Author: admin

Three thirty in the afternoon and I’m sweating into my third cup of coffee at some godforsaken strip mall type of coffee shop just off of the corner of a grunge-y looking building, waiting for a man who said he’d be here at two…

The clock is a weapon for anyone who uses it to remind them of discipline.

Time is the only currency that matters and we’ve been told for years that it’s more precious than money, more finite than youth and these slack-jawed parasites treat it like pocket change they can toss in the gutter.

I’ve seen them all…

The client who “runs late” to every meeting, stealing fifteen minutes here, twenty there, building a career on the accumulated theft of other people’s lives.

The old friend who cancels an hour before the reunion. Always an hour, just enough time to fuck your entire evening but not enough to make other plans.

The consultant who shows up forty minutes past deadline with a shit eating grin and a Venti latte, like lateness is a personality trait instead of a defect in their own putrid character.

These people are vampires. They don’t drink blood.

They drain seconds and minutes and hours, leaving you older and deader while they waltz through life unburdened by the concept of consequence.

The worst part? They think they’re special.

That their time matters more than yours. That the universe should bend around their whims while you sit there, aging, dying, watching the minutes tick away like heartbeats you’ll never get back.

Four o’clock now. He’s not coming.

I leave cash on the table.

Exact change, because I’m not a fucking animal and walk into the parking lot where the sun hammers down like God’s own fist.

Tomorrow I’ll wake up two hours older and no richer.

That’s the real crime. Not the disrespect. The theft.

The irreversible, unforgivable theft of time.

(The moral? Respect people’s time. Respect your own time. Do your best work and master time, cause no matter what we do. There’s no buying it back)

Stephen Walker.

P.S. If you’ve liked that little bit of prose. You’ll love what I’m cooking up with my editor. Let’s just hope I’m not pushing up daisies before it gets released.

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Stephen Walker, Unit 146317, PO Box 7169, Poole, BH15 9EL, United Kingdom

And you probably don’t even realise it.

I’m not going gentle into this Friday night.

The thing is. It’s not even your fault.

Friends and family are trying to rope us into those endless Tiktok clips.

Pulled deep into those scroll holes which do nothing but lobotomise the attention right out of us.

Our minds are being trained to crave quick hits of dopamine instead of sustained thought.

We’re becoming intellectually diabetic, addicted to mental junk food that tastes good in the beginning but leaves us malnourished. This is why you need to read David Foster Wallace. And Thomas Pynchon. And Don DeLillo. And Jennifer Egan. And Zadie Smith and and and…

And a lot of these are going to hurt.

Infinite Jest isn’t called infinite for nothing. It’s a thousand page brick that will make your brain sweat (I’m half way through it and man… [chefs kiss]

And if you so happen to pick up Gravity’s Rainbow, it will have you questioning reality by page fifty. As for White Noise, It will leave you paranoid about everything from supermarkets to radio waves. (Damn those radio waves)

And yeah a lot of it starts off hard to read but honestly that’s just your brain doing some extra work cause it’s so used to brain rot content.

These authors don’t write for people who want easy answers or comfortable narratives.

If you want politically correct bullshit and romantacy then sure, there’s plenty of books that’ll scratch that itch. Those are just junkfood.

The writers I’ve mentioned. They write for readers willing to wrestle with complex ideas, follow labyrinthine thoughts, and sit with ambiguity. They demand attention spans longer than a commercial break.

Wallace will take you inside the mind of someone so depressed they can’t feel their own feelings, then somehow make that experience beautiful (And I imagine it’s only going to be even more of a wild ride after I box off the last 500ish pages) Pynchon will weave conspiracy theories and mathematical concepts into paranoid masterpieces that feel like one of those dreams you have when you’re severely dehydrated in the jungle while fighting off Malaria. DeLillo will make you see the sinister poetry in American consumer culture which has sadly bled into the souls of the rest of the world.

Try Donna Tartt’s The Goldfinch if you want accessible complexity. Pick up Jennifer Egan’s A Visit from the Goon Squad for experimental storytelling that actually serves the story. Grab anything by Zadie Smith for brilliant social observation wrapped in gorgeous prose.

We’re going down that intellectual rabbit hole, baby.

