Do you ever stare at words on a screen, trying to force your brain to understand them? This happens to me when I’m writing an article, a press release, or – worst of all – a book. I read and re-read and re-re-read until I develop a sort of snow-blindness. Eventually, nothing makes sense.

In these situations, I often sit at my desk for ages – getting tired and annoyed. The solution, of course, is to take a break. Or at least switch tasks. But postponement feels like defeat. The current work suddenly seems urgent; it must be done, or all is lost.

I’ve fallen into this ditch several times in recent weeks. I’m currently doing a final (for about the fifth time) edit of my novel: The Wolf of Wistman’s Wood. The damn thing will be published this year, even if it kills me. Which it might. But maybe that’s the wrong attitude.

For today, I’ve taken my own advice. A few minutes ago, I was editing page 35 of 211, and my brain flipped into blue-screen-of-death mode. The words swirled into meaningless mush (I hope this was due to brain fatigue rather than the book being, y’know, meaningless mush).

So now I’m writing this instead. And writing apparently uses different brain energy than editing, because the words are flowing freely. The problem is, I now have to edit this newsletter. You can read on, but I’m going back to the start – to read, re-read and re-re-read. Please tell me you haven’t found any typos.

Comfort Fiction

With doom and gloom dominating the headlines, it’s easy to feel apathetic and hopeless. I’d like to offer two contradictory quotes for this situation. Firstly, when the world is crap, we should do something about it. There’s a line I love in the Gunship song Art3mis & Parzival (based on the book Ready Player One): “Saving the world is tough but let’s give it a shot.” Simple, but good advice to live by. So take a shot – do a good deed, join a political movement, boycott a bad company. And do more good things tomorrow.

But once that’s done, take a break. Worrying about the world doesn’t make it better. Take comfort from The Wind in the Willows – one of the best books on peace, friendship and a simple life. At one point, Mole asks Rat about the “Wide World”. Rat’s response is worth considering: “Beyond the Wild Wood comes the Wide World,” said the Rat, “And that’s something that doesn’t matter either to you or me. I’ve never been there and I’m never going, nor you either, if you’ve got any sense at all. Don’t ever refer to it again please.”

Dicing with Death

Like writing novels, making a podcast is only half the battle: you also need to find readers/listeners. We’re deeply grateful to have found a loyal, engaged audience for Dice Company. But – as the podcast’s social media guy – my job is to make this grow. Recently, I’ve focussed on making short clips for YouTube and TikTok. In the last couple of weeks, viewer numbers have increased dramatically. I’m not sure why, but I think the key is regular posting with a consistent style. It remains tough going – lots of work for every new listener, follower or subscriber. But we’re here for the long haul, and our wonderful listener community keeps us going. Just don’t ask Tom (who edits the podcast) about the pain of listening and re-listening and re-re-listening.