Over the last ten years of writing full time, I have fallen more and more in love with this question:

Are stories magnetic?

By magnetic, I mean the strange way that things from the imagined worlds of our art sometimes start showing up in front of us in the real world as we’re writing (drawing/dancing/cooking) them to life.

Things like, we write a song into our character’s storyline… and it starts playing on the radio. Or we’re writing a scene inspired by someone we know… and they text us. Or we’re making art from the memory of someone in our past, all their fingerprints still on our heart, and we have a dream about them so real it’s hard to shake off. As if, through our art and stories, we’ve drawn these things to us. Like magnets.

When I’m writing, these magnet moments make the little hairs on my arms rise before I can explain why. They happened to me countless times while I was writing Alice Hart, and Esther Wilding, and then Joy. I bet they’ve happened to you in your creativity too.

While I was writing The World Beneath Her Feet, I kept having this feeling. This bodily yes. This shiver of recognition. The sense that Maggie’s world, which only existed in my imagination, was showing up the real world around me. Over and over again. As I wrote Maggie’s story, it drew the uncanny to me. A person, a song, a bird, a name, a stranger, a place. I started keeping a list of these magnets. The geek in me can’t wait to share that with you after publication, when you might have read Maggie’s story.

For now, the magnet I’m beside myself to share with you is THE COVER.

Today I get to share the first look at The World Beneath Her Feet as an actual book with you.

(I also get to share the preorder link, which is live now, and feels very real, surreal, and exciting.)

Dear reader, meet Maggie Byrd’s story.

Sound on! Volume up! Full screen mode!

This art found me.

Earlier this year, when I started chatting with my team at HarperCollins about the cover design for this novel, we unanimously agreed that, for Maggie’s story, we wanted to break the ‘grid design’ of my first two novels i.e. the border frame artwork layout.

Following this decision, we went through two rounds of potential cover directions and neither worked. No goosebumps. No shivers.

Knowing how I wanted the cover to feel and kind of knowing how I imagined it might look, I went searching for a visual that I could share with my publishing team. My partner, Sam, joined the quest.

It happened countless rabbit hole searches later, when I was starting to drown in overwhelm. I was upstairs when Sam called, “Babes, I think I’ve found something.” He sent me a link, I opened it … and my heart started to race.

In the online gallery of Laura Moriarty’s art, I locked eyes on one of her paintings.

And that was it.

Zinging, tingling, hair-raising awe.

Cue a flurry of texts and emails with my team… only for Hazel Lam (book designer genius responsible for the covers of all my books, who I’m lucky to call my dear friend) to reply with something like:

“Holly, Laura’s art was the very first that caught my eye months ago for Maggie’s cover.”

CUE GOOSEBUMP EXPLOSIONS.

What then followed was me losing myself in Laura’s world of art and creativity – one of her mediums is painting with beeswax (!!) creating artworks that mimic the earth’s layers. Mind-blown.

(For context, if you missed my last letter, you’ll find the full blurb for The World Beneath Her Feet there.)

This novel, and Maggie’s character especially, kept asking me to look at the layers in everything: land, memory, love, grief, guilt, and the stories we tell ourselves in order to bear or bury them. So when I saw Laura’s art, it felt like kinship. Like recognition. It felt… magnetic.

I wrote Laura a letter, she sent me a gorgeous, generous response, I put her in touch with my team at HarperCollins, and away we flew together.

Hazel got to work wielding her magic on Laura’s artwork and additional elements to create the finished cover. Including the incredible trio of singing Australian magpies that I imploded on the spot when I found them – from another independent artist Plump Plum Studio. Witnessing how all of this art has come together to create art has been one of the strangest and most moving parts of this process.

I love this cover, Maggie’s story skin, and I hope you do too.

Preorders now available in Australia and New Zealand!

(I’m hoping to have international publication news soon.)

If Maggie’s story is calling to you…

PREORDER YOUR COPY NOW

(Fun fact about the publishing world: preorders matter enormously for authors because they give booksellers and publishers an early, practical sign that readers are waiting for a book. That support helps a book gather momentum before publication day, and gives it a stronger chance of finding its way into the hands of the readers it was written for.)

Thank you for being here for this moment. Thank you so much for your support.

This story has lived with me for such a long time in the dark. Beginning to bring it into the light, here, with you, means more than I can say.

With a light left on, always,

MY NEW NOVEL IS WRITTEN!

(Please bear with me, the sheer miracle of this moment warrants an outlandish use of caps lock and exclamation marks.)

And below, for the first time, I’m sharing the official blurb!

I sent my last letter to you in December. I’ve been mostly offline since then — all paid subscriptions here were paused too — and I signed off saying I’d write again when my new novel existed.

I have zero ability to be cool as I type this: dear Reader, I motherforking did it.

My third novel, The World Beneath Her Feet, exists. Maggie Byrd’s story is written.

It is now with my team at HarperCollins Australia, beginning its strange and wondrous transformation from an MS Word document into a book. (The nuts and bolts: my draft is going through edits, proofreading, and then typesetting before it goes to print. Eeek.)

The making of this book has not been pretty. World news, health, family, and this deadline (an absolute privilege, and still a hard thing) were all happening at once. There were days that levelled me. Many when I wasn’t sure I had the grit to keep going. Part of my elation now is discovering, by continuing to write, that I did. (Spoiler: if you’re going through something hard right now and are doubting your grit, I believe it’s in you too. Gentle reminder: keep going.)

Another part of my elation is deep gratitude. I’m no island. The thought of you, the person reading this, the person who reads my work, helped me keep showing up. I couldn’t have held my nerve with this deadline, or finished Maggie’s story, without you. Knowing, as I wrote this novel, that word by word Maggie was getting closer to finding her readers was honestly… well, I’ve had Wind Beneath My Wings stuck in my head for days now. Bette Midler really knows her shit, hey?

So, dear Reader: thank you.

Thank you.

The moment I finished:

This is the face of a woman who, day after day from December to April, deeply questioned whether this moment was possible. I took this photo just after I typed the final full stop on the last sentence of my draft and met a deadline that, at times, felt odds-against-me.

Then, I put my phone down. I scrolled back and forth through the 400 pages in MS Word that were no longer a figment of my imagination. I rolled my chair back and walked slowly upstairs, where my partner, Sam, was waiting to see me appear at the top of the staircase. His face was frozen in anticipation.

“I did it,” was all I could say.

Cue hugging and crying.

I wrote this novel in a storm of focus. Sam was in the eye of it with me, as much as anyone can be in proximity to a solitary act of work.

I didn’t see friends or family or, some days, the sky. For months, nearly every text I sent began with some version of: I’m so sorry to be so slow replying. I’m not of this world right now. It’s weird to me too. Thank you for getting it.

At a craft level, meeting this deadline was only possible because I had spent three and a half years daydreaming Maggie’s world to life and planning the shape of the story. I’d like to share more with you on this soon — it’s the first time I’ve written a novel this way.

After the hugging and crying, Sam and I poured a piccolo of prosecco between our thermoses, went to a favourite place, and cheersed in the light of the rising moon. Then our jaws dropped: a bush stone-curlew appeared beside us, eye-wateringly rare and a major bird-player in Maggie’s story.

The next morning, I sat at my desk and started editing.

That’s where I am now: Editing Land.

I’m dreaming of taking a proper break to rest and recover this winter (June and July here in Australia) because this isn’t my first rodeo with burnout, and thank god I’ve learned what happens if I don’t prioritise rest as soon as I can.

What I know now… barely

Since I finished the draft… I… well, I don’t know anything. I have no brain left and feel as if I’m relearning how to live when I’m not in my office twelve hours a day. Sleep cycles! Personal hygiene! How good is washing your hair?! Clean clothes? Having the mental computation required to speak to friends? Hugging your favourite humans and dogs?

All miraculous, frankly.

There are some things I feel unshakably clear on.

Writing this story onto the page pushed me to uncomfortable limits. It also made me acknowledge the treasures I found at that edge: things I hoped I might be made of, but truly did not know I possessed. They aren’t unique to me. They’re human. They’re in you too: imagination, love, and steely bloody-mindedness.

Finishing this book reminded me that making art can ask more of the body and spirit than we expect to give. What kept me going when I doubted myself wasn’t pain, struggle, or the belief that suffering makes the work better. It was play.

As far as my deal with myself went, I think this is how I made it through three months of working seven days a week, while leaving life as I knew it almost completely behind: I had to dig in, white-knuckled, and keep my sense of play alive.

I believe that’s why, even after everything the writing and deadline asked of me, I still love this story with my whole heart. And why I feel so lit up to begin sharing it with you.

THE BLURB!

For the first time, I get to share my publisher’s back-cover blurb for The World Beneath Her Feet with you.

Please imagine the book in your hands. You’ve turned it over. This is what you read.

Save the date!

The World Beneath Her Feet will be published in Australia and New Zealand on 1 September 2026, followed by a national tour. Details to come as soon as I’m allowed to shout them from the nearest rooftop.

More from Maggie Byrd’s world coming soon:

• Publication news for North America, the UK and beyond.
• The cover (I am beside myself!) along with pre-order links.
• An eight-part video series introducing you to the world of the novel.

A return to The Joy Rise!

I’m so keen to return to writing to you regularly. After months away, I have my pockets full of ideas for how I’d like to shake things up around here in this ever-changing Substack world: more letters on writing, wonder, creative courage, bookish behind-the-scenes, and the magic and mess of making things.

Please remember, my inbox is always open for any questions you have about my books, writing, creativity, process, fear, courage, mess, magic, or anything in between. I answer reader questions in free-to-read letters for everyone.

Ask your question

Beautiful things, lately:

• This written conversation I had with over at The Honest Editor, where she asked what practical advice I’d give to people wanting to unlock their power and write. My answer began here: write something small, then keep writing regularly. It doesn’t have to make sense. You don’t need to know what it is. Just let it be written. Let it write you.

• My live conversation on writing with joy, with the wonderful and community turned my heart inside out with gratitude. Podcast video recording coming soon! Watch this space.

Wherever you are this May, I wish you and your creative heart grit, courage and beauty.

Thank you for being here.

With a light left on, always,

Subscribe now

If you know someone who loves my books, or who might be drawn to Maggie’s story, I’d be so grateful if you shared this letter with them.

