What am I doing here?

Why I joined Substack, how it saved my writing career and what my life looks like now.

This time last year, I felt lost.

I couldn’t see where my writing career was going, no one wanted me to work on their flower farm and now that I was living in Somerset, I couldn’t get a job as a journalist in London.

But then I found Substack.

Or, rather: I found a way to continue doing what I’d been doing since 2008 - sharing personal essays online; growing a community through my writing - but to, at last, earn a little income from it.

I’d had a personal blog at first, and then upgraded to a digital magazine called The Early Hour, where I published articles daily at 5am for parents who, like me, were up early and had already read the Guardian app.

That platform took off and led to me getting commissioned to actually write for the Guardian (and Red Mag, Stylist, the Telegraph, Refinery29 and so on) and then to getting a book deal with 4th Estate to write The Freelance Mum.

I went on Woman’s Hour to speak about it - Jane Garvey gave me a rather unfair grilling about female plumbers - and the Jeremy Vine show. And had a bunch more articles published in the nationals and women’s magazines.

But I rarely made money from the actual articles and interviews on The Early Hour - my digital platform - that I was pouring my heart, soul and many hours of my time into.

By now, I had a toddler and a newborn baby, too.

Off the back of my book being published, I created an online course and I won’t go into detail because I’ve told the story so many times already but, in brief, it quickly became a business and boomed.

(I wrote more about it here.)

Now, with a third baby on the way - and my husband running the business with me - life was totally perfect. Except for the fact that we were then hurled into a bloody pandemic.

I had a second book published by 4th Estate - Shy - and alongside its publication, wrote for the Observer, the Independent and You Magazine and then promptly burnt out.

We decided to leave our home in Walthamstow and live in the countryside.

At first, it was idyllic. In fact, the whole way through it was idyllic. Plus, I got a book deal with Radar to write Raise your SQ, which is about spiritual tools and practices that will bring more focus, meaning and magic to your life.

I absolutely loved writing that book.

But once it was complete: that’s when I felt lost.

I was homesick for London, my old friends and family and - I think - my youth. But we were laying roots in Frome, in Somerset, so I couldn’t move back. The kids had settled at a school. We’d uprooted them once, we couldn’t do it again.

But every time I went back to London for the weekend, I’d get the train back to Frome, watch the high-rise buildings flatten into open fields and meadows and think: fuck, I’m moving in the wrong direction to get home.

However, I also joined the Substack platform and created my own little corner to share my personal essays, self-development tools and business tips. Soon, I was earning a neat little income directly from my words.

Now, I didn’t need to work in the Bonne Maman biscuit factory, become a cleaner or do painting and decorating. I seriously considered options A and B and I actually became C for a short while. But when the Substack took off, I dropped tools and returned to my laptop.

Something else happened.

One of my three kids became very unhappy at school. We tried everything we could to remedy it but in the end, we pulled him out. It was a really hard time and I was left to homeschool him while trying to do my writing.

By now, my agent had got me my first ghostwriting gig. It’s a newer line of work for me and I love it. I had surrendered in terms of my writing career - stopped focusing so obsessively on writing creatively, full-time - and this opportunity had come in.

It might sound counter-intuitive but once you’ve done the graft (I certainly had; I’d written articles and books for years), backing off awhile can sometimes be fruitful. When our head is fully ‘in’ our dream, the energy can become frenetic; it needs space to breathe.

I stepped back, turned my head elsewhere and - in much the way that a love interest notices you more if you’re not right up in their face - my dream career came chasing after me.

However, it wasn’t going to work homeschooling one kid, expecting the other two to continue to go to school, doing all the drop-offs/pick-ups - and finding time to do interviews, writing and editing. So it was time to make a decision.

I felt moving back to London was the right thing to do. There were undeniable advantages for moving, including way more schooling options for all three of our kids, especially our eldest who will be applying for secondary school this year.

And so, in January 2024, I moved back to London with my three kids. My husband has stayed behind to finish our house and honour other client work he’s committed to and we’re living apart in the week but have lovely weekends as a family.

I spend my week days dropping and picking up my kids who refuse to do any after school clubs, which is actually quite good because I then don’t have to arrange or pay for them.

In the middle section of the day, I work on other women’s books (as a ghostwriter), or my own books or write Substack essays to send out to my email list.

And from 3pm until my kids are in bed (8.30-9pm), I’m ‘mum’. And then I go straight to bed myself because I love an early night and an early morning.

If you’re interested in hearing my thoughts on home, life, work, writing, motherhood, love, relationships, neurodivergence (one of our children is recently diagnosed) and the awkward things I say and do - be sure to subscribe.

If you have a free account, you’ll get occasional articles in your inbox that you can read in their entirety, like this one, but if you pay a small monthly fee you can read everything, including the archive.

The personal essays are in this section.

If you want to work out what the fuck you’re doing with your own life, you might like the coaching section.

If you like the work/business/freelancing stuff, check out this room.

Any qus, ask away.

Thank you for reading.

Annie x

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