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Read about my journey into becoming a creative freelancer, interviews and reviews with great authors, and advice on writing and creative living.

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Sep 23, 2020
3 min

What Do Writers Wear?

As a lot of people are working from home, we’re in the strange position of being indoors, all the time. I’m also in the new situation of not going back to school in September. In light of these different circumstances, I have no idea what to wear. Like school uniform, the rules about what is considered ‘professional’ have stopped me from having to think too hard about what I put on my body when I go to work. Now it’s as if every day is mufti day (non-school uniform day, for t

Jun 21, 2020
7 min

Celebrating Amazing People #5

With the recent Black Lives Matter protests I wanted to look to a different part of untold history. I found this article where Montaz March talked about her dissertation on the unexamined history of black people in the UK. I was particularly interested in her discussion of black women and how they often fail to turn up in the history books because of their desire to assimilate completely into society. It’s so easy to assume that skin colour has always been a way of judging ot

Mar 27, 2020
6 min

Celebrating Amazing People #1

Like most people at the moment, I don’t know what to do. Scrolling through endless feeds and WhatsApp messages bring a strange feeling into my gut – helplessness. So many people working hard to help others, while I spend the day checking in online for my students or finding ways to amuse my toddler. Somehow, in the general scheme of things, it doesn’t seem like enough. In an effort to help out, I thought I’d turn my hand to providing some light relief. But what do people want

Jun 7, 2019
3 min

Becoming a Mum Made Me More Supportive of Abortion

I am woman who has a baby. She was wanted, she is loved, but it has been such hard work. There have been times that I have spiralled into despair over how much my life has changed, how tired I am. I spent a lot of time preparing and planning to have her, and even then it’s been tough. She’s wonderful, but no-one should be forced to do something this hard if they don’t want to. If you are not financially, emotionally or mentally prepared, even a little bit, to have a baby, you

Jun 17, 2018
7 min

Dressing Up, Dressing Down

This week we found ourselves back in civilisation, as Mexico City was the first stopping point for our Mexican adventure. It’s the biggest city we’ve been to since Tokyo, back in the chill of February. While most of our travels seem to have revolved around countryside, national parks and beaches, cities are probably the only place that I feel self conscious about what I’m wearing. A combination of skinny jeans and hiking shoes just doesn’t scream urban chic, and the frequent

May 7, 2018
8 min

Man, I Feel Like a Woman

Every time I’ve travelled before (and by that I mean more than a holiday) I’ve been on my own, or in the presence of other women. Living in China, travelling round South East Asia, in Botswana for a month, I was never with a man. We’ve just arrived in Santiago, and it’s the first time someone has advised me about my safety. I was out on my own with the baby in the sling, getting some coffee. A woman called me over and gestured to my back pocket, indicating that I shouldn’t pu

Oct 26, 2017
3 min

Non-Fiction (like pie) is your Friend

My shelf is in danger of falling down. We put it up to replace the bedside tables, so it hovers above our heads, laden with all the stuff I used to cram into those drawers. A basket filled with far too many tubes of half-finished hand cream, assorted earphones, toe separators, the tiny glass pig I brought back from China years ago. And, of course, books. At the moment I’m reading six. There are a couple of literary magazines, one novel, and four non-fiction books. Herein lies

Jul 17, 2017
2 min

Women Are Not A Minority

It’s a pretty important week for females and fantasy. The BBC have announced that the next Dr. Who is going to be a woman. For many, this is a very welcome change. For far too long, this genre has been almost completely dominated by white men. From Superman to Wolverine, Dr Who to Thor, the faces that are seen as saviours and heroes are all too often a variation on a theme, with hair colour and beard being the only factor of difference. With the last companion being black and

Jul 10, 2017
3 min

Why I’m Only Reading Books by Women

I’m trying to remember the last time I read a book by a man. Or, for that matter, the last time I watched something that didn’t have a female character in a dominant role. It seems that, perhaps unconsciously at first, I’m moving away from things created by men, or at least things that have a dominant male perspective. That might seem pretty reductive, to some. Surely only viewing the world through one lens is restrictive, no matter which one you choose? That would be true, i

Apr 30, 2017
4 min

Power – Gender and Naomi Alderman’s Novel

In terms of power and control, it’s a scary time. Unity and strength seem to be giving way to individual gripes and complaints, people turned against each other to shout blame for the lives they’re not happy with. Unstable times lead to unlikely heroes. People currently in power are those that we wouldn’t have dreamed of electing or giving a voice to. Suddenly, a victory for a abusive right-wing president seems the ‘popular’ choice. Keeping the current UK government, the cham