Share

Alice here again, popping by to share some more thoughts with you before Holly returns and regular Joy Rise programming resumes shortly. I think every human with a working internet connection will be aware that this weekend, Emerald Fennell’s Wuthering Heights will open in cinemas. The early reviews are mixed, but one thing is certain: the Brontës are having a moment, and it seems possible that a whole new generation of readers will discover the work of the Brontë sisters as a result. Here’s hoping.

As long time Joy Risers may remember, Holly has written previously about the huge influence the Brontë sisters had on her work, particularly on The Lost Flowers of Alice Hart. She first visited Heathcliff’s moors in 2010, and the landscape soon became an important part of Holly’s creative process:

I thought you might enjoy this video from the archives, when Holly was in Haworth walking the moors in 2024, talking about the influence of that landscape and Emily and Charlotte’s work on her writing.

But, what I’m really here to share today is a glorious podcast interview Holly did recently with Sam and Mia from the Brontë Museum, on Behind the Glass: A Parsonage Podcast. In which Holly dives deeply into her love of the Brontës and their enduring influence, and she shares a new piece of writing for the first time: a poem inspired by Emily Brontë’s dog Keeper (which I think is about as on-brand as we can get for The Joy Rise).

So, if you’re itching for a Brontë fix and the weekend feels just a little bit too far away, you can listen to the podcast here or wherever you get your podcasts.

Until next time,

Alice

Wishing you a warm welcome to 2026. As Holly mentioned in her December issue of Notes to Self, she is taking a little breather from Substack over the Australian summer while she dives head first into the manuscript for her third novel, The World Beneath Her Feet. If you missed it in the end of year blur, you can read or listen to Holly’s final post for 2025 by clicking the link below.

I’m popping in today to share with you a beautiful conversation Holly had with the wonderfully effervescent Jessica Rowe for her Big Talk Show podcast. On this special Book Club episode of the podcast, Holly and Jess do a deep dive into Holly’s work of non-fiction, The House that Joy Built. Jess says that reading the book helped her rediscover her imagination and creativity.

I listened to the podcast this morning while I walked our puppy Lulu (am I campaigning for the return of Dog of the Month? I am), and I found myself brimming with fresh ideas and a renewed sense of creative energy. I hope that if you find time to listen to this gorgeous conversation, it might ignite something in you too. You can listen to the episode here or wherever you listen to podcasts.

I’m off to find some sequins…

Alice x

Click play to listen, or read full transcript below of this podcast episode.

Welcome to the December episode of Notes to Self, my solo podcast made for you, by me, at my desk here, fuelled this month by endless shots of hard liquor (just kidding) and a heartfelt desire to offer company and comfort to your creative self.

If you’re joining me here for the first time, this podcast seeded from the notes to myself I have been jotting down at the beginning of every month now for years. My hope in sharing them is that they might offer resonance or support to your creative life too.

Here we are. Together. December 2025.

Even when we all know it’s coming, this month still manages to barrel towards me like an electrical storm blown in from the west with its own unpredictable charge.

December slips into my nervous system, heat lightning at the edge of clouds, a quick bright flicker across my heart. I never seem to meet it the same way.

Some Decembers I feel cracked open by its beauty; some years it makes me feel scraped thin. Most years, it’s both, often within the same hour.

Here, on the southeast Queensland coast in Australia, December holds hefty keys to hefty times in life: summer, the longest school holidays of the year, Christmas, New Year, and everything they all entail.

No matter where I’ve spent each December, this month has felt like a threshold as much as a celebration. Everything arrives seemingly at once.

The joy.

The ache.

The remembering.

The wanting.

The old stories. The new tenderness.

The grief that can still surprise me.

The phone calls that come, the ones that don’t.

The people we see, the people we long to see.

The distances we can cross to each other, and those that we can’t.

Even though I love this time of year, and actively fend off the sneak of stress and apathy so I can revel in what it means to me, this month of memory rituals, the uncontainable magic of the festive season still catches me off guard.

The uncontainable mess of it does too.

So, my last Notes to Self for the year are, unsurprisingly, about how to hold contradicting things that are true at the same time. (Especially when I’m writing fiction, trying to create art during this month of emotional electrical storms.)

❤️‍🔥 Before I share my December Notes to Self, I want to say thank you. A deep, heart-wide-open thank you for reading The Joy Rise this year.

Your messages, replies, and reflections on how my words have accompanied and shifted you have given me the gift of accompaniment in return.

The stories you’ve shared with me, of your creative bravery, grit, awe, wonder, love, and determination, have brought me so much joy and filled my resilience tank too.

This space is nothing without you; any sanctuary that The Joy Rise has become is because you’ve made it with me. I’m endlessly grateful.

✍️ I also want to let you know that I’m pausing billing for a short while, which means all paid subscriptions will be paused.

As of this week, I’m in the thick of a not-here-to-fuck-about deadline to finish my third novel, The World Beneath Her Feet.

I’m at the point in the process where I need the deep immersion of focused hibernation to write Maggie Byrd, my new leading lady and queen of my heart, to the last page of her story. As of this issue, I’m going to disappear into my deep, interior cave of story-making. The Joy Rise won’t go fully silent though.

The other queen of my heart, right-hand woman, and very excellent human, Alice Wood, will pop in occasionally to make sure the lights are left on here, always shining in the dark for you, while I’m away writing.

🌸 I’d love to offer one shared provocation before I go, something we can quietly carry together in the new year. I know I’ll need this anchor in the coming months as much as you might too.

When I return early 2026, I hope my first letter to you will include a photo of my first printout of the hundreds of pages that will be my completed draft manuscript. Pages that feel unfathomable right now… but I believe in myself, and I’m trusting the quiet, brutal, beautiful, steady work ahead of me.

And I’d love to ask you this: what would you like to meet yourself holding when we reunite next year?

This isn’t a question about setting or ‘smashing’ a goal, or ‘slaying’ a resolution, or ‘hustling’ to produce. Ye gods, no thank you.

This comes from genuine curiosity: what would you like to feel a little closer to in your creative life in a few months’ time? Tenderness? Courage? Rest? Joy? A deepened habit of noticing? A gentler way of speaking to yourself?

I wonder if you’d like to choose one small thing and keep it close through the season, winter / summer. Meet you here with it, in spring / autumn?

So now, to my main December Notes to Self.

It’s just one note. Made up of five words.

And they are:

Resist loss of the miraculous.

When I was little (this may not surprise you) I was a kid with big feelings and deep sensory observations. Back then, December had a particular heat to it. Not just the Queensland summer kind, though the night air always felt alive enough to touch, but the heat of anticipation that sat in my chest. When the possibility of magic sat beside something else: a messy melancholy that arrived with all the memory and wonder and beauty of the spirit of Christmas.

I’d sit at my desk by the window in my bedroom and try to decipher the cicadas and crickets at night, the backing singers of summers and Christmas here in Queensland. I’d listen to their stinging songs like they knew the wonder and tumult of December too. I remember thinking that if I stayed still long enough, or awake late enough, what might land on our roof wouldn’t be a man in a red suit, but the answer to the big Christmas secret: why can it feel so good? And why can it feel so sad?

The answer, of course, never landed on our roof. But what did arrive, year after year, was a feeling I didn’t know how to name. As I grew older, I knew where the feeling came from. Just not what to call it.

Something like hope.

Nostalgia.

Maybe uncertainty.

Longing.

Definitely something like love.

It’s a feeling that made my heart feel too big and too small at the same time.

It stayed with me in my teens, when summer school holidays became synonymous with Christmas and my teenage friends became my family. In December our hearts were strung with the lights of nights spent riding our bikes to the beach or each other’s houses, lying out on driveways still warm from the day’s baking sun, looking up at the stars and drinking throw-down VBs (Victoria Bitter, a kind of Australian beer) or Sub-Zeros, the sickly sweet wine coolers we favoured in the nineties. God, they make me nauseous even thinking of them.

Now, in my forties, I still recognise that feeling every December. Maybe you know it in your way too.

My note to myself for December is a line from from Louise Erdrich’s poem (that you can read in full here):

Resist loss of the miraculous
by lowering your standards
for what constitutes a miracle.
It is all a fucking miracle.

Since I got home from the UK last month, whenever everything’s felt too loud or too layered, I’ve opened my Notes app on my phone (if I haven’t had pen and paper at hand) and jotted down the things I’ve seen during my day that struck my heart as miraculous.

Here’s my list from the first day of December (please note, all genders are assumed and could be wrong):

• The curlews nesting.

• An old man wearing a t-shirt that said good things are coming.

• The muscle man with his fluffy Chihuahua.

• The young surfer greeting the elderly lady with the blue dangly earrings.

• The sunlight through the crown of the casuarina tree.

• The string of fairy lights wound in the casuarina’s branches, and the scarf tied around its trunk like it’s ready for the ball.

• The swallows dipping and flying over the cliffs on the coast; flashes of their blue and red feathers.

• The elderly walking club and two women in it saying to each other as they passed me, “Oh, you won’t believe it,” and “That’s so true.”

• The young boy and girl doubling on an e-bike in school uniforms, her hair clipped with nineties butterfly clips.

• The guy on the skateboard with headphones singing at the top of his lungs.

• The smile on Sam’s face as he carried our coffees and sat beside me on the grass.

• Licking the chocolate dust off the lid of my cappuccino.

These tiny miracles help bring me back to what’s mine to manage.

This year especially I’ve noticed that creativity feels different in December: quieter, closer to the bone.

Every time I feel overloaded, like the Griswolds’ power sockets at Christmastime, I’ve started asking myself:

What if this tenderness, this ache, this extension of my heart when it feels like it has no more stretch to give, is pointing me toward exactly what I need to be writing right now?

What if this is what Maggie needs most from me? To feel this?

I don’t have neat answers, but bloody hell, these questions floor me. And they keep me going at my desk.

One of my solo rituals this month is something I’ve been doing since I was sixteen:

I light a candle for the longings in my heart I can’t answer, and can’t solve, and I give them oxygen to burn with the little flame.

I’ll let whatever wants to rise, rise. So it has its place. Gratitude. Grief. Love. It all belongs.

Maybe you light candles this month too.

Maybe the act of knowing what we long for, and giving it light, is how we answer its call.

And if you’re feeling flat or numb or far from yourself this December, can I offer a reminder? You’re not out of rhythm. You’re not doing Christmas or the holiday season wrong. You haven’t missed a memo everyone else somehow received.

December is a wild and untamable time.

May I share one more note to self I’ve scribbled down for December while writing this podcast? Here it is.

Quietness is still a way of living vividly. It is still a form of your art.