Reading difficult books is like lifting weights for your mind.

Your concentration improves. Your patience grows. You start noticing patterns and connections that others miss. You develop tolerance for uncertainty and comfort with complexity.

And don’t get me wrong. The world we’re living in now profits from you being constantly distracted and carefree.

So pick up something that makes you work for it.

Stephen Walker.

This one will slap you. I read it back in highschool and damn…

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Stephen Walker, Unit 146317, PO Box 7169, Poole, BH15 9EL, United Kingdom

Sometimes you just need to half-ass things.

Could people liken it to failure? Sure.

I’d probably just say it’s some sort of survival mechanism in the creative and human sense.

I know this goes against everything we’ve been taught about excellence and giving 110% and all that motivational poster bullshit.

But perfectionism isn’t a virtue, it just ends up killing your productivity.

You know what happens when you try to make everything perfect? Nothing gets finished.

You spend three hours agonising over a single paragraph that nobody will remember next week. (I do this with single sentences sometimes and it annoys the shit out of me)

Or maybe you rewrite emails seventeen times for clarity that was already there in draft number two.

Or you research endlessly instead of starting, because starting means accepting that your work might be imperfect.

Meanwhile, the person who ships decent work or things consistently is lapping you.

Some things deserve your complete attention. Most things don’t. Learning to tell the difference is what separates productive people from burned out perfectionists.

That presentation for your biggest client? Give it everything.

That internal status update email? Write it, spell check it, send it.

Don’t spend forty minutes crafting prose poetry about quarterly targets, fuck that noise.

The blog post that’s been sitting in your drafts for three months because it’s “not quite right”? Publish the damn thing.

It’s better for an imperfect idea to exist in the world than for a perfect one to die in your head.

I’ve found burnout doesn’t come from working too much, it actually comes from caring too much about things that don’t matter enough.

When everything feels equally important, nothing actually is.

Your energy is finite. Your attention is limited. Your time is not renewable. Spending all three on making everything perfect means you’ll perfect yourself right into exhaustion and accomplish nothing meaningful in the process.

Good enough is often exactly enough. Sometimes half-ass is full success.

The people getting things done aren’t the ones agonising over every detail. They’re the ones who know when to stop polishing and start shipping.

And if you do ever feel like you’re stuck in a funk. This obnoxiously long link to yet another book will help kick your ass.

Stephen Walker.

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Stephen Walker, Unit 146317, PO Box 7169, Poole, BH15 9EL, United Kingdom

It’s rare for me not write anything.

Yesterday was one of those not writing days and well, as much as I preach daily emails for all the various reasons and benefits. A day off won’t kill you.

Just don’t take too many days off cause then it’ll spiral into many days off…

Anyways. I am back to be a menace to your inbox.

Inspired by my fellow writer and romantic Cole Shafer, here be a list just for you. (I rarely do lists but this was fun)

100 Laws for the Wildhearted: A Manifesto for Artists, Makers, and Other Beautiful Monsters

Tell a story like you’re catching lightning in a jar made of your own ribs. 

Romanticise the dirt under your fingernails. It’s proof you’ve been digging. 

Make art, not algorithm bait and zuckermuskbullshit. 

If you can’t be original, be so damn good the ghosts get jealous. 

Be strange. Be unmarketable. Then make them market you anyway. 

Taste is a weapon; sharpen it until it draws blood. 

If it doesn’t wreck you a little, it won’t wreck them at all. 

Clever is fine. Clear is divine. Confuse no one but yourself. 

You can’t bore people into ecstasy. 

Make something they whisper to their friends like a secret sin. 

The frame and the colours are the story. Don’t treat them like furniture. 

Quality is the altar. Sacrifice everything but your soul upon it. 

Without a soul, your “brand” is a zombie puppet. 

Competing on price is how art dies in fluorescent lighting. 

AI is the devil, reclaim your soul before it's too late. 

Do the weird thing only you can do. The cracked, crooked, you-shaped thing. 

Rules aren’t cages. They’re bones. Snap them and grow new ones. 

Carve away everything that doesn’t pulse. 

Build one cathedral. Bleed in every brick. 

Focus like a sniper with trembling hands. 

