This is my newsletter in which I include recommendations for paid subscribers. Behind the paywall this time is an incredibly effective way to organise your life, an excellent article on growing older, a podcast for bird lovers, a new creative pursuit and my current obsession with slouchy skirts…
I am writing this edition of The Rooster in one go otherwise when I will go back and revise it more things will have happened and I will want to write about them and it will be never ending. This is the way forwards for the Rooster I feel; a one-take live action update. Wait till you hear what happened ! Splat! These are the thoughts in my head! Splat! Like Jackson Pollock but with words.
I’ve been reading. I have never read so much in my life. In my role of judge for The Women’s Prize I have read sixty novels in all. I started in late Spring and I finished this week. There has been no watching TV, no boxsets, minimal socialising, an audio book in my ear whenever I am in transit, inside the house or out, a book held open six inches from my face wherever and whenever I am sitting. I have never had so many early nights.
The good news is that I still love reading! I am however, gasping to watch a boxset. Pluribus. The Night Manager. Traitors. It’s all ahead of me. Bring it on.
January was intense. The last of my Women’s Prize reading collided with editing the final draft of my novel. From a writer’s perspective, it wasn’t ideal. I worried that I wouldn’t have enough headspace, that the style of the writers I was reading would bleed into my own writing, that I would read back my book and think what’s the point? Who do I think I am to even attempt to write a novel when books as good as the ones I am reading for this prize exist in the world?
Now the novel has been handed in, I can tentatively say that I think the reading, extreme as it was, ultimately helped the writing process? I took two months off between the last draft and this one. In those two months all I did was read. I came back to this draft completely removed from any sentimentality around my writing. I joined chapters together, removed a lot of dialogue, took eight thousand words out of the draft in all. It was so obvious in the read back which parts of the book I had spent more time on than others. The first three chapters were so much better on a sentence level than chapters in the middle of the book. So I went about writing better sentences.
Lads I think my writing has improved. And I think it’s because of all the reading. This is not me saying I think my novel is good. I have absolutely no idea if it’s good. But I think that the sheer volume of brilliant writing I have absorbed has taught me how to be a better writer. I am learning and that feels wonderful. Like Annie Proulx said,
Writing comes from reading, and reading is the finest teacher of how to write.
Now the book is with the copy editor. I am incredibly grateful to have someone forensically combing through the work line by line to check for grammar, consistency, factual errors, a timeline that works. There is relief in knowing it is in the hands of a professional.
So January was all writing and reading apart from football training and matches. Last Sunday we played a very important match in East London. The match was tough, really tough, there was blood, mud, rain, and a crackhead invading the pitch brandishing an umbrella and nearly getting into a fight with the referee. Ah the joys of a Sunday afternoon on Wanstead Flats!
All the things I used to be scared of when I thought about playing football happened in this game; I fell hard into the mud, I was pushed around by my opponents, I got hit in the face by the ball. I was nervous beforehand, so nervous that I couldn’t eat, but interestingly ( to me, at least ), I wasn’t frightened. That feels like progress. The good news is that we won and that win secures us a place at the top of the league. So now, in the Greater London Women’s Football League, our club has been promoted from Division 1 North to, wait for it……………………………………
The Premier Division.
We play in the prem now, my team mates and I say casually. We can’t stop giggling about it. We joke about next stop being in Wembley Stadium when really all it means is that if we’re lucky at our matches we’ll have a dedicated person to run the line now. Still! the luxury of a linesman instead of one of the subs having to do it! Looks like football is not going anywhere anytime soon.
On Friday I had my first gig back of the year, and the first of six shows making up the Before Midnight London Residency 2026. Thanks so much if you came. And if you have tickets to any of the other shows you’re in for a treat. The no phones policy really incubates the atmosphere, it’s intense and fun and just generally really good vibes. These shows are all sold out but we’ll be putting our big Summer show at Gunnersbury Park back on sale soon, I’ll let you know about it on here.
And big news for London book lovers! We have a date for the next literary salon at The London Irish Centre. On 16 April I’ll be chatting to the writer Katriona O’Sullivan. Katriona’s first book ‘Poor’ won all the prizes and sold huge amounts. It is an incredibly vivid and moving telling of Katriona’s childhood growing up the middle of five kids in dire poverty. This April we’ll be celebrating the release of her new book Hungry, talking writing, class, bodies, belonging, survival, and loads more.
AND I’m delighted to tell you that we have just confirmed the Irish singer songwriter John Francis Flynn to play songs on the night. Come! bring pals! drink pints! These evenings are just so life affirming, I love doing them. You can get tickets here
Ok my live action splat is over. Behind the paywall you will find my recommendations in which I have included an incredibly effective way to organise your life, an excellent article on growing older, a new podcast, a really fun way of being creative and my new obsession with slouchy skirts…
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