I’m here with you inside this strange, shimmering, beautiful, melancholy month, holding all we have and all we’ve lost. Gathering and apart. Joy, as ever, with grief.

Let’s move through it gently.

Let’s keep an eye out for the small things that glow in our lives and each other’s.

Let’s write one true sentence, or make one true thing from the core of our hearts when we can.

Let’s trust the spark in us even when it’s barely a flicker.

Heat and heart carry us further than we think.

I am wishing you and yours the kind of December that will make your eyes water with love, joy, nostalgia, yearning, and gratitude for years to come.

(And if any of my fellow Stranger Things kin are listening, the countdown is on for Christmas and New Year’s, is it not? Friends don’t lie!)

Thanks for being here.

Thank you for being a paid supporter of my work. And thank you for listening and reading.

With a light left on for you and me, always,

I’m Holly Ringland.

See you in 2026, Joy Risers.

Click play to listen, and scroll to the bottom of this transcript for an episode-inspired creativity provocation.

Welcome to the November episode of Notes to Self, my solo podcast made for you, by me, at my desk here, fuelled this month by endless cups of Bushells Tea and a heartfelt desire to offer company and comfort to your creative self.

If you are joining me here for the first time, this podcast seeded from the notes to myself I have been jotting down at the beginning of every month now for years. My hope in sharing my notes to myself is that they might offer resonance or support to your creative life too.

Just a week ago, I travelled from the northwest of England, autumn on the cusp of winter, to the southeast coast of Queensland on Bundjalung Country, the place that raised and made me, spring on the cusp of summer. No matter how many times I have the privilege of making this journey, it always, always strips me bare. My time in the UK was a mincer. Two levelling, challenging months that pushed me often to what felt like my brink, mentally, and one month that brimmed with so much of everything that makes being human miraculous - creativity, discovery, connection, kindness, community - I feel like I’ll be running off the charge of it for months to come.

As I adjust and acclimatise, both physically and mentally, to coming home (both in my beautiful bricks and mortar dwelling, with my little garden, but also in my body from the alienation of wicked, ruthless jetlag) I followed my lead from October’s Notes to Self and wrote just one for November. It is this:

Note to self – writing and creating what matters most to you takes two forces: the solitude of showing up, and the communion that keeps you brave.

In other words, Holly, don’t be a self-isolating dick – you can’t live your creative life of your dreams alone.

Ahem.

Truth: I love feeling capable. I love the quiet hum of getting things done, of staying close to myself and not abandoning myself by succumbing to apathy or scarcity mindsets when things are difficult. I love knowing I can look after myself and others, and that I keep trying to do the best that I can, wherever I can, with what I have. In my writing and my creative life, I love the fact that I try.

But there’s a sneaky side to this love of self-sufficiency. It’s something I’ve grown wiser to over the last decade, I reckon, especially since being first published, when my responsibilities and my relationship with myself changed so dramatically.

Somewhere along the way, “I can do this” quietly turned into “I should be able to do this.”

And “I should be able to do this” quietly turned into “I must do this alone.”

It’s sneaky, that shift, especially if you’re someone, like me, who’s spent much of your life high-functioning, while maybe often feeling far from being any such thing. I know so well how it can feel seductively noble to keep every plate spinning even while you’re crumbling inside. I also know that sense of nobility doesn’t last long. It drains the joy out of creating, and, it just feels really, really lonely.

On my forty-eight billion hour plane ride home to Australia last week, I thought often about a list written by a blazing author named Laura McKowen, which was recently introduced to me by another blazing author, Mel Gentry Bosna.

A few years into her sobriety, a woman wrote to Laura McKowen asking for advice about her sister who was struggling with addiction. Laura was only two years sober herself, but she sat down and wrote the things she felt she would have needed to hear before she became sober.

There are nine points on the list (read it at the bottom of this transcript).

It’s number six and seven that have stuck to me like the most beautiful burrs since the first time I read them. Laura McKowen writes:

You cannot do it alone.
Only you can do it.

These two sentences knocked me out of my pants. They are the inhale and exhale of creative life. Aren’t they? They are also, of course, the lungs of life itself.

Every day, the messaging we internalise to be self-made, self-starting and self-healing is constant. In creative worlds, we are told to chase our dreams, build our brand and do it all while smiling photogenically under flattering lighting for The Algorithm. The myth of the lone genius persists. The artist in her studio. The writer in her garret. The musician hearing entire symphonies in her head.

But this myth conveniently ignores the truth of what creation actually is. Every act of making is born of connection. The stories we write, the songs we sing, the meals we cook, the gardens we plant.

They come from us being moved, inspired, taught, witnessed.

They come from lineage and conversation and grief and joy and love.

Earlier this year, I had a pretty dark night of the soul kind of wobble with my writing. I’d received back-to-back-to-back rejections, and writing to deadline while managing my brain’s reaction to the blows of those reactions felt brutal. (Part of the struggle was wanting to avoid that the rejection hurt – yeah – that old chestnut.) I just wanted to soldier on. I wanted to skip past the hurt and just work harder and get on with it. I could manage the blows, I told myself. I knew that no matter how much they hurt, I wouldn’t let them stop me from writing. And that was true, I knew I wouldn’t let them stop me from writing. I knew I could keep going.

But of course, skipping around the blows, barrelling right on by the hurt only caused me a growing sense of disconnection. From myself, my story, my page, and from my own heart and soul where my story and the world of my story dwells and grows and lives. I was trying to wrestle my work, my creativity, into being, as if willpower alone could replace connection.

Eventually, I called bullshit on myself, and asked for help - I reached out to some of the people I love and trust and feel safe being vulnerable with. One being Libby, my best friend of twenty two years. Her response by text made me cry. Not because I believed what she wrote, but because I knew she believed it. That gave me the courage to feel the blow, to gather strength from feeling it and to do what I knew was true, which is that I wouldn’t let the blow stop me from writing. And I kept writing my heart to the page.

Libby’s message to me said:
“PS you and Maggie are fucking magic. Keep going babes. This is your best work yet.”

For context, Maggie is the main character in my new novel.

I printed out Libby’s text and I stuck it above my desk. I’m looking at it now. It reminds me of this month’s note to self.

The solitude of showing up, and the communion that keeps you brave.

Learning to let myself be seen while I’m still in process, messy, unfinished and unsure, is really hard. It can feel safer to withdraw, to disappear, to hide behind the idea that no one will understand what we’re trying to make. I totally get it.

But time and time again again, book after book that I’m levelled and remade by writing, I’m reminded: every creative life and every act of creativity needs witnesses.

Someone to remind us the work matters even when it is not finished.
Someone to hold the rope when we lower ourselves into the darkness.
Someone to laugh with when we come back out, holding a muddy gem of an idea.

A friend. A reader. A mentor. A partner. A stranger whose art found us at the right time and nudged us to keep going.

The point isn’t that these people rescue us, they can’t.
The point is that they remind us we’re not alone in the making process.

And at the same time, here’s the paradox that Laura McKowen’s list holds so perfectly. Only I can do it. Only you can do it. Only you can make your thing. Only you can face the page. Only you can choose not to give up today.

That’s what makes creative work both terrifying and holy.
It’s an act of communion and an act of solitude.
Belonging and responsibility, interwoven.

There are moments when even our closest people can’t reach us in the making. When we’re deep inside the draft, or the grief, or the unknown shape of something becoming. When we have to stay with the silence long enough to hear our own heartbeat again.

Those are the moments when it’s just us and the work.
You and the raw truth you’re trying to translate.
You and the flicker of courage no one else can fan.

For a long time, I thought needing help and support to stand the weather of writing and creativity meant I might not be cut out for this life. That real artists, that real writers, were disciplined, focused, invincible.

Every artist, every writer, that you and I admire has people who hold them up. Friends, editors, collaborators, therapists, baristas, believers.

When I wrote my first novel, I thought I had to manage it alone to be a proper writer. Tough enough, resilient enough, talented enough. I remember crying in despair over my keyboard, just out of terror that I was doing it wrong. Terrified I would learn I was not a writer at all. Terrified that I was wasting my own time.

But in that process, the more I shared how scary writing felt, the more people rallied around me. A writer friend sent me quotes from The Artist’s Way every day. My mum took me walking at the end of eight hour writing sessions so I could inhale the sunset sky. Sam cooked my meals when I forgot to eat.

They didn’t write my novel for me, any of these people. They made it possible for me to keep writing it. That’s the difference.

I couldn’t outsource the shaky work of using my voice, no matter how much I wished I could, but I couldn’t sustain it in a vacuum either.

The myth of self-sufficiency says we should be everything. Maker, manager, marketer, muse. But out beyond The Algorithm and personal branding, creative life is communal life.
It is a network of unseen hands and hearts holding one another up.

So, if you’re listening to this and feeling stuck, or small, or like you are failing because you can’t do it all, please hear me.

We’re not supposed to do it all.
We’re supposed to do our part, our sacred piece of the work, and then allow or ask others do theirs.

Let the books you love hold you.
Let the people who care about you remind you who you are.
Let the lineage of makers before you whisper that you belong here too. And let yourself hear them.

That’s what “You cannot do it alone” really means, to me. It’s an invitation. To reach out. To be part of the circle. To widen the circle. I think Glennon Doyle calls it making a horseshoe. Remember you’re not an island.

And then comes the other truth.

Only you can do it.

Only you can tell your story or finish your painting or make the thing only you can make.
Only you can live the life that your particular mixture of longing and love has brought you to.

That’s the gift and that’s the task.

Each time we create, there is a moment when we step into solitude, to show up. When we face the blank page. When we begin again. What if that isn’t punishment? What if it is pilgrimage?

When we do the work that is ours, we don’t cut ourselves off from the world. We deepen our connection to it. We add our voice to the chorus. I rememer and forget and remember this over and again.

Note to self: the courage to create is never purely our own. Yet it is ours alone to summon.

Before we close, I want to offer you three questions to carry into your own reflection this month:

1. Who makes it possible for you to do what only you can do?
   Think about the visible and invisible people, art, or places that sustain you.

2. What kind of help are you resisting right now … and why?
   What would it feel like to let that help in?

3. What’s one small act of creative support or courage that only you can offer?
   Something no one else can do, but that might quietly help someone else?

When Laura McKowen wrote her list, she ended it with these lines:

You are loved.
We will never stop reminding you of these things.

So if I may, dear Joy Riser, here’s your reminder:

You cannot do it alone.
Only you can do it.

And you are loved.