Juggling a hundred dreams means you’ll drop every damn one. 

Moving isn’t progress. Dancing might be. 

Decide boldly. Even when you’re wrong, do it beautifully. 

Fear is a compass. Walk toward the teeth. 

Audacity. Audacity. Always audacity. (Tattoo it on your bones.) 

Punch up at gods, never down at mortals. 

Take no shit. Eat the criticism, digest the truth, spit the rest. 

Learn the rules. Then snap their necks with grace. 

Be the quiet storm. The unseen machine. 

If you hate the story, rewrite the mythology. 

Own your failures like feral pets. Name them. Feed them. Learn from them. 

Promise less, deliver art that burns brighter than what was asked. 

The audience knows their wounds, but not their medicine. You’re the apothecary. 

Heal, don’t sell. But if you must sell, sell healing. 

Follow up like a ghost that won’t stop haunting. 

If you are the artist, your first product is belief. 

When you’re lost, go there in person. Art lives where friction does. 

Relationships are compound interest for the soul. 

Do the thing that doesn’t scale. Handwrite. Handpaint. Handbleed. 

Outsource the boring stuff twice. Then learn the magic yourself. 

Study how barbers, churches, and cults captivate people. Then use it for good. 

Find the hungry, the weird, the overlooked cause they’re tomorrow’s giants. 

Hire slow. Fire your inner cynic fast. 

Committees murder ideas with polite smiles. Protect yours. 

Praise in the light. Critique in the dark. 

Good work breeds more work. Be careful what you summon. 

Winners make worlds. Losers imitate theirs. 

Relevance fades. Legacy becomes dust coated in gold. Choose legacy. 

Study the bones of the dead. They left you blueprints. 

Don’t build your dream castle on someone else’s digital sand. (I learnt this one the hard way. RIP 200 000+ followers) 

Yesterday’s tools won’t carve tomorrow’s myths. Adapt. Mutate. 

Think in centuries. Act before lunch. 

Chop wood. Carry wonder. 

Passion flickers. Persistence fuels the stars. 

Be the one who’s still there when everyone else quits. 

Your body is your brush. Treat it like an instrument, not an afterthought. 

Pay yourself first. Every hour of the day belongs to you, your thoughts and the muse before anyone and anything else. 

Keep a year’s worth of hope (and rent) in the bank. (A fuck it fund) 

Cash is king. But margin and creative space is the queen that rules him. 

Everything is temporary. Make it eternal anyway. 

When in doubt: make something that scares you, then show it to the world. 

Discipline is just romance with structure. 

Rest is part of the process. Even volcanoes sleep. 

Don’t chase balance, chase alignment. 

Ritual is rocket fuel. Build one. Light it daily. 

Reject cynicism when you can; it’s sugar-coated despair. 

If you find yourself jealous, study instead of sulk. 

Comparison poisons creation. Antidote: empathy and movement. 

Make a habit of finishing things. Corpses tell better stories than embryos. 

You think you're blocked. Actually, you're incubating. But don’t stay stuck forever. 

Treat failure like compost. It stinks but grows miracles. 

Don’t fetishize humility. Earn it with scars. 

The first draft isn’t trash, it’s raw ore. Melt it. Forge it. 

Every artist must be a hunter and a monk. 

The muse respects deadlines. 

Create like everyone’s watching. Edit like no one is. 

Turn pain into narrative structure. (That's where the best writing and creating gets done) 

Let your weirdness be the handshake that opens doors. 

The work is the marketing. The rest is choreography. 

Don’t chase perfection; chase resonance. 

Everything you make is a self-portrait. Be proud of the monster. 

Don’t bow to gatekeepers, they’re just scared you’ll climb the wall. 

Romanticise failure, but don’t build your house there. 

Make quiet art loud, and loud art whisper. 

If you’re not uncomfortable, you’re repeating yourself. 

Fuck trends. They die faster than moths in rain. 

Make stuff you want to exist in the world. If not you, who? 

The muse loves movement. Walk. Drive. Wash dishes. Invite her in. 

Don’t polish forever. Shine once, release it, start again. 

Momentum is oxygen. Protect it. 

Learn business. Not to sell out, but to stay free. 

Don’t become a brand. Become a myth. 

