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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

🎨 Bad art, mustard, and silly cooking [The Friday Goody Bag]

Hey Reader, I’m thinking of starting a club called The Bad Art Club. What do you reckon? Would you join? Mostly a rhetorical question, so you don’t have to answer unless you really want to. In the Creative Playground this morning we were talking about weekend plans and one of mine is to paint something. I dragged my watercolours out last weekend and stared at them for a while. Then, yesterday, I painted a birthday card for a friend. It’s not terribly good, but it is silly, and I enjoyed...

about 2 hours ago • 3 min read

Hey Reader, Most people don’t want to write. They want to have written something. And I get that. I want to be able to do the splits… But I don’t want to actually stretch and train it… because training is hard work and it’s frustrating seeing my legs at a right angle when my friend over there is fanny-to-the-floor Splitty McSplit Face and rightfully smug about it. The question then becomes: how much do I want to be able to do the splits? What am I willing to endure to get there? And how can I...

3 days ago • 2 min read

Hey Reader, You don’t need “the muse”. You need a consistent writing practice. One may appear just at the right moment for you, like the capricious and unreliable floozy it is, but the other means you’ll create your own inspiration, every single day, no matter what that unreliable floozy may be up to. So: let’s create that consistent writing practice, shall we? Write Every Damn Day on Easy Mode is available all throughout May, and by the time we’re done — after 30 days — you’ll have not only...

4 days ago • 1 min read

Hey Reader, There’s a moment, first thing in the morning at this time of year, that floors me. The sun is not long up, hanging diamonds from branches and blades of grass; the bird opera is in full swing; the air is cool with the promise of warm sunshine later on; and the honeysuckle scent hits me like a velvet-wrapped sledgehammer. For just an instant, everything is perfect and I am exactly where I want to be. Anything is possible in this moment. I try to find a moment like this at least once...

7 days ago • 4 min read

Hey Reader, You may or may not know that my husband and I have been, for the past 8 years, renovating a 350-year-old cottage. This means we live with lot of dust, spiders, and woodlice. And we’re learning a LOT of things fast. A couple of years ago, we ripped out the entire inside of one end of the house and learned that it’s very important that floors have proper, non-rotten support. Which the previous floor did not. Which was alarming. So, out it all came, including the top ceiling, and at...

8 days ago • 2 min read

Hey Reader, Prediction: The publishing industry is gonna come full circle again. 💥 In the beginning: writers wrote, and published themselves. They had to have a patron or be a certain level of wealthy. 🚪 In the middle: traditional publishers mushroomed up and began to gatekeep who would and would not be read. A lucky few saw their names on the covers if their faces fit. 🌊 In the end: mass self-publishing democratised writing. Anyone can and does publish, and that’s not necessarily a bad...

9 days ago • 1 min read

Hey Reader, I’m not a natural cook. But I am fascinated by the process of flinging ingredients together to create something deliciously and unexpectedly edible… And having been a (shoddy) waitress and (chaotic) barkeep in my motley career, which allowed me ot peep behind the restaurant scenes, I’m also captivated by kitchen life and the characters who live there. When The Bear came out, which I adored, it reminded me of Anthony Bourdain’s book Kitchen Confidential, which has been sitting on...

10 days ago • 3 min read

Hey Reader, If I had known what was involved in the Good Shout Powerhouse training I’ve been doing during April, I’m not sure I’d have signed up. And I definitely wouldn’t have done if I’d known what the final assignment would be, at the live session in London. They didn’t give us all those details, and I’m SO glad — because I have had an incredible experience with the Good Shout crew and I’m really proud of what I did there. In fact, I’ve got the beginnings of a tight five comedy bit that...

14 days ago • 3 min read

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...

15 days 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...

16 days ago • 1 min read
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