Until next month, with a light left on, always. I’m Holly Ringland. Thanks for being here. Thanks for being a paid supporter of my work. And thank you for listening and reading.

From Laura McKowen’s website, about her book, Push Off From Here: 9 Essential Truths to Get You Through Sobriety (and Everything Else):

When Laura McKowen was two years sober, she received an email from a woman whose sister was struggling with alcohol addiction. Laura had barely climbed out from the dark place the woman’s sister was in, but she made a list of things that she felt would’ve been the most important to hear when she was in the deep end of her own battle:

1. It is not your fault.

2. It is your responsibility.

3. It is unfair that this is your thing.

4. This is your thing.

5. This will never stop being your thing until you face it.

6. You cannot do it alone.

7. Only you can do it.

8. You are loved.

9. We will never stop reminding you of these things.

I cried my face off this week after getting the news that readers around Australia voted my debut novel, The Lost Flowers of Alice Hart, into ABC Radio National’s inaugural Top 100 Books of the 21st Century list (listen in the video below).

After hearing the segment on air, I walked into my office, here in Manchester, England, which is the same room where I wrote the first draft of Lost Flowers eleven years ago. I remembered how fucking terrified I was in there, writing. I also remembered the fleeting, soaring bursts of joy that came while I was writing Alice’s story. They were unlike any joy I’d ever known.

Right now, in this same office, I’m writing my third novel. It’s called The World Beneath Her Feet, and it’s about love, time, memories we try to bury, mistakes we try to hide, and what it means to crack our hearts open to live the fullest, messiest, most beautiful lives we can.

It’s bringing me deep, meaningful joy. And it scares the absolute bejeezus out of me.

Feeling these depths of joy and fear takes me straight back to 2014, writing Lost Flowers in this same chair, with these same trembling hands. I’m reminded of how I’ve learned since to bear the siren song between these two forces, and of what it takes to join them. To sing with joy and fear rather than to resist them, so I can do the most important thing at this desk: keep writing.

💛 For paid subscribers: what follows is a dive into the voltage between fear and joy, and I share ways I turn terror into creative fuel, to keep creating for the love of it when fear makes it feel impossible. Click below to upgrade and subscriber, or click here for my free-to-read issues of The Joy Rise.

Subscribe now

The pulse

I suspect if you’re here, reading along with me, you know what it’s like to side-eye the idea or project that keeps circling you. The one that hums under your skin and calls to you in your sleep. It’s the book, the painting, the song, the story in your soul. You’ve drafted it in your head a hundred times. You’ve daydreamed about it, maybe half-written it, maybe stuffed it in a drawer. Maybe deleted it (sob, I hope not).

Every time you get close to it, your pulse spikes. It feels like danger in your heart, so every part of you resists it.

But, what if it isn’t danger?

What if that bone-deep sense of risk we feel when we approach what our soul longs to create is actually us coming into contact with the aliveness of our ideas and projects? Like a kind of voltage?

What if the thunder of our fears is a storm masking an unknown, buried joy, waiting for us to unearth it, muddied and messy, shimmering and brilliant?

The science

When I feel consumed by fear around writing, it helps me to bear it if I understand what is happening inside my body.

Neuroscience tells us that joy and fear can share the same brain circuitry. Both emotions activate the sympathetic nervous system, triggering a biological response that includes increased heart rate, elevated blood pressure, heightened sensory awareness, and release of stress hormones like cortisol and adrenaline.

The brain’s limbic system, particularly the amygdala, plays a strong role in processing both fear and joy, or excitement. And here’s the intriguing bit: the amygdala doesn’t distinguish between positive and negative arousal, it simply detects intensity.

So, while our initial neurological response to fear and excitement may be similar, our cognitive appraisal determines how we ultimately experience the emotion.

To take agency of our appraisal, psychologists and coaches suggest using a reappraisal strategy: when we feel the rush of adrenaline, we can explore and identify it as joy or excitement, instead of fear. This simple reframe can change the story our brain tells itself about the same surge of energy.

To practice, I often try asking myself:

Holly, what if you’re not fearful or anxious about writing, but are instead activated by it?

What if your brain and body are preparing for the vulnerability, discomfort, awe and wonder that come with creation?

Research shows people who do this perform better and feel calmer afterward. (I strive to become one of those people - ha.)

It also turns out that the same dopamine-powered ‘seeking system’ in our brains that drives us to explore and take risks is the one that fires when we create. Meaning, the adrenaline that feels terrifying to us can be the same surge that leads us to joy.

* Sources: On the amygdala | On the neurology of joy | On the science of ‘doing it scared’

The invitation

Notes I’ve left myself on half-filled notebook pages, Post-its, and the whiteboard in my office:

• The thing you’re most afraid to create is probably the thing you most need to make. Let yourself make it. Let the process of making it change you.

• Maybe fear isn’t just an obstacle. Maybe, like us, it can be more than one thing at once. So… what if fear is also a compass? What if it’s how joy tells us, this way...

• Joy loves a fool with pen-indented fingers, a racing heart, and quaking courage. This is when she can meet you halfway, wild and beaming, I knew you’d come.

The Actions

When I’m frozen by fear around writing, the only way I’ve ever found to free myself is to take some kind of action. Even if it’s small. Especially if it’s small. One of those steps is reminding myself:

Joy and fear are two stories my brain can tell itself about the same creative spark I’m feeling.

So, if I reframe the context of the spark, I might reframe my experience of creating. In other words, if I change my story around writing, I can change how the act of writing feels. This is the science (and the poetry!) of creative courage.

Here’s a list of a few small, actionable steps I keep in a running Note on my phone for creative-fear emergencies.

1. Follow the fizz.
Stay with whatever sparks that delicious fizz of excitement in your chest: the scene, the colour, the fragment that feels thrilling and slightly nauseous. Keep close to that feeling to keep creating.

2. Move fear.
When panic rises, don’t freeze. Scribble, hum, pace, handwrite nonsense. Fear hates motion; curiosity and joy thrive on it.

3. Let it be ugly.
The thing you’re scared to make will almost certainly be a mess at first. Good. That means you’re making, exploring and mapping new terrain. You’re doing it!

4. Play with the stakes.
Tell yourself, I’m just writing this for five minutes. Or, This isn’t the real draft; this is me following curiosity and fooling around. Lower the stakes until the pressure drops and your imagination can squeeze through the door. When it does, remind yourself: you belong here.

5. Leave a light on for yourself.
End each session mid-sentence or mid-thought with a note for tomorrow. When you return, you’re already halfway there. For years I imagined this as leaving gingerbread crumbs toward courage. After writing The House That Joy Built, I realised it’s more a light I’ve been leaving for myself every time things went dark.

Sometimes fear tells me I know absolutely nothing about creativity and writing.
Other times I know, straight through my bones, what writing full time for fifteen years has taught me:

The ideas that scare us most are rarely about the work itself; our fears are more about what doing the work means. Responding to our ideas requires us to risk discomfort, surrender, and vulnerability to bring them into being.

Because here’s the kicker:
The joy we dream of and yearn for in our creativity is waiting for us inside the risk of trying to create.

So, hard as it is, let’s try answering the call of the ideas that make our hearts race. Even though it can be absolutely fucking terrifying. Because they’re our ideas. They’ve come to us, asking to be made. And they can’t become anything more than an idea without us.

I will if you will!

With armfuls of flannel flowers and a light left on always,

💛 Thank you, dear Joy Risers, for supporting this space for creative courage and wonder. Your presence here makes the work of writing, and the work of returning to joy, even in fear, possible.

Wherever you are when you read this, I hope you’re finding ways to go and do and be as gently as you can. These are not easy days.

I have a spark of good news to share here first, as ever, with subscribers of The Joy Rise. And I offer it gently with… *gesturing in every direction* …all of this… in mind.

It’s official:

⚡️Build Your House of Joy⚡️cards are coming!

Available now for preorder in Australia and New Zealand!

(I’m hoping to have international publication news to share with you soon.)

Booktopia | QBD | Collins | Amazon | The Nile | Find A Bookshop

Publication date: 28th October, 2025

When I wrote The House That Joy Built, I dreamed of ways readers might keep the ideas and offerings in my pages close, reaching beyond the book for a tangible anchor to joy in the middle of their real, everyday, beautiful, messy lives.

The spark for how to make that real came from Mark Campbell at Harper by Design. He imagined something tactile and playful — a way for readers to interact with The House That Joy Built beyond the page. From that single spark, and with the exquisite skill and support of my editor, Rachel Cramp, this beautiful little deck grew.

Inside the (beautifully tactile) box you’ll find:

🌿 48 cards, divided into the same 8 calls-and-responses as the book
🌿 Each card offers a gentle provocation, ritual, and/or spark for your imagination
🌿 I wrote them to be lived with. Scribbled on. Tucked into pockets. Turned to in quiet moments.

⚡️ PREORDER YOUR DECK ⚡️

Booktopia | QBD | Collins | Amazon | The Nile | Find A Bookshop

This is a small thing, but it means a great deal to me. These cards carry the spirit of our community here, and every ember and spark in every conversation I’ve ever had with my readers about creativity, fear, courage, and believing in the power of joy.

My wildest hope for these cards is that they might help you build your own house for your inner country — a place where your imagination and joy can feel safe to dwell and grow.

Thank you, from my heart, for walking alongside me in this space.
Here’s to the quiet defiance of our smallest, fiercest joys.

With a light left on,

This issue of SIGNAL & SPARK is one of three dispatches of The Joy Rise that I write and share each month.

Paid subscribers also receive:

🧡 NOTES to SELF
A voice memo from the heart for the month ahead.
A short, solo podcast + transcript of reflective notes, including sparks for your journal and ideas to begin each month - like a choose your own adventure map, inwards.

💚 THE WORK of WONDER
Tools and prompts to support your creative life.
A post exploring an obstacle to creating, offering sparks for ways to respond, reconnect with imagination and make what matters.

Subscribe now

Earlier this year, I read ’s very excellent What’s In Your Coping Kit? in which they wrote:

I was conducting an interview with Dr. Raquel Martin, and we were talking about how one copes in a time of distress. Among many bits of wisdom that she relayed was the concept of a coping kit. A selection of resources that you have on hand that can help regulate your nervous system.

The concept of a ‘coping kit’ has come back to me this year, an ongoing horrendous one in our collective world, and, I’m sure for many of us, a challenging year also in our indiviudal worlds.

