Letting go

and what comes next

Dear friends,

This month I’ve hit my dark night of the soul with writing, or more specifically, books. It’s winter where I am and I’ve never done well with the cold. For me this is a painful season but always a revealing one so this year I tried hard to avoid a crash and came up with the brave idea of ‘apply for everything January’. Honestly, what was I thinking?

For the last three years, January has become a month in which I earn basically nothing. A month in which I stare at an empty calendar for the year ahead, and panic. With no exaggeration, I have €250 worth of freelance work confirmed ahead of me – for 2026, but also my entire future. There’s Patreon, some bits and pieces of book sales but those can disappear at any moment. Everything else is a void of unknowing and bills. I always get by, because I’ve always gotten by, but my god, this level of uncertainty at my age, I wouldn’t wish it on anyone. Oh, and I moved house again.

I knew I was about to hit a wall, so I decided to take action.

I found my volition, I took the bull by the horns or whatever, and I applied for every possibility, every connection that I could think of. Publishers. Book shops. Everyone who ever podcasted or published articles on queer ecology or speculative fiction. I spent days and weeks crafting applications for art funding and writing grants. Anything that anyone sent me, I applied for. I submitted hard then sat back to collect the rejections.

I know everyone hates it. I know every artist or artist-adjacent person is going through the same thing. I hate feeling sorry for myself – and I’ve never been more aware that there is so much to do, and so many worse things - but I have to tell you how it is before I look for hope or perspective. I don’t want to bypass these feelings and some of you have been on this journey with me for a while. I want you to know.

I was commiserating with a dear friend (and working-class comrade) this week about how punishing it is to apply for grants and funding. We described it as feeling about the same as buying a lottery ticket, only the ticket is really expensive and costs hours and days of writing (if we value our time at all). And how weird is it that someone is paid to read all those applications? How sad is it that our voluntary labour generates content for someone else’s job? Surely there are better ways to spend our time.

I woke up this morning to an email telling me that the book I’ve worked on for three years isn’t ready for a publisher to publish it and it needs to be something quite different. That makes sense to me - I mean, how could it be ready? - but also don’t publishers get books ready? How is that something I would do by myself? I’m confused, I have no idea how any of this works and maybe I don’t want to know. I’m not sure how this became my life.

I’m tired. Bar a few exceptions, a few kind edits and comments from friends, it’s been me, writing this book year in, year out - what if I have nothing else to give, no more magic and hard work to muster up out of the ether?

The difficult part is not the rejections (which I more than understand), it’s that I don’t believe in the model that I’ve got trapped in. The irony of writing about mutual aid and relationships while destroying myself to publish as an individual no longer makes any sense to me. I never dreamed of being an author - I didn’t grow up with books in the house, I basically don’t own any, and if I never get paid, it’s not even a job. I never dreamed of being known. I’m trans and visibility is a double-edged sword, now more than ever.

This has all been for love and the revolution but I’m realising that if I gave up today and never found a publisher for this project, nothing would really change. Yes, there have been incredibly beautiful moments of learning and connection along the way, but I could have done that without spending thousands of hours at a screen. There have been workshops and discussions and moments in parks and fields that have felt truly transformational, but none of those needed an unpublished book to happen.

I’m tempted at this point to print out the manuscript, stick it to a wall and declare it to be published. Or delete the file, go for a walk, and make my life easier. Just writing these fantasies makes me feel desperately sad and relieved in equal measure and my racing heart knows that means something.

This is the part where I’m supposed to tell you that I still have hope - that I’m going to keep going with this project for as long as it takes for there to be a book. I probably could, maybe I even will. If conditions improve, I could still be into it.

I know without a doubt it’s the writing of my life and that also means something.

But this moment feels like a rupture. I’ve been trying to move on from this model for years and apparently, I’m more attached to it than I realised. I’ve tried unending commitment to hard work and self-sacrifice, what if I committed just as hard to letting go and seeing what comes next?

As I’ve spent today really really looking at the thing I didn’t want to look at, I wonder if it’s books themselves that feel like such a burden. I started writing a story this week, it was going to be really cute, and I got totally blocked because of one single, terrible thought. What if this becomes another book? I’m still carrying copies of a book from 2017 around with me and my back hurts. I’m still selling copy by copy, I do more admin than writing and I barely make a living.

As I say, I have a tendency towards self-sacrifice and even I know this isn’t right.

There are other ways, or there will be. Recently a group of friends, artists, comrades have come together to think about publishing as an act of mutual aid. My book in particular, but also all the work that needs to get out and doesn’t for all the reasons. I’m reminded that ruptures aren’t always bad and maybe there’s something else on the other side that isn’t isolation, visibility-risk and panicking at the start of every year, something beyond individualism all the way down.

And if there isn’t yet, maybe we can build it. It has to be worth a try.

I have learned so much from the books who have come into my life and there’s magic in that transmission through time and space, but do you know what I really like? Listening to crows and eating nettle seeds and reading stories with friends in the park and online and in bookshops and in crowdfunded story-podcasts and some articles here and there that I don’t have to carry and … yes…yes…

there will be an after.

I can honestly say that I’m more drawn to my ecosystems, to gathering to taste the present moment now (whether it’s made of rejection letters or wrens hunting at the edge of frozen lakes) than I have ever been. If I let go and spend the rest of my days touching lichens – and helping others to love them too - I think I could be okay with it.

Writing books has felt like one of the best ways I could be engaged for these nine years. They have had their small effects in the world and they will always be this wonderfully complex part of my story that no-one saw coming. But I never dreamed of becoming an author, published or unpublished, and these strange creations were always a form of service, a way for me to help, to put into action some of my burning desire to protect what is precious. That motivation hasn’t dimmed one bit, not once, not ever, and whatever happens next, books or something else, that is a reason to be grateful.