ brilliant essay below)? Before you give up on pursuing your dreams, you owe it to yourself to make time for debut author Emily Buchanan’s video today. Emily’s journey to publication included trying (and failing) to to give up on her own writing dreams after being rejected by the university writing program she’d applied to (Spoiler alert: she managed to get published anyway. Her debut novel, Send Flowers, is out now!). Emily’s messages for you range from the encouraging to the practical (her tip for creating compelling protagonists is spot-on👌🏼), and we think you’ll feel a lot better (and inspired) after watching it.

And speaking of Hattie Williams’ essay…The debut author of Bitter Sweet (out now!) talks about the warring factions that live in a lot of writers’ heads: the push and pull of enjoying quiet, introspective books, but not feeling talented enough to write such a thing oneself, while at the same thinking that to write anything else requires a big, flashy premise…and that there’s no point even trying to write until you figure out what that premise is. Which means you never get started because those kinds of high concept ideas aren’t just lying around. Don’t do that. Or, as Hattie puts it: “It is more important to write something really fucking good than it is to write something really fucking original.” encouraging. Keep reading for more of Hattie’s no B.S. wisdom!

We don’t know about you, but we here at The 💩 love it when our contributors—entirely by accident—seem to be in conversation with each other, so we were very excited when we saw this answer from Stella Hayward (The Good Boy) in her excellent Q&A today: “It’s pointless following trends, or trying to fit in with a current publishing obsession, if it’s not something you’d love to read yourself. It’s inauthentic, and readers know. If you write something you believe in it shows on the page.” We don’t think the universe could be making it any more clear that you should be writing the thing that matters to YOU. (Editor’s note: I think I’m going to start keeping track of these nuggets under the heading of “If You Build It, They Will Come”—if you write something good and true to yourself, if there’s something the inner storyteller you’ve been living with your whole life tells you it believes in, there will be other believers out there and they will find it).

And last but not least, Christoper J. Yates (The Rabbit Club) is back with Part Two of his essay from our Friday edition, and he’s brought along a tipsheet to summarize it all for you in a clear, actionable way—enjoy!

That’s all for now. Thanks for reading! ❤️

❤️ The Shit No One Tells You About Writing Team