Resisting complacency and apathy is top of my mind lately. I’ve been thinking a lot this month about what’s in my coping kit, and what kind of practices do my heart good. Not so much in big, overhauling ways, but more the quiet, accumulative ways that stoke my sense of communal connection, help me to resist numbness, and reminds me that while we’re occupied with doing the good that we can for ourselves, each other, humanity and our planet, our precious lives are also, still, happening now, and now, and now.

Here are a few heart-alivening things I’ve been turning toward lately.

Read more

Hello dear Joyrisers,

EVENT ANNOUNCEMENT:

Tickets are available now for a November fundraising evening event with my fave, , in Sydney on Gadigal Country.

Jules and I are getting together to talk about finding and fostering what really matters, which is why we’ve called our event, AT THE HEART OF IT, and we’d love you to join us.

When: Friday 28 November, 2025, 6.30pm

Where: Bondi Pavilion, supported by The Waverley Council, Bondi Pavilion, Gertrude & Alice Cafe Bookstore, and Novel Concept Brand Management.

All proceeds from the night go to Medecins Sans Frontiers / Doctors Without Borders.

TICKETS & INFO

If you’d like a taster of what happens when Julia and I get together, have a listen to the CREATIVITY, JOY, GRACE event we did together last year at Sydney City Recital Hall, in conversation with Michaela Kalowski, as part of Sydney Writers Festival.

🐚 Spark: inspiration from the wider world

This week marks the birthday of beloved poet, Mary Oliver.

I read her poem Breakage for the first time in 2022, while thinking through the ending of my second novel, The Seven Skins of Esther Wilding. I wasn’t yet sure where Esther would go in her final scene, but then I read Breakage and knew: she would, of course, go to the sea that raised her in Lutruwita/Tasmania.

Until recently, I hadn’t written a poem in more than a decade. But… they seem to be sparking in my heart lately.

Reminding me that my poetry doesn’t need to be groundbreaking or destined for status or greatness.

The point is that I’m writing poems. Something I truly haven’t done in years. And in the process, I’m feeling awe and wonder.

Which, given… *gestures in all directions*… feels like a tiny, vital miracle.

A Whole Story
after Mary Oliver’s “Breakage”
by Holly Ringland

I keep it in a small, cream dish
on my desk:
a tiny, flat top shell,
violet, striated.
Beneath its broken crown
shimmers iridescence.

I found it, empty,
by the edge of
a rockpool in Wales:
country of my ancestors —
where I knelt
nearly seven years ago
and made a cup with my hands.

I didn’t know then
about kanalaritja —
shell necklaces:
black crows,
glowing pink and green mariners,
periwinkles,
strung through ancient time
and colonisation —
still, and now,
by Pakana women.

I didn’t know then
if or how a woman
could find her way
back to the sea.

Nearly seven skins later,
returned to the Welsh rockpool,
I counted empty, broken shells
with iridescent crowns
around my feet.
And they reminded me: 

breakage
can be
a whole story.

🪺 Your whole story

I’m wondering if you have a small object too that you keep close, on your desk, in your pocket, beside your bed, that holds a whole story for you?

Maybe it’s a stone, a photograph, a button, a scrap of handwriting.
Maybe it’s worn down. Maybe it’s broken.
Maybe that’s what makes it shine.

I’d love to know… please free to share it in the comments. Or, if sharing isn’t your jam, I hope this pause brings a shimmer to your own creativity.

🪩 Thank you

Thank you for being part of this community. Whether you’re reading on a free or paid subscription, your presence is what keeps this disco ball glittering.

With a light left on,

Share

🌱 This is one of 3 issues of The Joy Rise that I write each month.

🌸 Paid subscribers also receive:

🧡 Notes to Self
A voice memo from the heart for the month ahead.
A short podcast + transcript of reflective notes, including sparks for your journal and ideas to begin each month - like a choose your own adventure map, inwards.

💚 The Work of Wonder
Tools and prompts to support your creative life.
A post exploring an obstacle to creating, offering sparks for ways to respond, reconnect with imagination and make what matters, including occasional downloadable PDFs to work with.

Paid Subscriber Treasure Trove

By subscribing, you're directly supporting my work, and helping build this space for others too. Thank you.

Subscribe now

💌 Q&A

If you’d like to write to me with your question about creativity, which I answer free to read in Signal & Spark, please do here.

🧚 Gift subscriptions:

If you know someone who would enjoy The Joy Rise, gift subscriptions are available here.

📚 My books:

Tap or click image above to learn more.

Welcome to the September issue of Notes to Self, my solo podcast made for you, by me, at my desk, fuelled this month by cups of Yorkshire Tea and a heartfelt desire to offer calm and contemplation to your creative self.

For several years now, I've been jotting down Notes to Self every month for the new month ahead.

I do this kind of like the post-its that I write and leave in a book I love on the pages that I don't want to forget.

But in this case, of course, the book is my creative life. And my hope in sharing my notes to myself is that they might offer any resonance or support to your creative life too.

Read more

Hello dear Joy Risers,

Welcome to Signal & Spark, your monthly free dispatch of The Joy Rise. Thank you, as ever, for being here.

⚡️ Signal: News from my world

Here’s what’s bringing joy to my writing world this month:

🥳 THE JOY RISE TURNS ONE + A SPECIAL OFFER:

Dust off your dancing shoes and break out the party hats, our beautiful Joy Rise community is one!

Thank you so much for joining me here, it’s an honour and delight to grow and evolve this space with you.

To celebrate, I’m offering 75% off the price of annual subscriptions for a limited time.

That’s 12 months of full access to The Joy Rise for AUD$25 / £12 / USD$18.

Redeem this special offer for yourself, or gift a subscription to someone else:

Subscribe

✨ Spark: inspiration from the wider one

This month’s spark: I wrote a poem for the first time in years. Inspired by the creativity of my dear friend and wonderful writer, Beth Kempton.

I noticed Beth’s invitation to write and share tiny poems online, thought how glorious, then kept scrolling, unaware it had ignited something in me.

The spark came later, while I was up to my eyeballs in dust and grot, scrubbing my Manchester writing office clean, after eight months away.

Unusually for me, I didn't just notice the flicker of an idea sparking in my heart, I let myself tend it: I stopped cleaning, sat down, and allowed myself to write whatever came to mind (not something that I do often when I’m novel-writing, as I am now).

I looked at what I’d written, moved things around a bit because my sentences didn’t make sense (they never do when they first come barrelling at me)… and then… I realised I’d written a poem. I was genuinely astonished. And later discovered that August is Poetry Month in Australia, which made my poem, and the little electric shocks that writing it gave me, feel like even more like a contribution to something bigger than me.

Peeled
by Holly Ringland

I peel the ripe, purple-green fig,
cut it open,
soft, sweet colour spilling from its heart
at my kitchen counter.

All of us -
counter, fig, glinting knife,
past self,
present self -

gather around the cutting board,
drenched in strange northern sun.

Strange because it’s rare here,
to be this bright and warm.

Strange because
sixteen Augusts ago
I arrived in this cold,
northern red-brick city

alone,
bewildered - almost disbelieving
that there might ever
be a place in the sun
for me.

Now:

Here I am.
In Manchester.

Eating a ripe fig
on a warm Friday.

Soaking the northern light
into my skin.

The hinge of the poem was a micro-moment that happened at my kitchen counter a couple of weeks ago: I sliced a fresh fig open, noticing how the sunlight spilled across it.

A memory stirred, of the punnet of fresh figs I bought at a Soho market on a sunny London day in August sixteen years ago when I first came to England.

My stomach filled with emotion butterflies, remembering how utterly impossible yet painfully hopeful everything felt then.

I didn’t expect the moment or memory would become a poem I’d later write between the vacuum, Dettol spray and my cleaning rags.

It reminded me that the point isn’t that this poem is groundbreaking or destined for status or greatness.

The point is that I wrote poetry. Something I truly haven’t done in a decade or more. And, in the process, I felt a starburst of joy and wonder. Which has stayed with me since.

It also reminded me of novelist and poet Louise Erdrich’s words from her poem Advice to Myself #2: RESISTANCE:

Resist loss of the miraculous
by lowering your standards
for what constitutes a miracle.
It is all a fucking miracle.

Even a small act of creation, like a poem about a fig that’s not at all about a fig, which appears in the middle of grubby cleaning, is a reminder that creativity isn’t something we have only when everything’s ideal and aligned.

Our imaginations are always with us, in us, quietly waiting for us to notice a flare of light, quietly waiting for us allow ourselves to tend to those sparks inside us… to make something from nothing. What a fucking miracle.

I’ve promised myself that next time my imagination sends me a spark with its invitation, I’ll accept it. And find the courage to share it. Creativity is human-made magic. We need it and each other, more than ever in our lives.

Maybe you’d like to join me? Have you noticed and tended a spark in your heart lately?

💡 What if?

What if you noticed and tended a small spark today? A sound, a fragment of memory, a tiny observation… and your creative response to it. Write it, sketch it, hum it, or simply sit with it and daydream. What if you let it lead you… right now?

💌 I’d love to know if this sparks anything for you. Please reply below if you feel like sharing.

If you enjoy noticing and tending the creative sparks in your heart, 🧡 NOTES TO SELF and 💚 THE WORK OF WONDER are designed to do just that.

This is one of three issues of The Joy Rise that I write and share each month.

Paid subscribers also receive:

🧡 NOTES to SELF
A voice memo from the heart for the month ahead.
A short podcast + transcript of reflective notes, including sparks for your journal and ideas to begin each month - like a choose your own adventure map, inwards.

💚 THE WORK of WONDER
Tools and prompts to support your creative life.
A post exploring an obstacle to creating, offering sparks for ways to respond, reconnect with imagination and make what matters, including a downloadable PDF to work with.

Subscribe now

🪩 Thank you

Thank you for being part of this community. Whether you’re reading on a free or paid subscription, your presence is what keeps this disco ball glittering.

With a light left on,

🥳 The Joy Rise Birthday Sale

To save you scrolling up:

I’m offering 75% off the price of annual subscriptions for a limited time to celebrate The Joy Rise turning one!

That’s 12 months of full access to The Joy Rise for AUD$25 / £12 / USD$18.

Redeem this special offer for yourself or gift a subscription to someone else:

Subscribe

Last week I shared with you my August Work of Wonder essay about the ache to make something beautiful; the urge we feel to create in grief and why it can be so hard to do.