Make friends with solitude; she’s brutal but honest. 

Art doesn’t owe anyone an explanation. 

Make things for your future ghost to be proud of. 

Try everything once, but finish something thrice. 

No one is coming to save your project. You’re the cavalry. You are the carpenter that has to get their hands splintered and bruised. 

Make love to curiosity daily. 

Die on your own hill but make sure the view is worth it. 

Keep your torch lit, even when the rain won’t stop. Someone, somewhere, needs to see it. 

Stephen Walker.

P.S. Go check out Cole’s stuff over here on the instaspam

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Stephen Walker, Unit 146317, PO Box 7169, Poole, BH15 9EL, United Kingdom

So I caught whatever plague is making the rounds…

Could be a cold, could be the flu, could be the opening act of the next global pandemic.

Who knows anymore? These days every sniffle feels like it might be Patient Zero material which is always fun when you’re out and about.

Anyway, I dragged my diseased carcass inside, ran a hot bath thinking I’d soak the sickness out of my bones, and promptly passed out in the tub like some kind of fever dream 12 monkeys styled film casualty.

Thank god for tall legs, because they’re apparently the only thing standing between me and becoming a drowning statistic.

My knees hit the sides of the tub and kept my head above water while I was unconscious and fighting whatever biological warfare was happening in my bloodstream.

When I finally came to, the water had gone ice cold and I was so shrivelled up I looked like a raisin that had been left in the desert for six months.

Seriously, I caught a glimpse of myself and immediately thought of Ed Gein eyeing me up for his next home decor project.

(Mental note to self… Stop watching Netflix before bed. My subconscious doesn’t need that kind of inspiration while I’m fighting off death in a bathtub)

My fingers were so pruned they looked like they belonged to someone’s 90 year old grandmother who’d spent her entire life washing dishes.

But hey, I’m alive, I’m not a lampshade, and I didn’t accidentally become the inspiration for some future true crime documentary about the guy who drowned in his own bathtub while sick. (Which would be an interesting way to go…)

Since I’m clearly not meant to be productive today and neither are you if you’re reading this, let me suggest something way better than whatever mindless scrolling you were about to do…

Pick up Perimeter by M.A. Rothman. It’s basically what would happen if Jack Reacher was Mormon, had better moral strength, and got dropped into situations that make regular action thrillers look like children’s bedtime stories.

The main character is this guy Levi who’s built like a brick shithouse but has the kind of moral compass that actually points north. Fast paced, entertaining as hell, and the perfect antidote to whatever productivity guilt you’re carrying around today.

Anyways. It’s bed time before I start coughing up parts of my insides. Gross. I know.

Stephen Walker.

P.S. If you’re also fighting off whatever biological weapon is circulating this week, maybe avoid hot baths and Netflix serial killer documentaries. Just a thought.

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Stephen Walker, Unit 146317, PO Box 7169, Poole, BH15 9EL, United Kingdom

Ed Gein was a monster.

But you might take his side after being given a psychological masterclass in horror.

(Or so I’ve been told by a friend who has just binged the whole series in one day…)

Granted I’m only 1 episode in, and there was a lot to unpack in the first episode.

All I can say is it was a wild start and as a writer I’m always looking to understand how truly disturbing characters work.

Forget the Hollywood serial killer bullshit with the dramatic music and over the top theatrics.

From what I know from previous documentaries and articles I’ve read on Gein, was that he was so terrifying because he seemed so fucking ordinary.

Kept to himself. The kind of guy neighbours barely noticed until they found human skin lampshades in his house.

And I mean a lot of writers miss the mark.

They go straight for the obvious crazy, the maniacal laughter, the grandiose speeches, the bloody gory theatrical violence and what not. From what I know. Actual monsters just blend in with day to day life. They’re not twirling their moustaches and lurking around all sneaky like.

You might read about how they just made small talk at counter while buying break and milk, but when they get home. They plot something so twisted even our boy Stephen King would lose sleep.

Now I’m invested in seeing how this show builds Gein’s character. I want to see if they’re going to add the mundane details. The way his twisted logic feels almost reasonable when viewed through his damaged perspective. (The barn scene towards them middle of the first episode just sets the tone) The slow reveal that this unassuming man harbours thoughts that would send most people into therapy for decades.

