Sunday Email - Reboot
Welcome to my Substack!
Hello my friends!
Thank you so much for subscribing to my Substack. Some of you are brand new subscribers, some of you are old friends from my Sunday newsletter. If you’re a Sunday regular, hello again – I’ve missed you.
If you’re new here, hello, welcome!
I’m Rosie, I’m a writer based in East London, author of two novels and – so far – half a draft of one non-fiction book.
I always wanted to be a writer. When I was little I followed my mum around bookshops, picking books off the shelves and asking if this author or that was good enough to make a living from writing. I can’t remember what exactly she said, but I do know that if the answer was no, then I didn’t listen.
I made my first attempt at getting published when I was eight or nine. I wrote a book called Sunset and Susie about a girl who, unable to sleep, sees a spaceship every night at the foot of her bed. One night, she goes up in the spaceship and sees that she isn’t the only person who can’t sleep, that there are people awake all over the world, and that she doesn’t need to worry about not being able to sleep.
My granny drew illustrations for the book and my mum helped me to send it to a publisher. An editor replied to say that they liked the book, but their list was very full, and that the ending – it was all a dream – was a little too clichéd. She returned the original manuscript along with my granny’s drawings. But, she said, keep on writing. You’ll be famous one day.
I went to Cambridge to study English Literature and I started writing my first novel, What Red Was, in 2016, a couple of years after graduating. I was suffering from post-traumatic stress disorder at the time, and writing was one of the things that really made me feel better. It helped me to put a name to my emotions and it helped me to become the storyteller, rather than a person who was in danger of become lost in their own story.
The act of writing helped me to understand my experiences, and the novel, when it was published by Harvill Secker in 2019, became a way for me to reach other people who had been through the same things I had. I started working on book two, a novel — The Orange Room — since not long after What Red Was was published, and it’s coming out with Harvill Secker in July. Book three is in the works, and I can’t say for sure whether it will have a colour in the title.
This is why I write. Stories, and words, are shortcuts. They close distances when there are gulfs between us. Stories ask us to put ourselves in the shoes of people whose life experience we’ve never had, will never have, and find recognition there. I started this newsletter for the same reason I write books. I wanted to connect to people. Sundays have always felt a little shapeless and lonely to me, and every Sunday sitting down to put words to my thoughts and send them out to people who want to hear them, or might need them, is one of my favourite parts of the week.
It helps me to feel connected, and I like to write about whatever has touched me, inspired me, or moved me on any given week. I’ll be writing about books, mental health, creativity, and I’ll tell you a bit more about my writing process and what helps me to think expansively and compassionately and curiously about the world and my place in it. I look forward to writing to you.
Love, Rosie xxx