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Learn to Write Like You Mean It

A daily newsletter by Vicky Quinn Fraser

Good day to you! Join 500+ writers, creatives, misfits, and weirdos and learn to write like you mean it in 10 minutes a day. Get ONE practical tip, story, or shenanigan Monday to Friday 🖖🏼

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Featured Post

The one thing we’ve got

Hey Reader, What are you even doing here? ^^ I ask myself this all the time when I find myself procrastinating or hiding or otherwise not using my voice. What am I even doing here? If you’re not using your voice, what are you even doing here? It’s the one thing we all have. Some of us are listened to more than others, granted; but we all have a voice. What we choose to do with it, is up to us. Are you using it to make connections? To make people feel seen? To feel seen yourself? To speak up...

about 15 hours ago • 1 min read

Hey Reader, I think I’ve fcked up over the past few months. In talking about what I do, and who I do it for and with, and why. After a throwaway comment on a networking call, my kneejerk reaction was to get really cross… The comment was along the lines of not being able to compete with a new AI book-writing tool/course/thing. It got my back up and I immediately went on the defensive — defending what I do, why it’s better than AI tools, why AI isn’t proper writing, blahblahblah. Then I took a...

1 day ago • 1 min read

Hey Reader, “Have you seen Daniel Priestley’s new book writing service?” he asked. “I have, it looks interesting.” “I think you’re going to find it difficult to compete with that!" “Maybe,” I said with a smile. But I won’t. Because I’m not in competition with Daniel Priestley’s new Bookmagic service. Those are not my people. For a bunch of entrepreneurs, it’s going to be amazing, and I hope they love it… but not for everyone, and here’s why. “Tried and tested book planning and writing...

3 days ago • 2 min read

Hey Reader, When’s the last time you rearranged your writing space? Or a room in your house? Yesterday, Joe went to get his car windscreen repaired, and I took the living room apart and put it back together again. He has a desk in there, and it’s a dingy little corner and it was making me sad, and he didn’t like it either, so while he was out I took all the books out of the bookcases, moved them around, hoovered them, put a load into a pile to send to charity shops, and then dealt with the...

4 days ago • 1 min read

Hey Reader, Happy FriYAY! Have you seen the movie Cabaret? Or read the book? Even better… have you seen the stage show at the Playhouse Theatre in London, which they’ve transformed into the Kit Kat Club for this run? That’s where I was on Wednesday. A friend treated me and another friend to tickets, which I am so grateful for because a) it was a lovely gift and b) I probably wouldn’t have realised Cabaret was on or chosen to see it if I had. It was stupendous. We were up in the gods with a...

7 days ago • 5 min read

Hey Reader, I’m going to make a wager. Your biggest fear isn’t public speaking, or death, or taxes; it’s you. Yourself. We’re taught not to trust ourselves and our voices. We’re taught to sit down and shut up. And we’re taught that if we stick our heads out, they’ll be cut off. So today I have a prompt for you. What are you afraid of? If you speak up, and speak out, about what you believe in… what’s the worst that could happen? If you make something beautiful, and put it out there… what’s the...

8 days ago • 1 min read

Hey Reader, “The point,” James Victore said in a creative workshop, “is to have a fucking opinion.” We can’t make art — or teach anyone anything — without an opinion. Our opinion; not someone else’s. Oscar Wilde said: “Most people are other people. Their thoughts are someone else’s opinions, their lives a mimicry, their passions a quotation.” This has never been truer than in the era of social media, when we’re all so busy we gobble down our opinions as soundbites, fed to us by “thought...

10 days ago • 1 min read

Hey Reader, Here are 21 reasons I’m not writing what I “should” be right now: I have finished my cup of tea. It's cold in here and my fingers ache. My tshirt is upsetting me. My hair is upsetting me. My skin is too tight and, yes, it’s upsetting me. I can hear too many things. I can’t hear anything but now my headphones are hurting my head. My stupid glasses keep slipping down my stupid nose. I need to go and make a cup of tea. My legs hurt. My butt hurts. My back hurts. My brain hurts. My...

11 days ago • 1 min read

Hey Reader, I woke up to this message this morning from a client: It says: “just want to say THANK YOU again. i feel like i got my creative spark reignited and it’s always incredible isn’t it? how that can happen after a single conversation.no matter how cynical i get, in general, or on the general world of coaching, it’s fucking lovely to have someone who GETS IT to reflect back, ask the questions you need to hear, and remind you of what it is you really care about and how to nurture that”...

14 days ago • 3 min read

Hey Reader, “Respect my authoritaaaaaaaaah!!!” /Southparkmode Was chatting to a friend last night about how the word “authority” contains the word “author” and all the implications of that. Like, the bro marketers will tell us that “a book cements our authority on the subject” and yeah, okay. For sure it can do that. Even if you’re not an authority on the subject (but that’s for another day). It’s part of the reason I’ve written at least one of my books (How the hell do you write a book). But...

14 days ago • 2 min read
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