My name is Sheryl, and I’m a perfectionist.

I was a magazine editor, for large parts of my working life. It’s a job where content is key, ideas your currency. You only get one chance a month to impress your readers, so you want to make the best issue possible.

But once the words and pictures are on the page, it’s all about the detail. The headlines and captions, spelling and grammar, the paragraph breaks, typography and the turn arrows. It’s easy to become obsessive. And I did.

(Though the perfectionist in me wants to be honest and say you wouldn’t believe this, from my output. …

Very few people talk about the gap.

But I think it’s one of the great barriers to us making the work we were meant to make. Ira Glass, the producer of the brilliant PBS radio show This American Life, explains it best.

“Nobody tells this to people who are beginners, I wish someone told me. All of us who do creative work, we get into it because we have good taste. But there is this gap. For the first couple years you make stuff, it’s just not that good. It’s trying to be good, it has potential, but it’s not. But your taste, the thing that got…

I am talking to a writer client.

A scriptwriter, she’s had a lousy run of luck. There were projects that fell at the final hurdle. One film was given the green light, then suddenly cancelled due to the pandemic. Another idea had been continually optioned by a production company that clearly had no intention of ever making it into a TV series — but didn’t want anyone else to do it either.

She is stuck.

She’s miserable. She is spending far too much time online, comparing her stalled career with the apparent success of her peers. “I just want to write!” she says.

My reply is simple. “Then write!”

As creatives, we sometimes forget this.

We…

Money, money, money

Does even thinking about it make you cringe, feel shame or fear? As it comes to the end of the financial year, are your figures ready for your tax return? Or do you have a drawer stuffed full of receipts that you’re aiming to deal with soon — but don’t actually process until days before the deadline?

If so, you’re not alone. There is too much mystery around money matters, too much emotion that doesn’t belong there. Money is tied up with our childhoods, with power, shame and our sense of self-worth.

If you’re someone who tends to shut down…

We live in a time of rapid change and disruption.

I’m not just talking about the pandemic, here. The world of work has been changing for some time now. There’s no longer such a thing as a job for life. Soon, there may be very few full-time jobs at all. I can see a not-too-distant future when almost everyone will be freelance, and we’ll all need to be agile, adaptable and endlessly flexible to earn a living.

There is much to be said for this. We get variety, flexibility, and much more control over our lives, the work we choose to do and who we choose to work with. …

I’ve been a freelance writer for (gulp) more than 30 years now. There were many mistakes, many wrong turns along the way. Here are a few things I wish I’d known from the start of my career.

1. Save for taxes

Seriously. Like death, there’s no escaping them. Every payment that comes in, you need to put a portion of it aside for tax. (I use a separate account, so I’m less tempted to dip into it.) Otherwise you’re in deep, deep trouble when the bill comes in. And it will.

You know this, already. But it’s easy to forget. Especially when that payment…

I first met Daisy Buchanan at a literary festival.

It was the Port Elliot festival, in the grounds of a stately home in Cornwall, and this particular year, it rained and rained. We were both speaking at the festival, and were introduced, briefly, by friends.

A day later, I was in a sea of festival-goers in wellies and waterproofs, trudging up a muddy path and muttering very British apologies while trying not to poke each other with their umbrellas, when I spotted Daisy and her husband Dale, sitting at a table under a tree without any raingear on, soaked to the skin but enjoying a jug of Pimms as…

It’s snowing here on the UK coast.

It’s cold. It’s dark. And I’m tired. I haven’t been sleeping well recently, but it’s not just that. I’m weary to my very soul. I’m tired of lockdown. Tired of winter. Tired of the book I’m writing. Tired of not seeing the people I love. Just tired.

There’s nothing unique about my tiredness, of course.

We’re all feeling it. But right now it’s 8pm, I’m behind with work, and I reluctantly dragged myself back to my study to finish my weekly post here on Medium. February falls as four whole, neat weeks this year, and I’d been determined to use them well.

Then I realised that I’m not walking my talk.

I’m a coach. I help talented…