I’m an over sharer, an anxious mess, an ex publishing professional, a screenwriter, short story writer, personal essayist and a novelist (The Lamb & more soon).
This is where I come to pass and receive nervous notes and be transparent about my writing and my wobbles. It’s part diary, part scrap book, but mostly a collection of extremely nervous notes scribbled down.
I don’t have a paywall (bar one handwritten letter I write to paid subscribers every year), but if you’d like to support me, there’s a paid subscription option with a couple of small perks.
While writing my debut novel The Lamb, there were specific books that became my life raft. Sometimes, I wish I could go back and tell that version of me about everything our book went on to achieve and how all those books she was reading made it possible.
Back while I was writing The Lamb, I was doing the most random gumtree jobs to make ends meet. I was running market stalls, did one disastrous trial bar shift at a local hotel, and then finally landed a job in tech (where I was later made redundant after just six months). It was my first proper grown up job and I was devastated to lose it but I hit the gumtree odd jobs again while I searched for other opportunities. I then found a job in copywriting. Half way through my probation, I was sacked - right before Christmas. The reason cited? You’re a bad writer.
The mommy issues cannibals novel I was writing started to seem like a frivolous pipe dream.
My confidence was at its lowest. I was a flat broke failure of a person and a failure writer too. I had endless ambition but I was stuck in a cycle of financial and emotional instability with no clear end in sight. I was absolutely certain that there was no way I’d ever become a published author.
But, at the end of every day, even when I felt like the world was swallowing me whole, I could always escape into books.
These are the novels that made me feel held, that kept me writing, that inspired me when my tank was empty. These are the books that helped me regain my strength, and I hope they help you regain yours too.
In no particular order:
The Island Child by Molly Aikten
Split Tooth by Tanya Tagaq
Earthlings by Sayaka Murata
In the Dream House by Carmen Maria Machado
A Certain Hunger by Chelsea G. Summers
A Haunted House and Other Short Stories by Virginia Woolf
The Haunting of Hill House by Shirley Jackson
Carmilla by Joseph Sheridan le Fanu
Lanny by Max Porter
Grief is a Thing With Feathers by Max Porter
How Saints Die by Carmen Marcus
Her Body and Other Parties by Carmen Maria Machado
Mammoth by Eva Baltasar
My Sister the Serial Killer by Oyinkan Braithwaite
The Woman in Black by Susan Hill
Girl, Interrupted by Susanna Kaysen
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