I’ve since made something special just for paid supporters (hi, you legends) that I hope might be of value to anyone curious about carrying the ideas in my essa…

Read more

Hello dear readers,,

Welcome to the August issue of The Work of Wonder on The Joy Rise, on the ache to make something beautiful; wanting to create in grief, and why it can be so hard to do. Thanks as ever for being here.

I’m writing to you in the bleary days of fresh jet lag after stumbling off the long flight from Meanjin/Brisbane to Manchester, England.

I’ll write more about my return in a future issue; it’s been full of Feelings and Revelations (which would have been my band name, if my 80s Jem and the Holograms dreams had come true).

In short: in 2009, Manchester is where I arrived alone on a one-way ticket from Australia. I was 29. I sold everything I owned and used my life savings to make the move, to pursue my dream of becoming a working writer. Ultimately though, it was to save myself from falling through the floor of my own life after leaving what I’d promised myself would be the last violent relationship I would live through with a man.

Manchester is the place where, over the next ten years, I kept that promise and followed that dream.

Read more

Hello dear Joy Risers,

Welcome to Signal & Spark, your monthly free dispatch of The Joy Rise. Thank you, as ever, for being here.

⚡️ Signal: news from my world

• I recently had the joy of chatting with the wonderful Dr Marion Piper about creativity, courage, and connection on her podcast What Doesn’t Kill Us.
  🎧 Listen on Apple Podcasts, Spotify, or Google Podcasts.

• I also spoke publicly for the first time about my new novel (!!) THE WORLD BENEATH HER FEET, which will be published in ANZ by HarperCollins Australia in 2026. ✨

✨ Spark: inspiration from the wider one

I met Pacific Northwest publisher and writer Laura Stanfill about a decade ago, through emails with our mutual friend and author, Kate Gray. Laura and I stayed in touch online, and last year we finally met in person when she came to my US book tour event at Powell’s Books in Portland. Joy!

This month’s Spark comes from the opening of Laura’s new book Imagine a Door: A Writer’s Guide to Unlock Your Story, Choose a Publishing Path, and Honor the Creative Journey.

I love how powerfully Laura’s words capture the wonder, possibility, fragility and peril of the doors we can open, and close, on ourselves and our creativity.

📖 Excerpt from Imagine a Door by Laura Stanfill

Imagine a door. You turn the handle and find yourself in a —

Kitchen / Courtyard / Underground cave / Jungle / Corporate boardroom / Bedroom / Cockpit / Dark alley / School

You hear —

A car alarm / Branches moving in the wind / Water droplets / An unfamiliar bird call / A droning, monotone presentation / Snoring / Steady, high-pitched beeps / Nothing / A yelling adult

You feel—

Worried; your car, again? / Soothed / Excited—is there a hidden hot spring? / Delighted and curious / Impatient / Annoyed / Confused—hello? / Hesitation / A thrill of disobedience

You decide —

That none of these scenarios are financially viable.

That none of these directions are going to earn you an agent or a six-figure publishing deal or even a small-advance agreement with a reputable small press.

That you, obviously, in the ecstatically creative throes of imagining a door, have conjured exactly nothing of value, because wherever your story leads, it’s not going to get you enough social media followers to prove you have an audience to an agent who cares about metrics.

Besides, you’ve probably chosen the wrong protagonist.

You still haven’t figured out how to make dialogue seem realistic without being boring.

You have dinner to conjure.

The imagined door slams shut. The story pieces fall and shatter.

You walk away, the paragraph dangling mid-sentence, the chapter unfinished.

💩 On failure, creativity… and dung beetles

Reading Laura’s words reminded me how painful those shattered story pieces can feel: every one like a small, sharp failure.

And then, as I’ve been prone to do since writing The House That Joy Built, thinking about failure got me thinking of dung beetles.

Truly. Stay with me.

As you might know, dung beetles depend entirely on waste, repurposing the literal shit of other animals to survive. They evolved this way an estimated 130 million years ago. They’ve been turning shit into their livelihood for that long.

♻️ What if it isn’t failure?

Hand on my heart, now when I’m writing and I feel the creep of shame, fearing I’ve made a mistake in my manuscript or I begin to perceive that I might have failed in my work, I pause. And I honestly think of dung beetles.

I ask myself… what if the “shit” you’ve made is useful? Necessary?

What if what you think has been a waste (of time, energy, or effort) is something you needed to create so that you could transform it into something else… and learn about yourself along the way?

🌌 And here’s a little more magic…

As if the dung beetle wasn’t already offering enough to our creativity: the nocturnal African dung beetle is one of the few invertebrates that navigates and orients itself using the Milky Way (!!!).

So. Here we are.

Us, our creativity, and dung beetles.

Even when we’re surrounded by shit, it pays to keep our eyes on the stars.

Even when we’re buried in shit, the opportunity for transformation is within us.

There is still the possibility of miracles. There is, somehow, still beauty.

🪲 This is the work of creativity: nothing is wasted.

🪄 Provocations for the “shit” times in creativity

I wanted to leave you with some questions to tuck into your heart sleeve.

As ever, hold what resonates, leave the rest:

• How would your experience of creativity shift if it was impossible to fail — if your only goal was to experience the joy of creating?

• What happens if you change the language you use with yourself about failure?

  • I’m failing at creating → I’m trying out creating.

  • This project is a failure → This project is me trying, learning, and becoming.

• Do you have any “wasted” ideas you could (forgive the pun) dung-beetle-the-shit-out-of and turn into something repurposed? Maybe even beautiful?

If you’d like to read more from Laura, you can find her on Substack here or order her book: AU | US | UK.

See you next month, and thank you for being here. With me, Laura, and the dung beetles.

As always, with a light left on,

🌸 Thank You

If something here has stirred your heart or imagination, you can:

• Subscribe for free to keep receiving Signal & Spark.

• Become a paid supporter to receive deeper tools and encouragement throughout the month and help me to keep this space blooming.

Subscribe now

In whatever capacity you’re able to be here, thank you for your readership and support.

Your presence genuinely makes all the difference.

💬 More ways to connect

💌 If you’d like to write to me with your question about creativity, please do, here. I answer reader questions in Signal & Spark issues of The Joy Rise - read one here.

🦋 If this is the first time of you’ve received or read The Joy Rise, you can learn more about me and this space here.

🧚 In case you missed it:

This totally candid, natural photo of me casually wearing headphones while holding a Sharpie (😜) exists because my monthly, solo podcast, Notes to Self, went live last week for paid subscribers! Scroll down for a tiny sample + link to the first episode.

🪺 Coming in the next issue for paid subscribers:

💚 THE WORK of WONDER
Tools and prompts to support your creative life.
An exploration of an obstacle to creativity, offering tools and ideas that I use to respond and reconnect with imagination, and make what matters. Is there a specific obstacle that you’d love me to write about? Let me know.

Subscribe now

Welcome to the first episode of my solo podcast, Notes to Self. In addition to sharing the notes I’ve written to myself for August, this podcast episode also includes companion provocations, rooted in memory, the senses, courage and creativity. I hope they might each be a little door for you and your imagination. Kind of like a choose your own adventure map that you can take inwards. You might like to use them as journal entries, maybe a walking meditation, or maybe just thoughts to carry in your heart. Maybe after each one you pause. Maybe you let your body answer first. However they land with you, I hope these provocations might help you to stay by your own side.

The genesis of this podcast are the notes that I’ve been jotting down for several years now, at the beginning of every new month. I do this kind of like the post-its that I write and leave in a book I love, on the pages or paragraphs or scenes that I don't want to forget. But in this case, of course, the book is my creative life. My hope in sharing my notes to self is that they might offer any resonance or support to your creative life too.

Read more

Welcome to Signal & Spark, your monthly free dispatch of The Joy Rise. Thanks for being here.

Signal (news from my world):

• UPCOMING EVENT:

  SEPTEMBER 27, 2025, HAWORTH, ENGLAND

  I have the enormous honour and pleasure of headlining The Brontë Women’s Writing Festival with none other than Tracy Chevalier (and am utterly calm about it). If you’re nearby, please join us!

  From the Brontë Parsonage Museum:

  You’re invited to join us for an evening with Tracy Chevalier (Girl with the Pearl Earring) and Holly Ringland (The Lost Flowers of Alice Hart). Host Yvette Huddleston will be in conversation with the two authors discussing their novels and how they’ve both been inspired by the Brontës' writing.

  Tickets include a glass of fizz on arrival.

Tickets & Details

• BOOK NEWS:

  PRE-ORDER THE HOUSE THAT JOY BUILT IN THE UK + USA + CANADA

  My first non-fiction book, The House That Joy Built, comes from the core of my heart and is part-memoir, part-research, and part-storytelling about the transformative pleasure and power of giving ourselves permission to create. It became a national bestseller in Australia on release and readers have called it “life-changing”. Apple Books called it a “non-fiction masterpiece”. (Neither circumstance made me howl. Not at all.)

  Pre-orders are available now from:

  🇬🇧 Waterstones

  🇺🇸 Barnes & Noble

  🇨🇦 Indigo

  Or, from your favourite, magical, wonderful independent bookshop. Every pre-order comes with infinite gratitude and good wishes from me to you.

Spark (inspiration from the wider one):

I received this wonderful message from a Joy Riser, named Gab:

Hi Holly, I hope you are oh-so well. Thank you for sharing your heart with us all.

I would love to know how you navigate the "messy middle" of a project - where you've done so much, are invested in your idea and story... but still know how far there is to go! Do you have any creative circuit-breakers that work for you? Rituals, systems or routines? Something else entirely? Perhaps it is different with every project? I would love to hear how you navigate your way out and through to the other side.

With love, Gab x

Dear Gab,

Thank you for your beautiful question, and for being here. I’m so glad you wrote to me about the messy middle: that low-light place in the creative process we often stumble through, more than once in a single project.

I’ve reached this point with every manuscript I’ve written. I’ll be deep into weaving the story together, have thousands of words down, and then - suddenly - fatigue. The distance between where I am and where I need to be to finish feels overwhelming. My energy drops. I’m primed for self-doubt, the inner critic, and their siren songs about me as a writer and my writing. The bright spark that felt electric and all-consuming at the beginning flickers low.

Ooof. What a time. What a dangerous time the midpoint of our process can be, if we let this dimness convince us to abandon our story or our creative selves.

Over the past decade, I’ve stopped seeing this part of the process as a problem I must fix, or a sign that I should quit. Rather, it’s become a sacred, uncomfortable threshold to me. That is always testing. Always challenging me to loosen my grip, deepen my trust and belief in my work and self, and remember both why I started, and will persist. I dread and value it.

