#1 August is like the Sunday of summer
school holidays, book edits + getting photographed
How to Build a Life is a newsletter for people bang in the thick of life’s mess and mayhem, who are still trying to find the magic. It’s written by me, Laura Jane Williams, author of 12 (!) books. I’m almost 40, a solo parent by choice, decorate my house like a tart’s boudoir, and lift very heavy weights. Those four things are my entire personality.
My latest rom-com is Enemies to Lovers, and I am the author of teen series Taylor Blake is a Legend too.
Looking backwards
I have been sick all summer. My kid got taken to Legoland the day school broke up, and came home with a new breed of germs that floored me. I painted my kitchen whilst he was gone, the whole thing done in 48 hours. I thought that might have been the thing to end me - ceilings are hard! Even with my muscles! But no. The shakes, the shivers, the temperature, the chest pains, the cough, the reoccurrence of all of those things 4 weeks later… what choice, after all that, does a mama have, besides accepting the invitation to slow down?
Lol, jk, just kidding. Single mothers can’t slow down.
I got photographed by the Daily Mail last week. It should be in the paper next Thursday, but they keep pushing the story which doesn’t offend me AT ALL. I can’t wait to show you the behind the scenes of what it’s like to have the Daily Mail read your Substack and want to talk to you about it… and then photograph you for it… and then put you in hair and make-up and send clothes because you need to look a certain way…
Honestly guys, it was wild. WILD. And also kind of hilarious? My kid took it in his stride, mummy going in the paper, but then that night he was watching Love is Blind UK with me (don’t ask.) and my friend Phoebe popped up, as one of the contestant’s friends. ‘I know her!’ I squealed at the TV, quite pleased, for once, that we’ve gone fully Wild Wild West in this house and summer break means sometimes watching reality TV at 9.30pm with a witness to my delight. ‘Your friend is on the TV?’ my kid exclaimed. ‘We know everyone famous!
I had a book out this month! Enemies to Lovers (currently 99p on Kindle) is about Flo Greenberg - highly strung, over-achiever, and desperate for a relaxing Greek holiday with her family - and Jamie Kramer, her brother's best friend. He’s a pain in the arse. And somehow on Flo’s relaxing Greek holiday too. With two surprise weeks of sharing meals, boat trips and sun-loungers, Flo must endure the company of this irksomely chiselled Lothario. But after what happened last year, she’s determined not to let him get the better of her. In fact, spending time with the enemy will be the perfect cure for Flo's all-consuming anger towards Jamie, right? (Spoiler alert: wrong.)
I just had to look up the blurb on Amazon to put it here, and found this review, which I’ve never seen before. How nice, to stumble upon a lovely thing! My Weekly apparently said: ‘There are moments of high humour and deep emotion. There are twists and turns in the story. There's fizzing sexual attraction. But the real success of Enemies To Lovers is the sensitive understanding of real people that underpins the action.' That’s a really kind review! In fact, several readers have reached out to say that Flo’s anxiety in the book is very relateable and fairly portrayed. That’s been cool to hear. You can be the main character in your own life and still have a breakdown, you know? You still get to be the hero.
In more work news… omggggg it’s been a busy one. I think I’m going to do a life-in-the-day-of piece, or a day-in-the-life-of, because it’s not until you write it all down you realise how much you do, is it? Like hello, superwoman called and she’d like her cape back.
I say I’m tired, and maybe that’s because in addition to the big old How to Build a Life launch on August 1st (which, back on July 1st, wasn’t even a glint in my eye. It just came to me one day and I thought, YOLO!), and both the UK and USA release of ENEMIES, I’ve also done my last round of creative edits for my next teen book, TAYLOR BLAKE SEIZES THE DAY.
When you write a book, you write a first draft and then send it back and forth with your editor doing big structural changes and gradually getting more granular on a sentence and semantic level with line edits. That can be four, five, six rounds of edits. After that, it gets passed to somebody else for the copy-edit (fresh eyes, lots of “a minute ago they had blue eyes but here you say green??” observations) and then proofreading. You don’t make creative changes here, just tidy the thing up.
No sooner had I sent TAYLOR BLAKE back than I got my copy-edits for my next rom-com LOVE AT FIRST SIGHT from my adult publisher. In between working on a super secret project only my agent knows about (*insert eyes-on-stalks emoji here*), it’s been pretty continuously vibrant in this house. But, by mid-September it will all be off my desk, projects for 2025 locked in, and I’ll start to plan 2026… You know. If I have the energy. Do you think the 3am finishes I’ve been doing to get all this done might be the reason for the ongoing illnesses? Wait. Don’t answer that. Also: busyness isn’t a badge of honour. It is, I think, sometimes just stupid.
Looking forwards
I like to call September “C*nty September”, because back-to-school is ROUGH. It’s like breaking in a horse all over again, not just for the kid, but for me as well. This week we’re going to bed fifteen minutes earlier every night so that by next week we’re back to normal, non-Netflix-watching-when-it-is-already-dark-out bedtimes. T-shirts will be ironed, shoes bought, hair cut. Probably. But if I don’t do those things before the official start date back, they will definitely be done at some point in September. No rush. Nobody ever died from wearing a crumpled top or having hair so long it’s in their eyes.
(Wait, shit. Did they die from those things?)
As promised, I have it on my list to cover how I budget in a post soon, and will probably break this up into personally, and how I run my business? If you want? I’m lining up people I admire to interview about how they build a life, as an occasional series on here, mostly because this newsletter is an excellent excuse to be nosey about how other people do things. Anyone you think I should approach? Again, hit up the comments please! I’ve got some wellbeing content brewing in my head, as well as some currently-still-baking thoughts on single parenthood by choice, and adoption. I just want to give myself time to write about adoption really clearly, because it is important, and people should know about it. I like talking about it! But I gotta do it right.
Anything else you’d like me to put on the docket? Tell me!
Finally, some things I’d like to put in place for September include getting back to my manifestation practice. I have the big blue manifestation book by Vex King and Kaushal, and it was that book that had me identify what I wanted within the next six months. Thing is, after one month it all started coming to fruition so I let the practice slide. Fool! What else could I manifest if I kept it up?!
Also in that book, it asked me what I do for myself each day, each week, and each month. The answer is mostly (and I’ll bet you can guess this is coming) nothing? I don’t really do anything mindfully for myself? I can convince myself the gym is for me but I don’t think that should really count. Anyway, that’s my top thing for the last quarter of the year: scheduling in daily, weekly and monthly “me time”. If it isn’t in the diary it won’t happen, another thing comes up, there’s a piece of last minute press or a cupboard to tidy or a bum to wipe. So, if you see me here next month and I haven’t reflected on having done this, please do come for me. I respond well to the critical parent routine. My therapist friend pointed it out.
As ever, thank you for being here pals. Oh! And as well as what you’d like more of here, do let me know what you’ll be doing for yourself once a day, week, and month. I’d love to keep you accountable for a bit of self-care. Community! I’ve heard it really works!!
Until next time,
Laura x
I laughed way too hard at "Nobody ever died from wearing a crumpled top or having hair so long it’s in their eyes." only because I've taken to picking up my son's crumpled school shirts from the floor one minute before we head out the door, smell it, and if it doesn't smell terrible, throw it on him and call it good.
I know you’ve lived abroad before and I was wondering if you’d consider moving & living abroad with your son? And also it’s something I’ve always liked the idea of, would you recommend it? 💛 thank you for the perfect holiday read, I loved reading about Flo and her dysfunctional-functional family, hard relate to that!