Creative Coffee

I first met Leyla Kazim almost ten years ago, in 2015, at a ski resort of all places. I was working for Condé Nast at the time, she was a renowned blogger, and we were invited to review a new ski company (I was writing a piece for Glamour magazine.) I’m so glad our paths crossed. Since then, we’ve stayed friends and it’s been so fun to be on this new(ish) Substack adventure together. In this chat, we discuss her Substack A Day Well Spent with Leyla Kazim and all the twists and turns of her creative career, from software engineer to award-winning food presenter and writer. I always learn a lot from Leyla: whether it’s how to do face yoga, how to avoid toxic chemicals in everyday products, or growing vegetables at home, she’s a very good egg — someone who creates a life she loves with intention and good vibes. Hope you enjoy our chat! Links:* Leyla’s Instagram page.* Leyla’s Substack* Leyla’s OG blog The Cutlery Chronicles This is a public episode. If you’d like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit thehyphen.substack.com/subscribe

Haley Nahman’s newsletter “Maybe Baby” was the first Substack I properly started reading back in 2020. Every week I loved receiving her emails that made me think, laugh and reflect. My intrigue around Substack as a platform grew in tandem. She is also the first person who I followed who turned her newsletter into a full-time writing job after leaving her media job, and the first person I saw who opted for the support of her paid subscribers during her maternity leave. I’ve been following Haley since the Man Repeller days where she wrote and edited the site for four years before 2016-2020 and it was a joy to speak to her for this Creative Coffee hour.In this episode, we discuss how Haley runs her successful newsletter, her previous experience at a small but intense media company, being authentic in your work, managing your newsletter business, the loneliness of freelance work, thinking about the reader, how to come up with ideas, the benefits of working with an editor behind-the-scenes, where she writes, and having boundaries regarding email. Hope you enjoy! Things discussed:* Haley Nahman’s Substack Maybe Baby* Haley’s Instagram @halemur* How Haley is changing up her newsletter schedule* How Haley’s paying subscribers supported paid maternity leave as part of Maybe Baby* Natalie Wynn on Patreon: “Contrapoints” * The Debrief website aims to be more than 'BuzzFeed for girls' * For people who loved Man Repeller: Leandra Medine’s venture cafeleandra.com* Man Repeller's Leandra Medine | British Vogue This is a public episode. If you’d like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit thehyphen.substack.com/subscribe

Is a good story worth something? JP Watson thinks so.A few years ago, I made a new friend in Birmingham-born writer JP Watson. He is probably most well-known for being the founder of The Pound Project which has sold thousands of books to more than 100+ countries worldwide, is known for paying authors an equal share and a former winner of The Bookseller's Futurebook Startup of the Year award. The company started with a frustration with the industry and has grown into a really incredible place that allows writers and creatives to thrive. The Pound Project is a publisher but it’s also a movement. It cares about the environment by only printing what is sold, and cares about authors getting paid. The tagline says it all: “small change, one story at a time”.In 2018, I published a book called Sabotage through The Pound Project. Back then, the money was raised via Kickstarter, and we had over 1,300 backers and raised over £10k+ to bring the book to life. It felt new, exciting and really creatively fulfilling. Following that project, I got a book deal to turn Sabotage into a slightly longer book with publisher Hodder & Stoughton.Publishing with The Pound Project, from my perspective as an author, is such a fun and joyful experience. I wrote about all the surprising joys of indie publishing here including the financial share (50:50 split), the creative control, the transparency and a whole lot more.This year, I published a new book with The Pound Project called A Year of Nothing, a short memoir split across two books chronicling my burnout year underground. We got press in The Guardian, i, ELLE, Australian TV plus tons more and sold 3,000 copies. It proved that there is a market for smaller books and we had a ton of fun doing it. ps. If you missed out on the publication of A Year of Nothing, make sure you’re following The Pound Project and The Hyphen newsletter in case it is ever re-released (which it might be!) Things discussed:* My original interview from 2018 with JP Watson on Ctrl Alt Delete podcast* Sign up to The Pound Project newsletter (and stay tuned for A Year of Nothing re-release)* Find out more about A Year of Nothing here.* My article on The Hyphen: “The surprising joys of indie publishing”. * Dolly Alderton speaking on the Amazing if podcast (celebrating the Pound Project’s Gremlins book)* A piece about “Enshittification” * How ‘F**k You Pay Me’ is empowering creatorsHope you enjoy the episode! This is a public episode. If you’d like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit thehyphen.substack.com/subscribe

I really enjoy Emily McDowell’s honest take on creative grief, career identity, life transitions and quitting. She has a brilliant podcast called Quitted that she hosted with her pal and fellow Substacker Holly Whitaker. One of my favourite episodes is titled ‘Emily McDowell quits being a human brand.' (On that note, Emily and Holly have just launched a new workshop on how to help you navigate “the deep shitty middle” of transitions. These are two women who know the score, who have been there in the thick of it, and I’m excited that they are bringing their wisdom forth in this way.)I love Emily’s views on how we can reframe quitting as a negative thing and instead embrace the bravery it takes to say goodbye to something. Quitting something can be painful but it can allow us to move forward into a new space. She recently wrote an excellent Substack post about the word ‘completion’ when it comes to quitting a job/project/thing: “in conversations about quitting, failure, and walking away, there’s a word and concept I think is underused: completion.”I also like this line she wrote: “What if, instead of a line that goes perpetually up and to the right, with the goal of reaching a future point of “success” — the point of being alive is expansion?”I don’t know about you, but the words ‘completion’ and ‘expansion’ make so much more sense to our human psyches, right? More so than arbitrary ‘success’ and ‘achievement’ and ‘climbing’? Maybe there’s an easier way to look at things. Hope you enjoy this conversation with Emily! This episode is focused on the process of melting down a career and re-building it, slowly. If you like it, please consider leaving a little review on Apple podcasts, it helps more people discover this newsletter and podcast. Thank you! Toodles! ♡It’s Nice That: creative grief and how to deal with itYou can follow Emily’s Substack here. Check out Emily’s new workshop here.Check out A Year of Nothing here. This is a public episode. If you’d like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit thehyphen.substack.com/subscribe