When I find myself at this threshold (as I will again soon with my new novel) I return to a bit of a daggy but very effective tool for me: a mnemonic that I made up to help me keep moving through the midpoint.

(Shout out to primary school music class — I still remember the treble clef thanks to “Every Good Boy Deserves Fruit.”)

Sharing this, I hope it can be of some help to you too.

L-O-V-E: a compassionate compass for the messy middle

A ritual.
A response to fear and shame.
A way back to courage.

L — Listening (to my longing)
When things go dark, I call the first spark of my idea back to me. What bright longing lives at the core of my story? The midpoint often feels low because somewhere in the process I’ve lost a strong sense of connection to the pulse that started it all. I listen for that beat.

O — Owning (where I am)
There’s power in naming what’s true. This is hard. I feel stuck. I feel lost. Owning the mess without shame helps me breathe again. It lets grace back in to the room of my mind, replenishes my imagination and resilience, and renews my commitment to my work.

V — Venturing (into play)
When I need to refine my focus, it’s time to play. I write something silly or small, switch mediums, move my body, talk out loud to my characters, go to a gallery, use Pinterest to find glimpses of their lives. Play interrupts perfectionism. It clears space for joy to re-enter.

E — Embracing (what I love, without shame)
This is the heart of the midpoint matter. I ask myself: Do I still love this story? Do I still have skin in the game? If yes, I trust and keep going. If not, I come back to myself, with tenderness, and listen again for the longing in my idea, that first lit me up.

When I feel lost or overwhelmed throughout the creative process, I ask gently:
Am I creating from L-O-V-E?
And I adjust. Again and again.

This is how I navigate the low light of the messy middle. Not by fighting through it with self-punishment, but by loving my way forward, with self-compassion.

Cheering for you, Gab, for your imagination, and your courage.

With love, solidarity, and a blazing light left on,

• If you’d like to write to me with your question about creativity, please do, here.

• If this is the first time of you’ve received or read The Joy Rise, you can learn more about me and this space here.

Coming in the next issue of The Joy Rise for paid subscribers:

🧡 NOTES to SELF
A voice memo from the heart for the month ahead.
A short podcast (with text transcription) of reflective notes on creativity, including provocations for your journal / notebook / ideas, to start the month.

If something here has stirred your heart or imagination, I’d love for you to stay.

You can subscribe for free, or become a paid supporter to receive more in-depth tools and encouragement throughout the month for your creative life, and to help me keep this space blooming.

In whatever capacity you’re able to be here, thank you for your readership and support.

Your presence genuinely makes all the difference.

Subscribe now

Sometimes, when I desperately want to lose myself in creating, but I’m too busy, stressed, numb, or close to burn out to feel like I can create anything, I write myself a treasure map.

It helps me to find my way into feeling where the gold is - my imagination and heart - when the way feels totally lost to me because I’m too exhausted.

(I call it a map. It might be a poem. Maybe it’s a list of prompts. A trail of gingerbread crumbs. You get the idea.)

I do this, write myself maps, to be soft and unyielding with myself, and to honour my commitment to creativity. Creative expression is one of the core ways that I replenish my resilience and my capacity to show up for myself and others. In other words, I write these maps to bring myself violets.

As Tennessee Williams wrote:

Just as violets find ways to persist against odds, grow through the hardest surfaces and break through the cracks, we too can grow a powerful connection with our creativity in unlikely ways.

Writing myself maps are one of the unlikely ways that I persist like a violet. It’s an act of taking and making micro-moments for creative connection, when I’m reminded, again and again, that creativity doesn’t need hours from us.

In the briefest moments, intentional focus can still connect or reconnect us with our imaginations. Especially when we’re exhausted / stressed / on edge / afraid / empty, and brevity is all we’ve got.

And here’s the kicker: writing my maps are an act and outlet for my creativity in and of themselves.

I thought to share my current map with you in this latest issue of The Joy Rise. I’m turning to it often at the moment. I hope it might resonate or offer you comfort if you’re exhausted and yearning to connect with your creativity too.

Subscribe now

Did you know?

While this issue is for paying supporters of my writing, I also write for all of my subscribers. You can find all of my free-to-read issues of The Joy Rise here.

Read more

Today, I’m trying something different. This week’s issue of The Joy Rise for paid subscribers sees me coming to you via video, instead of in the written form, with some thoughts and reflections on how we can continue to find the courage and the gall to keep creating and to keep believing in the value of creativity in these deeply distressing and chaotic times we all find ourselves in. What is the point? How can I keep going? Should I keep going?

These are big questions, and this is certainly not the first time I’ve felt them come up for me. I suspect many of you have experienced similar thoughts many times before too. For me, on this occasion, I found a possible response to these questions somewhere unexpected. A message in a bottle from a past self. A gentle reminder about why I bother. About why we must all bother, if we can.

So, I invite you to join me here at my writing desk. Let’s try something new together.

With a light left on,

Today I am delighted to share with you a Q+A with artist and activist Tilly Moses. Tilly is one of the first people I started to read when I joined Substack nearly a year ago, and I find myself constantly inspired by her. So, you can imagine my delight when she agreed to answer some questions via email for me to share with you here. And whilst today’s conversation was conducted as a written Q+A over email, the time and consideration Tilly has put into her answers makes it feel much more like a lovely, meandering chat between friends. So, pour yourself a hot cup of something and settle in, because you’re about to meet the incredibly creative and oh-so-stylish Tilly Moses (and I bet you’re about to look at your wardrobe in a whole new way, too).

Q&A with Tilly Moses

1: Tilly, thank you so much for joining us on The Joy Rise, it is a delight to have you here. I’ve got to start with your incredible sense of style - what do you love about clothes and fashion?

Thanks so much for having me!

I’ve always loved clothing, ever since I was little. Clothing is more than just something we use to cover up and keep warm or to keep the sun off - it represents thousands of years of human history, culture, and self expression. On a personal level, it’s always given me a route to express myself, bring joy into my everyday life, and connect with other people. And now, as a disabled person, it also gives me a route to challenge stereotypes and unseat ableist ideas about what disabled people and our lives look like (I wrote an article about this which you can read here). I also love its everyday-ness - you have to get dressed every day anyway, so why not turn that into something that brings you joy and makes you feel good? What an amazing power to have, to make something mundane and ordinary into something full of whimsy! I try to do that as much as I can, and fashion is the one of the easiest ways I find of doing it.

2: Could you please share some photos of a few favourite outfits with us, and any associated stories?

When I put this outfit on, I felt so much joy! I felt so much like myself in it! Patchwork is my favourite pattern and you’ll see I wear it as much as possible across lots of my outfits. I have a very clear memory of putting this outfit together because I built it around wearing slippers - I was going out for the day in my wheelchair and the weather was starting to get cold. When you’re sitting down all day, not moving, you get cold fast, especially your extremities. For some reason, I had previously been stuck with the idea that you have to wear “proper” shoes when you leave the house, but I’d been talking to my friend who’s been a wheelchair user for much longer than me, and she was aghast that I hadn’t been wearing slippers in my wheelchair during the winter months. So I decided I would start! I built this outfit around my slippers, which are from Seasalt and have that lovely patchwork/chequered vibe - I decided to mirror that with the cardigan and dress. It’s a lovely example of how some of the best innovations and creative outputs spring from my experience as a disabled person - I’d never have put this outfit together unless I was a wheelchair user with a specific practical problem to solve. It makes me happy knowing how intertwined my disability and my creative process are.

More details about the pieces in the outfit: the cardigan is second hand from ebay and is pure wool, so it’s incredibly warm and cosy. The brand is Pachamama and it’s maybe my favourite item of clothing I’ve ever bought, I just love the way it makes me feel. The red handwarmers were bought for me by one of my closest friends, Sam, and they’re made by Turtle Doves London, who use pre-loved cashmere from jumpers to make gloves and handwarmers. I found the dress on depop and I’m fairly sure it’s vintage 90s. The bag is from a vintage fair I went to - my friend Ilana picked it up and insisted I buy it, and she was right to because it’s my most used handbag now!

This photo was taken the day after Josh and I got engaged, hence my funny little pose showing off my engagement ring. This green colour is my absolute favourite colour of all time (so much so that my friends call it “Tilly green”) and my engagement ring has a green stone, so I really wanted to wear this colour for our engagement dinner at our favourite local restaurant. The dress is from a local boutique and I bartered with the woman behind the counter to give me a discount if I crocheted some granny squares for her to stitch onto jumpers to sell. It’s made out of a very floaty silk and is perfect in hot weather. The velvet coat is from ebay and so are the little velvet shoes. I loved this outfit, I felt so beautiful all night! Bonus picture included of me looking at Josh all moony-eyed in the restaurant that evening.

Remember my love of patchwork? It’s on full display here! This is one of my most re-worn outfits - if I’m ever not sure what to wear, this is a go to. It has everything! Sunny colours, patchwork, two-toned tights, patchwork boots, handmade cardigan, and it’s comfy and cosy to boot! This cardigan is the first wearable crochet piece I made and I made it to match this dress specifically, down to the purple wool I used to connect the crochet squares, which matches the purple splodges on the pattern of the dress. I also crocheted the covers on my wheelchair, and I love how the cardigan and chair covers look together.

These photos were taken by the incomparable Emma Ledwith. Emma is a brilliant photographer I’d been following on social media for a while and I happened to see that she was offering free photo sessions on International Women’s Day, so I messaged her to reserve a slot for my friend Leah and I - we had become close friends a few months earlier and wanted some good pictures together, as we’re both passionate about fashion. The session was so fun and I love how the pictures came out. There are a few of Leah and I giggling together in the daffodils that make me feel so happy every time I see them! Emma said we were the most colourful people she photographed that day, which I wear as a badge of pride.

Purple, green, and blue has to be one of my all time favourite colour combinations. There’s just something about the way they play off each other that makes my brain so happy! I don’t remember where I wore this to, but I do remember feeling amazing in it! Almost every part of this outfit is second hand or handmade - I crocheted the scarf and the vest; and the dress, coat, and bag are all second hand. You can’t quite see them but I’m wearing little spotty blue socks with a scalloped edge over the top of my tights, and a pair of beautiful stripey handwarmers my mother in law made for me. The sixties style hair clip from Inky and Mole was the perfect finishing touch. The sheer maximalist madness of this one makes my heart sing - I’m already looking forward to wearing it again next winter!