Now I’m thinking to myself how can I write a villain that haunts people? Don’t make them a cartoon. Make them someone readers might sit next to on public transport. Someone who could be their co-worker, their neighbour, the person ahead of them in line at Starbucks.

The one thing I’ve also noticed in general is that monsters won’t just announce they’re monsters. They just exist, quietly, in spaces we thought were safe.

I’m looking forward to studying how Gein’s ordinariness becomes the most terrifying thing about him. The most compelling dark characters are the ones who feel like they could step off the page and order coffee next to you.

That’s when readers start double checking their door locks and wondering about the person who lives upstairs.

And if you have no clue what I’m talking about, just watch the trailer here.

Stephen Walker.

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Stephen Walker, Unit 146317, PO Box 7169, Poole, BH15 9EL, United Kingdom

The French have this saying…

C’est la vie.

More aptly put;

“That’s life.”

Those two words carry the weight of centuries of human experience, wrapped in what I’d call a linguistic shrug, that somehow manages to be both profound and casual at the same time.

You’re not resigning nor giving up. It’s something much more sophisticated at a deeper look.

It’s a soft sigh of acceptance that acknowledges life doesn’t give a damn about your carefully crafted plans. You know that feeling when everything you’ve mapped out gets completely derailed?

When the job falls through, the relationship implodes, the project you poured your heart into gets rejected, the pandemic cancels your entire year, the diagnosis changes everything?

We’ve all been there and got the t-shirt.

Most of us respond to these moments by losing our absolute shit. We rage against the unfairness, demand explanations from a universe that doesn’t owe us any, exhaust ourselves trying to force square pegs into round holes.

The French just say c’est la vie and pour another glass of wine.

There’s wisdom in that response that goes deeper than it appears.

It might even come across as being passive or fatalistic. Now I’m sure we understand that life is fundamentally unpredictable, and fighting that reality is like screaming at the ocean for being cold, wet and deadly.

Your plans were beautiful. Your timeline made perfect sense. Your vision of how things should unfold was logical and well-thought-out. And life laughed in the face of all of it, because life doesn’t read your fucking calendar.

C’est la vie.

There will be detours. The mess isn’t interrupting your life; it is your life. The unexpected turns, the sudden stops, the routes you never planned to take…

That’s where the actual story happens even if the story feels like an absolute shit show on the surface.

Every person you admire has a biography full of detours that seemed like disasters at the time. The failed business that led to the breakthrough idea. The rejection that forced them to try something better. The crisis that revealed strengths they didn’t know they had.

None of it was part of their original plan. All of it was essential to who they became.

There’s beauty in accepting that you’re not the director of this movie.

You’re just the protagonist stumbling through scenes you didn’t write, with dialogue you’re making up as you go along. Sometimes the lighting is perfect and your lines are brilliant. Sometimes you trip over the furniture and forget what you were supposed to say.

C’est la vie.

This doesn’t mean becoming a doormat or abandoning your ambitions. It means holding your planTwitter has been insufferable today.

The Litterati? (Literature nazis or whatever) were up in arms on Elon’s hellsite…

They were screaming from their high horses about how piracy is terrible and you’re an evil monster if you don’t care about piracy, especially if you’re an indie author trying to make it in this cut throat world of self pub and ink slinging…

But now it’s my time to get on my soap box and tell a different tune about piracy.

Hark Ye!

So back in 2020 I was working on a project with a fellow writer and marketing nerd.

We wrote a couple of guides, posted it to Gumroad and had a few big twitter accounts promote it and before we knew it. They were posted all over those blackhat web forums and discord servers.

Luckily we didn’t take anything too seriously cause hey, it’s not like we were out to stop world hunger or anything…

Originally my first instinct was to fire off angry emails and DMCA takedown notices like some kind of copyright vigilante.

Then I remembered something.

I used to be that person downloading shit I couldn’t afford.

Now most artists and creatives don’t want to admit this.

Sometimes it’s the only way people can access work that might change their lives.

I know, I know. We need to eat. We need to pay rent. The written word is already undervalued and we’re all fighting for scraps in an attention economy that treats books like disposable content. Every download that doesn’t generate revenue feels like money stolen directly from our grocery budget.

