The Hyphen by Emma Gannon

Hello! The Hyphen is a newsletter funded solely by its readers—these round-ups take hours and hours to compile! Thank you for keeping the lights on! If you enjoy reading it, why not upgrade to become a paid subscriber, and you can access everything behind the paywalls and comment sections? Greetings from New York. I can’t share too much yet but I’m here for a research and writing trip. It’s been such a fun week of solitude. I truly never get lonely in New York.

Editor’s Note: This weekend I spoke about my new book at Latitude Festival and stayed at a tranquil hideaway b&b Five Acre Barn in Suffolk, twenty-five minutes drive to the festival. We drove from London and stopped off in Aldeburgh and had a fish pie at The Lighthouse. We checked into the b&b, and enjoyed the little garden out the back of our room, filled with a wild cacophony of sounds, and spotted a grass snake.

very happy with my new @parisreview hat from vinted Hi all, soooo I’m looking to write some upcoming essays centred around people’s questions, and I’d love to know if you have any! I’d love to directly answer prompts inspired by you. What would you ask me if we met for a coffee? Maybe it’s about writing, traditional or self-publishing, creativity, money, memoir, Substack, lifestyle, travel, mental health — really ask me anything. The nosier the better tbh….

For a while now, I’ve been privately questioning the role of the ‘author’ vs the life of a ‘writer’. ~Writer: in their own private corner, writing! ~Author: out in the world, selling! I inhabit both roles, as one must in any creative career—but I feel, especially as I get older, a much closer kinship with the writer side. I find the Public Author-facing role increasingly itchy and uncomfortable.

Hello! The Hyphen is a newsletter funded solely by its readers—these round-ups take hours and hours to compile! Thank you for keeping the lights on! If you enjoy reading it, why not upgrade to become a paid subscriber, and you can access everything behind the paywalls and comment sections? Thank you all so much for your lovely comments on this post. As mentioned, I’m taking a little break over August, and this will be the last Sunday Scroll for a wee while.

In 2022, which feels so long ago now, I was in a total career crisis. The traditional publishing model was not working out for me at all. I was writing books prolifically, and they were selling—not millions, but enough to know there was an audience, and yet: I could not make ends meet from writing. The maths did not math. The advances did not stretch and I rarely received my royalty statements on time. So many elements of the industry were wearing me down.

“How do you find the time to write?” is a question I get asked a lot. I have to admit, I really don’t like being asked it. I didn’t like being asked it in my early twenties, and I don’t like that I’m still asked it. I’m bored of being asked it, fifteen years later. Nowadays it also just simply baffles me. As my friend Leyla said: “What a funny thing to ask someone whose living it is to write.” My job is to write, so I find the time to do it. Like any other job.

A friend texted the WhatsApp group, saying “Mercury is in Retrograde.” “AH,” I replied and checked online to confirm it. “That makes sense. OF COURSE it is.” A couple of days ago I landed in Porto, where I’d be staying for two nights: part work, part pleasure. I’d been invited to do a bookshop event at Rosebud, the city’s only English-language bookstore, alongside my dear friend Abigail Bergstrom.

Hello! The Hyphen is a newsletter funded solely by its readers—these round-ups take hours and hours to compile! Thank you for keeping the lights on! If you enjoy reading it, why not upgrade to become a paid subscriber, and you can access everything behind the paywalls and comment sections? I launched my new book, A Creative Compass this week—my first book on creativity, and I’m so proud of it. I’ve always known I wanted to write in detail about living a life full of devotional joyful creativity.

I feel slightly bad admitting this, but it takes a lot to impress me these days with a hotel room. I am so picky about the plumpness of pillows, and bedding softness, and whether there is enough complimentary water in the room. I remember years ago when I was reviewing a suite at Rosewood London during my time at Condé Nast (often dubbed London’s ‘6 star’ hotel) and I thought: oh dear, now no hotel room will ever be the same again. Nothing can really compete with this.