Jan 26, 2017
5 min

Femspreading – Making Space For Women

Genderspecs – changing gendered perspectives, one blog at a time. It’s always a joyous moment when I receive an email telling me that the next podcast episode of ‘The Guilty Feminist’ is out. This time the theme was ‘Taking Up Space,’ and how women don’t tend to do it quite as much as men. I’ve suffered from bad shoulders for years. Part of it is the curse of the writer/student I became in later life – carrying my laptop about on my back like a tortoise with a portable office

Jan 22, 2017
3 min

Being Nasty – The Power of Protest

There’s something pretty uplifting about meeting a hundred thousand people who share your views, even if you just walk down a road together making ‘woo’ noises every now and again. Or perhaps that makes it even better. When I attended the Women’s March in London, after a slew of thoroughly depressing news articles read under the duvet (yes, this cold still won’t go away) there was undeniable hope and power in the footsteps of thousands who are feeling out of step with the way

Oct 7, 2016
4 min

Y: The Last Man – Book Review

I know I’m massively behind the times in reading this, but as I’m currently working on a similar narrative, several people recommended this graphic novel as a good place to look at how a gender-imbalanced dystopia played out. Interesting ideas, some lessons learned, and a few pitfalls to avoid. On a day in 2002, a mystery virus simultaneously kills off every creature with a Y chromosome on the planet. Apart from one. Yorick (his parents liked Shakespeare) and his monkey Amper

Sep 30, 2016
4 min

We Are All Disordered

This month I started teaching AS Media Studies. What a treat. I’d forgotten the delights of delving into the signs and representations that we are bombarded with in daily life, and unpicking the institutions behind them, the messages they send us, and why. Of course, it can lead to a few rude awakenings. Poring over Lynx’s ‘ironic’ adverts depicting a scantily clad woman pulling a turkey out of the oven, it was clear that some of my students were already hyper-aware of the sk

Aug 19, 2016
4 min

Why I’m Not an Angry Feminist

Today I had the joy of experiencing a running buddy while out on the streets. As I ran past him, he came into step beside me, waving his arms and making silly high pitched noises. After which he collapsed in giggles, so amused by the sight of a woman running down the road. All of this was done in the sight of, not a crowd of jeering lads, but what I assume was his young daughter. I can only imagine the lessons she has learnt about the value of women through her eyes as she wa

Aug 5, 2016
4 min

Empress Orchid – The Mistrusted Empress

I first heard about ‘Empress Cixi’ through a BBC documentary called ‘The Ascent of Woman.’ An impressive summary of a huge swathe of human history, the programme asked questions about the subjugation of women over the centuries, and examined the reasons behind it. Much of it was startling, such as the fact that covering women up with veils was considered appropriate to show status and sexual promiscuity, many hundreds of years before Islam existed as a faith. It also examined

Jul 31, 2016
4 min

A Little Life

There’s something immensely satisfying in a novel that appears to start out one way, and then takes you somewhere you weren’t expecting. Initially, A Little Life appears to be a well-written if slightly superficial account of a group of young men in New York. The prose is beautiful, but not laboriously so. At a moment of poignant observation, we are treated to a delightful turn of phrase. What separates this from wordy writers that just like to describe everything, is that th

Jun 10, 2016
4 min

A Girl is a Half-Formed Thing

Personally, I’m not a fan of the word ‘genius.’ It’s derived from ‘genie.’ The idea that a little imp comes and sits on your shoulder and gives you an idea, and that’s where your fantastic work comes from. To me, that detracts from the graft, the inspiration, the dedication, needed in order to produce something of wonder and beauty. As Adam Grant points out in his TED talk, one of the reason people end up with beautiful creative things is that they create lots of average or c

May 23, 2016
3 min

Wearing Makeup Isn’t Empowering

Genderspecs – unpicking gender stereotypes, one blog at a time There’s an awful lot that can empower you these days. Shower gel, pants and even socks are being held up as things that allow us to assert our rights. To a certain extent, this can be true. The physical expression of who we are can allow us to be noticed, taken seriously and even challenge stereotypes. Where I draw the line (a metaphorical one around my eyes which makes me look cross) is at the idea that wearing m

Mar 31, 2016
4 min

Genderspecs – The Gendered Gaze

Genderspecs – unpicking gender stereotypes, one blog at a time. The Gendered Gaze Come on, you’ve done it too, haven’t you? Described your mate Terry as a ‘man’s man’ or as ‘bloke,’ your mate Fiona as a ‘girly girl.’ These are broad brushstrokes we all recognise. Terry probably likes football, or some sort of sport, while I can bet that the canine following Fiona round the house is not a wolfhound. Gender is a nice simple set of rules we can assign to people. The problem is,

Sarah Scribbles

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