But let’s talk about the bigger picture for a minute.

You know what’s really fucked up?

There are brilliant people in countries where books cost a month’s salary. Students in places where Amazon doesn’t ship. Kids in regions where accessing “Western” literature is actively discouraged by governments who prefer to control information flow.

What if someone in Africa desperately needs to read that book about overcoming creative blocks, but it costs more than they make in a week? What if a writer in rural China stumbles across your work about breaking generational trauma, but there’s no legal way for them to access it?

Are we really going to stand on principle while someone who could benefit from our work suffers because they can’t afford the entry fee to our wisdom?

It’s purely some twisted form of capitalism prancing around with a half shattered mask of artistic integrity…

Look, I’m not saying we should all just give our work away for free. I’m not suggesting piracy is morally neutral or that creators don’t deserve compensation. But the scarcity mindset that makes us treat every unauthorised download like a personal attack? That’s what’s really holding us back.

Here’s what I did instead of sending lawyer threats (Which honestly is so fucking exhausting anyways) I started to put a simple message in all my ebooks.

Something like, “Hey, if you got this book through unofficial channels, no judgment. I’ve been broke too. If it helped you and you’re ever in a position to support the work, here’s my newsletter link. I’d love to hear your story.”

You know what happened? People started reaching out. Not all of them, but enough. Some just wanted to say thanks for not being a dick about it. Others shared how they found my work and why it mattered to them. A few even sent small donations when they could afford it later.

One person told me they’d downloaded my book while unemployed and depressed, used the techniques to turn their life around, got a better job, and paid for my time via a Zoom call.

That reader is now worth more to me than ten people who bought the book once and forgot about it.

We’re not Stephen King. We don’t have the luxury of not caring when our work gets shared without permission. But we also don’t have his name recognition or marketing budget. Sometimes a “stolen” book is the best marketing we’re going to get.

Every person who discovers your work, regardless of how they found it, is a potential ambassador for everything you create next.

They might recommend you to friends who do pay. They might hire you for bigger projects. They might become lifelong supporters once their circumstances change.

The scarcity mindset says every pirated copy is a lost sale.

The abundance mindset recognises that most pirates were never going to buy your work anyway, but some of them might become your biggest fans. On top of that. When you haven’t paid for anything (Skin in the game) you’re less likely to do anything with it anyways so does it really matter?

I’m not saying don’t protect your work or that artists should embrace being exploited. I’m saying maybe we should consider the difference between organised piracy operations profiting off our labour and individuals who genuinely can’t access our work any other way.

There’s enough to go around. Your words reaching someone who needs them, even if they can’t pay for the privilege, shouldn’t be considered theft.

I’d liken it some sort of hidden impact or whatever.

If someone reads some of my words and impacts their life in a positive way, well that to me is a job well done.

And if they so happen to still be on this email list, they can happily click this super long and obnoxious link and buy me a coffee or whatever…

Stephen Walker.

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Stephen Walker, Unit 146317, PO Box 7169, Poole, BH15 9EL, United Kingdoms lightly enough that you can do that little jiggle wiggle thing? (Pivot lol), especially when reality demands it.

It means finding grace in the gap between what you expected and what actually happened.

The French understand something about living that other cultures seem to miss…

You can’t control the story, but you can control how you respond to it. You can rage against every plot twist, or you can trust that even the detours have something to teach you.

There’s gonna be mess. But there’s also going to be beauty.

In the way you adapt when everything falls apart. In the strength you discover when you’re forced to improvise. In the stories you’ll tell years later about the time when nothing went according to plan and somehow everything worked out anyway.

C’est la vie doesn’t make you give up on your dreams.

It’s more about giving you a little slap and letting you know that there’s no way you can dictate exactly how those dreams come true.

Sometimes the most profound wisdom comes wrapped in the simplest phrases. Sometimes the French really do have it figured out.

C’est la vie.

Stephen Walker.

If you’re not diggin’ these tasty little emails anymore you can hit the unsubscribe button right here >>> unsubscribe

Stephen Walker, Unit 146317, PO Box 7169, Poole, BH15 9EL, United Kingdom

The French have this saying…

C’est la vie.

