Here we are, in the final days of 2024, which. WTF, man. The year’s been a rollercoaster, both personally and collectively, and I feel like it passed me in no time at all.

I know I’m not alone in the sense of perpetually not doing enough, because… well, capitalism, innit? The machine says more, more, more, always. Do more, make more, earn more, spend more.

I’ve written before about embracing imperfection and disavowing fear, and those have continued to be themes in 2024. My word of the year was ‘permission’. As in, giving myself unconditional permission. To say and do things. To not do things. To follow my weirdest creative impulses and the ideas with the most energy and excitement, even when they’re complicated, or not commercial, or not what other people want and expect. To speak up when I’m hurt. To prioritise pleasure and rest. To not sacrifice myself for other people’s comfort and convenience. To take action on the things that matter to me. To be a mess and make mistakes.

And… it’s a deffo a thing I need to keep exploring, but I’m proud of this year’s experiments with it. There were some significant wins: when I applied for the Queer Amusements residency and the Northern Writers Award, I made a conscious choice to be as me as possible; I spoke as honestly as possible when describing myself and my work, and tried not to hide, or apologise, or use words that don’t feel like mine. So getting made writer-in-residence and being given the Northern Writers Award for Fiction were affirming moments that gave me the momentum and reassurance to keep that practice up.

Publishing Lost + Found was another part of that: I knew no publisher would touch a collection like it (it’s not commercial to publish short fiction going back a decade from a writer no-one’s heard of, even less so when it’s accompanied by non-fiction reflections way too confessional for most publishers to be comfortable with), but I don’t need gatekeepers’ permission to share my work, so I put it out myself.

I left Substack earlier this year when I realised its on-platform politics and changes were becoming distracting and distorting my trust in my process, and started sharing these letters with you more directly instead. Less people stumble on me by accident now, but I feel much more able to share in a truthful way, and that’s worth more than any bump in subscriber numbers.

Being writer-in-residence at Queer Amusements gave me a solid permission slip to research, dream and develop new material, and to experiment with bringing in sound and guest collaborators to my performance at the end of the festival, and I’m still incredibly grateful to the team who gave me so much encouragement and support.

I started this year working on a project that involved a sacrificial ceremonial burning of a giant wooden anteater (seems somehow on-brand tbh), and I’m ending it with a luxurious big break from client work to focus on writing. I feel very rusty being back in fiction writing world, but I’m trying hard to keep giving myself permission to write as boldly and candidly as I can.