Pushing a new book on social media is a skill set I wish I didn’t have to have — When my first general non-fiction book came out in 2019, I had no practical experience of promoting a book. My fantasy about the process was fuelled by countless film scenes depicting newly published authors, and it went something like this. I would have a dedicated public-relations person, perhaps even a…

Deciding to learn Latin sounds a lot like writing procrastination. But was it? — I’m a psychologist who’s published multiple books, but apparently no one is invulnerable to procrastination, or immune to imposter syndrome. For a while now, I’ve been subjecting myself to additional pain by feeling shame and guilt about what I thought was just spinning my wheels: spending hours learning a dead…

Deceased people’s data is burgeoning online. Why should we care? The ancient Natufians had a practice that, on one hand, seems quite odd to us moderns. They buried their dead under their houses but retained the heads, making plaster death masks to hang on the walls. On the other hand…

In 2020, in order to write, I need to rebel. What about you? This is my Rebel Writer manifesto. To be a true rebel writer, I must be risky, bold, generous, committed, supportive, and open. To truly grow, I must rebel. So I will rebel against my fear, my shame, my embarrassment. I will rebel against…

Sometimes the very places you once longed to escape become exciting again. Once upon a time, I lost my way on a walk, and I genuinely panicked that I’d remain disorientated long enough to die of exposure. It was a summer’s evening in urban England, I was half a mile…

Welcome to the writing arm of the Rebel Book Club. Here’s how to submit. You might not remember where you were and what you were doing when you first heard about Rebel Book Club. But you probably remember the moment you first walked into that room full of people and…

My phone and my gratitude are mortal enemies. Here’s when I realised that. — I once had a thief of a job. It stole nearly everything: every waking moment and too many of the sleeping ones, my health, my attention. Whenever it broke into my mind, its burglary tool of choice was my phone. All my daughter’s early drawings of me depict me with…

How’s Twitter supposed to decide what to keep and what to cull? During Thanksgiving week in America, when people celebrate family ties over turkey and pumpkin pie, Twitter announced that it was beginning a massive cull of inactive accounts. Anyone who hadn’t signed in for six months, it warned, would…

Use an exercise about death to help you live a better life. — A couple of days ago, I was sent a new book to review, a daily diary that’s designed to help people live a more self-aware and values-aligned life. Flicking through its pages, I spotted that the authors, both of them psychologists like me, had included a variety of values-clarification and…