More aptly put;

“That’s life.”

Those two words carry the weight of centuries of human experience, wrapped in what I’d call a linguistic shrug, that somehow manages to be both profound and casual at the same time.

You’re not resigning nor giving up. It’s something much more sophisticated at a deeper look.

It’s a soft sigh of acceptance that acknowledges life doesn’t give a damn about your carefully crafted plans. You know that feeling when everything you’ve mapped out gets completely derailed?

When the job falls through, the relationship implodes, the project you poured your heart into gets rejected, the pandemic cancels your entire year, the diagnosis changes everything?

We’ve all been there and got the t-shirt.

Most of us respond to these moments by losing our absolute shit. We rage against the unfairness, demand explanations from a universe that doesn’t owe us any, exhaust ourselves trying to force square pegs into round holes.

The French just say c’est la vie and pour another glass of wine.

There’s wisdom in that response that goes deeper than it appears.

It might even come across as being passive or fatalistic. Now I’m sure we understand that life is fundamentally unpredictable, and fighting that reality is like screaming at the ocean for being cold, wet and deadly.

Your plans were beautiful. Your timeline made perfect sense. Your vision of how things should unfold was logical and well-thought-out. And life laughed in the face of all of it, because life doesn’t read your fucking calendar.

C’est la vie.

There will be detours. The mess isn’t interrupting your life; it is your life. The unexpected turns, the sudden stops, the routes you never planned to take…

That’s where the actual story happens even if the story feels like an absolute shit show on the surface.

Every person you admire has a biography full of detours that seemed like disasters at the time. The failed business that led to the breakthrough idea. The rejection that forced them to try something better. The crisis that revealed strengths they didn’t know they had.

None of it was part of their original plan. All of it was essential to who they became.

There’s beauty in accepting that you’re not the director of this movie.

You’re just the protagonist stumbling through scenes you didn’t write, with dialogue you’re making up as you go along. Sometimes the lighting is perfect and your lines are brilliant. Sometimes you trip over the furniture and forget what you were supposed to say.

C’est la vie.

This doesn’t mean becoming a doormat or abandoning your ambitions. It means holding your plans lightly enough that you can do that little jiggle wiggle thing? (Pivot lol), especially when reality demands it.

It means finding grace in the gap between what you expected and what actually happened.

The French understand something about living that other cultures seem to miss…

You can’t control the story, but you can control how you respond to it. You can rage against every plot twist, or you can trust that even the detours have something to teach you.

There’s gonna be mess. But there’s also going to be beauty.

In the way you adapt when everything falls apart. In the strength you discover when you’re forced to improvise. In the stories you’ll tell years later about the time when nothing went according to plan and somehow everything worked out anyway.

C’est la vie doesn’t make you give up on your dreams.

It’s more about giving you a little slap and letting you know that there’s no way you can dictate exactly how those dreams come true.

Sometimes the most profound wisdom comes wrapped in the simplest phrases. Sometimes the French really do have it figured out.

C’est la vie.

Stephen Walker.

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Stephen Walker, Unit 146317, PO Box 7169, Poole, BH15 9EL, United Kingdom

Put the phone down and pick up a book (After you’ve read this email obviously)

And no. Not an audiobook. Not a Kindle. An actual, physical book with pages you can turn and a spine that’ll look good on your shelf after you’re done being completely mindfucked by whatever’s inside…

I’m talking specifically about The Fog by James Herbert.

Also NO…

…not the movies.

John Carpenter’s 1980 version was… fine, I guess, if you enjoy watching people stumble around in what looks like someone’s vape clouds while dramatic music plays.

And don’t get me started on the 2005 remake, which somehow managed to take a perfectly good concept and turn it into a CGI nightmare that made the original look like Citizen Kane.

The book though? Chef’s kiss.

Herbert knew how to write horror that gets under your skin and stays there.

The Fog isn’t just some mysterious weather phenomenon that just so happened to be.

It was a living, breathing nightmare that drives people to acts of violence so brutal and random that you’ll find yourself double checking your door locks.

