the outlier
the outlier
peasant woodland, a room with a view and daring alone
hello,
Some oddly warm October weather in London means this edition is coming from outdoors – I’ve found a very salubrious spot outside the V&A museum to write this which is a little more glamorous than my sofa.
This week paid subscribers (an annual sub is 38% cheaper than a monthly one) received a reading roundup, detailing everything I’ve finished recently with a little extra depth on William Boyd’s Any Human Heart, as well as what I’m reading right now.
the books📖
It’s been a fun week out and about where I’ve been to the National Gallery to see some Constables and to Maison Assouline for the launch of a special anniversary book from The Players’ Tribune to celebrate 10 years of existence.
The Constable experience was completely glorious, getting to view the collection entirely to myself, while meeting The Players’ Tribune team and the various guests was really interesting, some innovative storytelling work going on in professional sporting spaces.
Aside from fun stuff, I’ve been writing away behind the scenes, finishing up a couple of little freelance projects and am now planning a keynote for UK Sport in a month or so where I’m hosting an athlete career transition afternoon. I really like the idea of doing more hosting and speaking and this one is going to be a great opportunity to put my best foot forward.
Finally, in a lovely chance happenstance I got shouted at in the street by former rugby player turned podcaster Jim Hamilton and we met in person for the first time! Jim had me on his show to talk about Fringes when it was taking off so it was a treat to meet him properly and thank him. He also told me I should do a podcast…
for your interest
peasant woodland, a room with a view and daring alone
peasant woodland
When I first started writing online, I went down the self-publishing rabbit hole. I’d had my agency compromised by my team environment in professional sport and was clearly yearning for a sense of control, however illusory, but I think it’s clear that much of what I learned is still a thing.
Ownership is important and where we write is important because if you’re not careful, you don’t really own anything.
I wrote the other week about musician James Blake realising he has no way to advertise his own shows. He fundamentally misunderstood how his world works. That’s his fault but he’s not the only one and it’s surely no coincidence that his partner Jameela Jamil has just joined Substack. Jamil is seeking a direct line to those who want to listen to her and has done some amusing Instagram experiments comparing how the reach of her posts depends on her state of undress.
When I published Fringes on Amazon, I realised that while it would probably never come to any kind of wrangle, Amazon was the de facto publisher of the book. That led me to set up my own independent press, something that’s mostly just a name and a logo, so that I actually own my own words.
This week, the world’s biggest artist Taylor Swift has announced a book (more detail here), commemorating her Eras tour, and unusually for a celebrity, she is self-publishing, doing an exclusive deal with Target to stock the book in the run up to Christmas. Swift has been burnt by giving away ownership before, having her music sold out from underneath her, leading her to rerecord her earlier albums so she owns them outright and more recently, self-financing her concert film where she worked directly with theatres to release it before selling the streaming rights to Disney.
Swift is perhaps the world’s biggest working artist in any medium so this is not a straightforward comparison but what it is is a precedent. If her book goes well, and I suspect it might, who’s to say other big artists won’t look for greater ownership of their work?
In terms of online writing and ownership, it’s hard now to know what to do. My personal website is a mostly forgotten thing and when I type my name into my browser, this substack is the first thing that appears. Of course, I could repurpose what I have here over there but that is more work and not the type of work I need more of.
I found this piece by Mandy Brown on the topic of how to publish your writing thought-provoking:
It is something like that peasant woodland that I’m after here: not an abandoned forest, not a re-wilding, but a kind of cultivation.
Brown seems more techie than me and more adept at articulating the inherent problems of publishing on networks you have no influence over. Right now, while I always have an eye on a more permanent project or home for my words, this is my little space for cultivation, my bit of countryside, where first ideas come and take seed and we see if they grow.
Brown says she has ‘no idea how I’d start from scratch today’ as a writer but I think you can only go where the people are if you want to encourage your own growth. Publishing to no one is inherently risk-free in that no one will ever tell you to stop and it’s possibility free in that no one will ever tell you to keep going. So far I’ve enjoyed clearing my area of woodland over here and now, I feel like I’m ready to plant a few different seeds.
a room with a view
In Montpellier, I took a trip down to the hotel spa. Right next to it was a small but beautiful gym where, rather than the usual bulky treadmills, dull black dumbbells and plastic-y equipment, the small but well-appointed room was full of brown leather.
It was like an old Ivy League boxing gym, complete with brown leather boxing gloves, brown leather sandbags instead of kettlebells, evocative photography on the walls and a new but classically designed water rowing machine. I had no kit or particular interest in doing any exercise on holiday but that gym made me want to go and do a session (see this tiktok for a similar sentiment).
When I played for Cornish Pirates, the joke about contract negotiations was that the coach would sweep an arm out towards the bay beyond Penzance and say,
‘This is a £10k view.’
This was annoying but it did contain a grain of truth. A beautiful view is worth something. But how much?
A brief googling reveals that a beautiful view could (allegedly) add up to 80% onto a property’s value depending on the region but I’m more interested in how much it’s worth to a person. How much better does a beautiful view, environment or workplace make your life?
This is one of those questions that keeps coming up for me so let me know what you think or if you have any reading recommendations on it.
daring alone
Substack Notes sometimes turns up older bits of writing and on coming across Poorna Bell’s great piece on living alone, I thought two things. I replied with my own note, reproduced here:
Like you I loved the zen of my space when I lived alone, the idea that when I returned everything would be the same and in the place I left it. Sometimes I'd get asked, 'don't you want more stuff?' but I loved the big blank spaces in my apartment and the feeling of being unencumbered by all the bits and pieces of someone else's life. I found those lonely spaces extremely relaxing.
But I do remember thinking one weekend, this is precarious actually. I must have eaten something disagreeable on the Thursday night and couldn't get out of bed until Sunday, sleeping on and off for almost three days. Once I finally mustered the energy to go to the shop and countenance the idea of eating something again, I thought how unsafe you are alone actually, how dangerous life can be without someone else in it, even for the relatively young and healthy with friends living nearby. It was strange, to have to be ill to recognise how daring it is to live alone.
Doing things alone is daring. Sometimes, you’ll feel the precariousness of it close in around you but sometimes, you get a moment to yourself opposite a masterpiece.
a book
I read We Should All Be Feminists by Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie (amazon / independents), an essay-length adaptation of a speech she made, and I think I’ve found another book for the boys’ literacy project. It’s short, cogent and sensitive and will definitely provide some topics to discuss with them. I’ve been looking for a short nonfiction book by a female author to give to them and this could be the one.
Aside from that, paid subscribers can check out my full reading roundup.
a listen
I enjoyed this Looking Sideways interview with pro surfer Laura Crane about her changing approach to her sport, both in focus (she’s now looking at the big waves of Nazaré in Portugal) and in her self-portrayal on social media.
a quote
It is a truth only fitfully acknowledged that whom the gods wish to destroy, they first give an opinion column.
– Parul Sehgal
lastly
Thanks for reading! My work is made possible by you so if you’d like to support me you can buy my books, hire me to do something or you can become a paid subscriber using the button below.
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I’ll see you next time.
Crap. That began to tug at the heart strings a bit.