I had to include this outfit - it’s the first one of mine that went even remotely viral online. I had only just started filming little outfit videos, as before I’d only been posting photographs. My mum bought me this coat for Christmas and I was (and still am) thrilled - it really reminds me of Elmer the Elephant and gives me a lot of childlike joy! I immediately wanted to style it, and decided to pick the yellow out of the coat as a focal point. But once I put on the yellow dress and coat, with the tights and boots, I knew the outfit needed something extra. So I crocheted the scarf to match the coat, using scraps of wool leftover from other projects. The wools I used weren’t even the same thickness, which is breaking all the rules of crochet, but I actually think it adds to the whimsy of the finished scarf and outfit. I happened to pop into a local shop the same day, and found a hat that matched perfectly and was knitted by a local artist. The yellow walking stick was the finishing touch. I knew it was a good outfit because, as I was filming the outfit video, someone walked past, looked at me slightly alarmed, and said “you look very… bright!” Perplexed responses from people around you are how you know it’s a good one!

I posted the video on Tiktok and it blew up, getting about 218k views and lots of very kind comments. It helped me to realise people are actually interested in seeing my outfits and appreciate them as an art form - before, I was just posting my outfits for fun and because it’s a hobby I would be doing either way. It was partly this video that made me start a Substack, as I wanted to start writing about my creative process and how I put my outfits together, as well as being able to speak more in depth about disability and the ways in which it contributes to and affects my life. I’m really grateful to this outfit - it’s brought me a lot.

3: I have long been a believer in dopamine dressing, and when I’m writing fiction I tend to find myself embodying the world of my characters in some way that is reflected in my appearance, either in what I wear, how I choose to adorn myself or sometimes even with symbolic references in ink on my skin. I’ve read some of your reflections on dopamine dressing, could you tell me a bit about what dopamine dressing means to you?

That’s so interesting and I love to hear that you’re also using clothing to connect with your characters!

For me, assembling my colourful outfits is an act of self expression that gives me huge fulfilment personally, but it also has a broader political significance. I’m reclaiming ownership of my body from the ideas of the medical model, which says that a disabled body is tragic and to be “fixed,” and should only be seen in sterile medical settings where everything is white and grey. By dressing the way I do, I show that I am a vibrant and joyful human being, with a life worth living.

I’m showing that I don’t view my body as something “broken” to be ashamed of, but as something that is worth dressing lavishly, intentionally wrapping it in lush fabrics and hanging sparkling ornaments from it. And to turn a disabled body from one that people see and say “I could never live like that”, to one that people say “Wow, I wish I looked like that!”, is a feat I’m greatly invested in! Dressing joyfully can be freeing for everyone, but for disabled people in a political climate that wants us downtrodden or dead, it’s downright revolutionary to show up embodying joy.

4: Beyond your personal style, where else do you find creativity in your daily life?

I think it’s woven so much into my everyday life that I struggle to even identify it! Our house is a constant ongoing project for me - finding ways to inject personality into a rental property is a good challenge! I also crochet, embroider, write bits and pieces, and I love taking photographs. I have thousands and thousands of photographs that I’ve taken of beautiful little moments, when the light hits just right, or the colours in a scene made me feel something. I rarely share them but I love to take them anyway, for me. I used to be a folk musician - I released two albums and gigged pretty constantly for the best part of 10 years. I stopped for a variety of reasons but I still sing in the house and listen to a lot of music. And I love film and TV. As someone who has to spend a lot of time sitting/lying down for health reasons, it’s become a big part of my creative life. I think there’s this idea that to be doing something creative we have to be making something, but I find that consuming other people’s stories is essential for me to be creative - it prompts me to think about the world in new ways and about other people’s perspectives and experiences, and that often sparks new ideas that I use in my own creative pursuits.

5: When you’re feeling stuck or blocked in a creative pursuit, what helps you?

I always have so many creative projects on the go at once, and part of the reason is I find I work better when I can swap between things.

I find there are a few reasons I might be stuck on something. One is that I’m too physically or intellectually tired to keep going, so I need to physically rest, or switch to something which uses different personal resources. So, say I get stuck writing a personal essay, I often pick up some crochet or embroidery because it’s less cerebral than writing and involves working with my hands. The change of creative focus helps to free me up creatively again so I can go back to what I was stuck on. If switching doesn’t work, it’s likely that I’m tapped out of all my personal resources - chronic fatigue doesn’t care about your creative projects and won’t budge just because you want to finish something! So, it’s time to rest. Bed rest with the cat and minimal screentime is the thing I find works best.

But sometimes, I’m not tapped out of resources, I’m just bored! I’m someone who gets a bit sad, listless, and bored quickly doing one thing, and I don’t always have the resilience to keep doing something I’m finding dull or difficult. I spent a long time feeling guilty for this and thinking I should just “push through it”, but bullying myself in that way never yielded results (a good life lesson in general, especially for disabled and neurodivergent people). The actual answer in these cases is that I should spend time with people. Social rest is very effective for me; I find that it fills my cup back up. Spending time with my friends, community members, family, or even strangers gets me excited about life when I’m feeling listless. And that excitement gives me the energy and drive to have another crack at whatever it was I was finding frustrating or boring.

Honestly, patience, rest, and self compassion are the key - I really try not to push myself too hard to make anything to a specific schedule or when it’s not coming naturally for me. I’m in the privileged position of not creating for income, which means I have the luxury of being able to give myself a huge amount of self-compassion. This keeps creativity sustainable and enjoyable for me, because I can forgive myself when I don’t finish a project. As soon as you forgive yourself for a project unfinished or gone badly, you’re free to pick up another one. A lot of people get stuck or blocked creatively for years because they can’t get past one specific idea. I allow myself to say “OK, I don’t want to finish that project - I had fun doing what I did, I still learned things from the process, but now it’s time to move on.” This frees me up to start something new. I finish what I finish and enjoy the results!

6: What does creativity give you?

For me, creativity is a way of connecting to my core self, because my creative drive has always been consistent throughout my life, from when I was very little. I remember spending hours as a child making a bird puppet out of paper, hand-colouring the whole thing, in lieu of having coloured paper to work with. I cut out little holes in the paper to give it texture, and attached strings and sticks at the top so it was functional. Whatever’s been happening in my life, I’ve always been someone who wants to make things - it really brings me back to myself. I find it comforting, grounding, and such a source of satisfaction. I also get a feeling of empowerment from being able to make things for myself - often, I’ll have a clear image in my head of an item I’d like and it either doesn’t exist to buy or I could only buy it from huge companies that are destroying the planet and exploiting people. In those circumstances, it feels really good to know I can make the thing myself! I think creativity also makes me feel competent, because I’m good at it. It’s nice to feel good at something, especially in the context of me spending so much of my time pushing through to do things necessary to my survival that I’m not naturally gifted at, and disabled people being made to feel so burdensome for our care needs. Being self-sufficient through creativity is a gift.

Sharing the things I create facilitates connections with other people too, which I really value. A wonderful example of this creative community happened this week - Michelle Roetman sent me a pair of trousers she’d handmade, I styled them in an outfit and posted a video of me wearing them. Yesterday, I got a notification from Sophie McPike that she’d sketched me wearing that outfit in her sketchbook. I’ve loved Sophie’s work for a long time so it’s really special to be included in it! This kind of chain of creativity makes me so happy; creatives inspiring other creatives.

7: I’ve read that you’re about to embark on a project which involves hand embroidering wild flowers on your wedding dress with your bridesmaids?! I can’t tell you what joy that brings me on so many levels. Can you tell me a bit about how that idea came about, and how it’s going?

Absolutely! It came about because I’ve always dreamed of having a wedding dress with colourful wildflowers covering it. Although there are more alternative options for wedding dresses available now than ever before, including dresses with wildflowers all over, when I started actually looking at the options, none of them were quite right for me. Either the colour palette of the flowers was wrong (a lot of pastels, which isn’t my style), or the material of the dress wasn’t to my taste, or I thought the fit of the dress wouldn’t work for my body. So, after talking to my friends about it, I decided I would find the right dress in terms of its fit and style, and then embroider the flowers myself, giving me control over all elements of it and ensuring that it will feel like “me.”

Once I’d decided on this route, lots of opportunities opened up before me. Because I’m deciding every detail, I can pull from mine and Josh’s lives and personal histories, as well as from folklore - I grew up surrounded by folk music and stories and culture, and it’s still really important to me to have that represented, even though I’m not a folk musician professionally anymore. Doing it this way means I can choose flowers with personal significance as well as with folklore in mind - bridewort will almost definitely make an appearance, as will flowers from the fens where I grew up and from by the sea where Josh did. Josh has put an appeal in for foxgloves to be included as they’re his favourite, but I’m trying to decide whether to allow them - they’re traditionally the fairies’ flower and are poisonous, so you do not mess with them or claim them for yourself! But we’ll see. Maybe the fairies will let us have this one.

I’ve never embroidered anything before, except one cap for Josh that he wears a lot. But I’ve always loved to pick up different crafts and throw myself into them, and I have a slightly outlandish amount of self belief that I’ll be able to make something work if the pressure and stakes are high enough! (See also the papier mache mushroom hat I made in the five days before a fancy dress party, with no previous experience making anything even remotely similar, or any back up costume options). What could be more high stakes than the most meaningful and photographed piece of clothing I’ll ever wear? Hopefully that means it’ll also be the best off-the-cuff piece of crafting I’ve ever done!

The other gorgeous thing about it is that my friends and family are going to contribute - my mum, my bridesmaids, some other friends, are all going to do parts of the embroidery. Traditionally, the lace for wedding dresses was made by groups of women sitting for hours, working together and doing it by hand. There’s something magical in going back to that, and in it being a communal activity - sitting together while we make it will bring so much joy before the actual wedding day. And I think the feeling of wearing my community on my body on my wedding day will be indescribably beautiful. I really can’t wait!

So far, I’ve listed out the wildflowers I want to include, have found photographs of other people’s embroidery of some of those flowers to use as a basis, and I’ve got some materials from my local fabric shop. The dress has been shortened to my height so I can practice on the offcuts, which I’ve started doing in the last couple of weeks. I’ve practised a forget-me-not and a cowslip, as they’re fairly straight forward. I’m making a blog series tracking my progress so updates will be coming soon!

Tilly, your joy and creative expression is absolutely contagious. Thank you for joining us on The Joy Rise. I’m off to explore my wardrobe with fresh eyes.

Dear reader, thanks as ever for supporting my work.

With a light left on,

Subscribe now