This is the kind of book that’ll make you cancel your Sunday plans because you physically cannot put it down. You’ll start reading after coffee and suddenly it’s dark outside and you haven’t moved from your chair and you’re questioning whether that sound outside is just the wind or something much worse.

Sundays were made for this kind of reading. Not the productive, self-improvement, optimise-your-life bullshit that clogs your weekdays.

I’m talking about reading for the pure, unadulterated pleasure of having your mind completely hijacked by someone else’s imagination.

When was the last time you disappeared into a story so completely that the real world ceased to exist?

When did you last feel that particular brand of exhaustion that comes from being emotionally wrung out by fictional characters?

Your phone can’t give you that. Social media can’t give you that. Netflix definitely can’t give you that…

But a good book can transport you somewhere else entirely. It can make you forget about your problems, your deadlines, your crushing sense of existential dread about the state of the world.

I mean if you look at the world right now. It’s a steaming hot dumpster fire of pure turd.

The Fog will do exactly that. Herbert had this gift for making ordinary English towns feel like the most dangerous places on earth. He understood that the best horror comes from taking normal people in normal situations and introducing one element that turns everything upside down.

Plus, there’s something deeply satisfying about reading physical horror fiction. The weight of the book in your hands, the ability to flip back and reread a particularly brutal passage, the satisfaction of watching your bookmark move through the pages as you get closer to whatever nightmare Herbert has waiting for you at the end.

So here’s your mission for today…

Find a copy of The Fog. Turn off your phone. Make some coffee or tea or whatever keeps you functional. Find a comfortable chair with good light.

And then let James Herbert ruin your peaceful Sunday in the most delicious way possible.

Your brain will thank you for the break from all of this always being on. Your imagination will thank you for the workout. And your future self will thank you for remembering what it feels like to be completely absorbed by a story again.

Trust me on this one. The fog is coming, and you want to be ready for it.

This is the 3rd time I’ve read The Fog and I was pretty stoked to have been able to pick up a 50th anniversary edition at the local Asda while grabbing a coffee.

And if you absolutely must get the kindle version. Well it’s free on kindle unlimited right now.

Stephen Walker.

P.S. After you finish The Fog, Herbert wrote a whole bunch of other books that’ll mess with your head in equally satisfying ways. Consider this your gateway drug into proper British horror fiction. You’re welcome.

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Stephen Walker, Unit 146317, PO Box 7169, Poole, BH15 9EL, United Kingdom

Sometimes I feel like I’m losing my fucking mind writing these emails.

Not because the ideas are bad.

I still believe everything I’m telling you. But because I’ve written about resistance seventeen times. I’ve explained the importance of daily practice in twelve different ways. I’ve dissected creative fear from every possible angle.

And I know I’ll write about all of it again next week.

Good ideas need repetition to sink in. Your brain doesn’t absorb life changing concepts on the first pass. It needs to hear them multiple times, in different contexts, with different examples, before something finally clicks.

I got off the phone today with my editor. It was only a short call but it’s the same message and concept splayed out in a different way.

Yes I get it, but holy hell, for the creator? This repetition feels insane.

I’m sitting here crafting another email about showing up consistently, and part of my brain is screaming, “You’ve already said this a trillion times, Move o… Find something new ffs.”

The boredom is real. The urge to chase shiny new topics instead of drilling down on fundamentals is overwhelming.

I’m even re-reading this tome of knowledge for probably the tenth time…

This is the hardest part of being creative that nobody talks about.

Getting past your own boredom with your message to serve the people who need to hear it.

While I’m over here feeling like a broken record, someone is reading about creative resistance for the first time. Someone else heard it before but wasn’t ready to act on it then. Another person needs to hear it exactly today, in exactly these words, to finally push through whatever’s been stopping them.

Such is the wheel of life or whatever. A lot of repetitions.

Plus I don’t think anyone ever consumes content chronologically. I don’t think I’d want to make things with that level of order. My brain just doesn’t work that way.

So I’ll keep writing about the same core truths in new ways. I’ll keep feeling mildly insane about it.

But it has to be said a few more times I reckon.

I trust my message/s…

Even if I want to lock myself in an insane asylum (sometimes)

Stephen Walker.

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Stephen Walker, Unit 146317, PO Box 7169, Poole, BH15 9EL, United Kingdom