CW: this piece discusses depression, and the suicide of a friend. It’s coming up a year since my friend Andre died. Hindsight can be cruel: I knew he suffered from depression and chronic pain, and in the weeks leading up to his death he became increasingly combative and withdrawn. I knew he was having a hard time, I just didn’t realise how bad it really was; it felt like a stepping back, but not an end—he’d been working on a new manuscript and we’d been going over his opening chapters together. It didn’t seem like something you’d do if you wanted to die.  I know from personal experience that it’s more complicated than that—people rarely plan these things. The black dog is a persistence hunter:[…]

Just popping in to say: I got my first full MS request yesterday. Even if it turns out to be a dead end, it’s the confidence boost I needed right now. Keep chipping away at that mountain, fam.

There’s a genre of opinion piece infesting the darker creative corners of the internet, where an unsuccessful artist lashes out and writes a diatribe about how the system is broken, and everyone is garbage, and how they’re striking out on their own. We all look at those petulant flameouts, and we shake our heads and wonder what drives somebody to that. I know I did. Now, four months into querying without a single partial, I get it. Every unanswered submission on my spreadsheet burns. Every form letter makes me feel worse about myself as a writer and as a person. Querying is a sandpaper whirlwind rubbing down my soul; querying is a little man with a big hammer gently tapping out an arpeggio at the base[…]