WHAT IS AS I WAS SAYING?
Photo: Mal’s Photography UK
I’ve had a career as a journalist and an author that I never dreamed possible back when I was 22 and begging people for work experience. (99% of whom never responded and one told me not to bother because it was ‘too competitive’). The short version is that I’ve published four books - non-fiction and fiction - and I’ve been a journalist for 20 years.
My last permanent role was as UK Executive Editor and Global Lifestyle Head for HuffPost, which I quit to go travelling for a year and then start my own business. I’ve written for The Times, Sunday Times Style, The Guardian, Red, Grazia, Marie Claire, Vogue, The Telegraph, Stylist and others, and I currently have an ongoing column in The i Paper.
So far, so LinkedIn. While that tells you who I’ve worked for, it doesn’t tell you what I care about, and who I write for. It hasn’t changed much since my first journalism job when I wrote a profile about Kalpana Chawla, who was the first Indian woman to go into space and died in the Columbia Space Shuttle Disaster. I saw how powerful it could be to tell stories that inspire, that even if your feet never touched moondust, to dream big.
Then, when my husband Rob died in 2015, it added another layer as I wrote about his passing, about love and the issues he faced, and saw how vulnerability and honesty could show people aspects of life they hadn’t known about, and how that could create a tidal wave of empathy and compassion.
I don’t tend to do much journalism these days - a lot of what I’m interested in writing about doesn’t always fit the media agenda, and it still pays the same amount of peanuts it did 20 years ago. It’s like a pair of undies that no longer fits. What you’ll find on my Substack is the freedom of writing and space to unravel thought - not in a tinfoil-hat kind of way - but a place to talk about a wide range of topics from social commentary of popular culture (have to flex those newsroom muscles somehow), to career, mental wellbeing, dating and relationships. I can also talk about becoming a writer and how to navigate publishing. Most importantly, I want to connect with you.
This Substack can’t exist without you, and I’m not interested in sharting out my views from my ivory tower. I want us to learn, communicate and share with each other. Tell me what you want to know more about, and let’s talk about it.
As a free subscriber, you’ll be getting two of my best articles a month that I will pour my time and love into.
A great way of supporting further is to become a paid subscriber. Really, this Substack can only exist with this kind of help. You’ll receive at least four posts a month and I’m trialling a monthly chat, where once a month I’ll be online for an hour for us to discuss and talk about whatever you’d like. There will be bonus content including audio and video, previews of book stuff, and access to the growing community I’m building on here where we can discuss and share thoughts. Also first dibs on 1-2-1 writing advice zoom appointments (cost separate to subscription fee).
For founding members, you’ll get all that and more, and we will be able to chat 1-2-1 virtually on Zoom as a one-off. In terms of why you might want to pay for a subscription, without wanting to be crass, getting paid to write and making a living from it is becoming increasingly tough. I’d love to be able to pour as much love, time, effort and skill as I can into making every post something that brightens up your inbox, and growing a paid subscription base will help enormously with that.
I’ve rambled on for far too long, and with that - let us begin!
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