Being a good writer... is 3% talent and 97% not being distracted by the internet. #amwriting #kidlit

Horror writer at work.

Talent is insignificant. I know a lot of talented derelicts. Beyond talent lie all the usual words: discipline, love, luck, but most of all, endurance. JAMES BALDWIN #Writers

Writer's block.

If you're a writer you'll know the feeling.

My personal writing bunker. Works a treat. Construction plans available to writer friends in need.

Creativity fears

Five years. Five years of learning, drafting, revising, dreaming, and showing up at the page. Today, I’m celebrating the signing of my second traditionally published picture book contract, with both books forthcoming in 2029. Whoopee!!! 🤸‍♀️🥳 @seymouragency @Gabycabezut #kidlit

A 24-year-old Polish tennis player arrived in Paris last week ranked 114th in the world, with no sponsors, no guaranteed income, and no certainty she could even pay for her hotel room. She had to win three qualifying matches just to enter the French Open main draw. Prize money is only paid at the end of the tournament, so a Polish sports drink brand quietly stepped in and covered her hotel bill. Her name is Maja Chwalinska. And today, she plays in the French Open final. Before this tournament, she had won exactly one Grand Slam main draw match in her entire career. She had battled depression so severe that in 2021 she couldn't get out of bed. She underwent knee surgery in 2022. She spent years grinding through small tournaments across Europe just to stay afloat. Then she arrived in Paris, won three qualifiers, and kept winning. Zheng Qinwen. Elise Mertens. Maria Sakkari. Diana Shnaider. Nine straight matches. One set dropped. She is now the first qualifier in French Open history to reach the final. The last time a qualifier reached a Grand Slam final, it was Emma Raducanu at the 2021 US Open. Raducanu won. By simply making the final, Chwalinska has earned more prize money than her entire career combined. The runner-up cheque alone is $1.6 million. If she wins today, she takes home $3.25 million. One week ago she couldn't pay for her hotel room.

My wife died in March, 2026, and that day my fiction writing stopped. But now, I’m ready to start again. I promise a committment to writing daily with the goal of my next novel releasing in the near future. (posting to stay accountable).

Bring Class, Elegance & Decency Back. Princess Catherine proves you don’t need shock value to stand out. In an era where attention is often the goal, she represents a kind of elegance that is increasingly rare. That’s much harder to achieve. Her greatest strength is that she understands the difference between being noticed and being respected. Anyone can generate headlines. Very few can earn genuine admiration year after year without constantly reinventing themselves or demanding the spotlight. She is the Princess of Wales.

A beautiful moment in Manchester today as the Princess of Wales congratulates Claire Lorente, who rings the bell signalling the end of her cancer treatment 🥺💙

Our very special guests! 🧁☕️ The Queen has hosted a tea party for children supported by Dreams and Wishes, a charity dedicated to helping seriously ill children and their families build precious memories. 🫖🥪 After travelling by horse-drawn carriage from The Royal Mews, the children sat down to sandwiches and cakes with Her Majesty at Clarence House. The Queen’s Equerry, Major Treasure, also set the children to task with a treasure hunt… leading to the stash of chocolate coins hidden under the Grenadier Guards’ hats! 💂🪎 Dreams and Wishes was established in 2011 and is entirely volunteer-run, with a dedicated team committed to making every child’s wish a reality.

Writing about 2,000 words in three hours every morning, ‘Casino Royale’ dutifully produced itself. I wrote nothing and made no corrections until the book was finished. If I had looked back at what I had written the day before I might have despaired. Happy Birthday Ian Fleming People often ask me how to start writing a book. My answer is always the same. Start writing. Do not sit there trying to perfect every sentence while you’re still creating the story. That’s how many people talk themselves out of finishing altogether. Write first. Keep going. Edit later. Even Fleming understood that looking back too soon can kill momentum and confidence. The first draft is not supposed to be perfect. It’s supposed to exist. You cannot edit a blank page. Good morning-

Finnish scientists trucked in real forest dirt and grass and laid it over the gravel at four daycare yards. They let the kids dig around in it for a month. The blood tests came back with changes the researchers hadn’t expected to see so fast or so clear. The study ran at ten daycares in two Finnish cities with 75 kids aged three to five. Four of the yards got the forest treatment: about a tennis court worth of soil and grass laid over the gravel, plus planters and peat blocks the kids could dig and climb on. Three others stuck with their normal gravel yards. The last three were daycares where the kids were already visiting real forests every day. After one month, the variety of bacteria living on the kids’ skin shot up, and the kind that helps train the skin’s immune defenses jumped the most. Their gut bacteria started to look like the gut bacteria of the forest-visiting kids. Their blood showed more of the immune cells whose job is to keep the body from freaking out at harmless stuff like pollen and peanuts, and overall inflammation dropped. The kids on the plain gravel yards showed none of this. Childhood asthma in the US doubled between 1980 and 1995. Food allergies in kids jumped 50 percent between 1997 and 2011, then jumped another 50 percent between 2007 and 2021. And peanut allergies in one-year-olds tripled between 2001 and 2017. The Finnish researchers think one of the reasons is simple: kids today don’t get dirty enough. 37 percent of American preschoolers now spend an hour or less outside on a normal weekday. Their immune systems are getting trained in environments stripped of the bacteria humans have always lived around. Aki Sinkkonen, who led the study, put it in plain words: “It would be best if children could play in puddles and everyone could dig organic soil.” The Finnish government is now helping pay for daycares across the country to make the same changes.

The Family Of Writers

Never stop saying "dozen" and "half dozen". Never stop using the word you read in an old novella. Never stop using your regional jargon. Don't succumb to an internationalized English stripped of its whimsy and romanticism in the name of streamlining global commerce.

This Writing Life.

I am writing a reflection on May right now. Out of curiosity, I popped it into an AI detector and it came out 22.3% AI-written despite being original and typed by hand. I don't really know what to do about this. It bothers me, it makes me sad. These tools are flawed.