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Happy Monday!

A new episode of our Diving into Writing podcast just came out, and you can listen to it here or wherever you listen to your favourite podcasts.

On this episode of Diving into Writing, Lucinda and I talk about values and how they show up in how we plan and schedule our writing lives.

Here are some of topics we discussed:

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This blogpost was originally published as a guest post about the second volume of my 365 Days of Gratitude Journal for Long and Short Reviews.
A little disclaimer: Since this post was originally published over a year ago, I’ve made some updates to the information 😉

10 things you might not know about me

  1. I can play Tavli (Backgammon for the English speakers). I’m an absolute beginner since my partner, who’s a Cypriot, only recently started teaching me, but I do know how to play.
  2. I’ve been a vegan for many years.
  3. Before moving to Cyprus, I taught gender and postcolonial studies (and some media studies) at the University of Utrecht, the Netherlands.
  4. I’ve adopted three kittens last year. I found them when they were five weeks old and was supposed to foster them until they were old enough to be adopted, but we fell head over heels with each other. It’s my first ever failed foster.
  5. I’m an INFJ and score really high on the introvert scale. The last time I did the test, it was over 90%.
  6. I co-host one writing podcasts: Diving into Writing with Lucinda Pebre. The other writing podcast I used to co-host—Doing Diversity in Writing—no longer publishes new episodes, but I’m releasing the episodes on my own blog one by one.
  7. I have a pretty large crystal collections (over 150 the last time I counted, which was when I was moving them to Cyprus). Before the pandemic, when I travelled more often, I had the habit to find at least one crystal shop in the area I was visiting and buy whichever stone(s) spoke to me.
  8. I volunteer at a local charity that does TNR (Trap-Neuter-Return) on the sizable stray cat population (there are more cats in Cyprus than humans).
  9. I have two half-siblings I’ve never met.
  10. I quit my PhD to move to Cyprus and focus full-time on my writing, my editing, and my coaching of other writers. I left with just enough money for the first six months and it’s been four-and-a-half years now.

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Happy Monday, writers!

We might no longer be doing the Doing Diversity in Writing podcast, but that doesn’t make the episodes we produced any less relevant. If you haven’t listened to the three seasons we put out yet, here’s your chance.

The full show notes and list of resources mentioned in the episode I’m sharing today can be found below.


In this episode of Doing Diversity in Writing, we discuss some of the fears and frustrations that might come up when writing diverse characters.

Here are some of the common fears and frustrations that came up:

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This blogpost was originally published as a guest post about the second volume of my 365 Days of Gratitude Journal for Sherry from fundinmental.

My five favourite gratitude quotes

With two gratitude journals out there, I’ve gathered a fair collection of gratitude quotes. In today’s post, I’ll be sharing some of my favourite quotes from both the first and second volume of the 365 Days of Gratitude Journal.

If any of the quotes speak to you and you wish to print them out, I created a high-quality PDF you can find here.

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Happy Monday!

We might no longer be doing the Doing Diversity in Writing podcast, but that doesn’t make the episodes we produced any less relevant. If you haven’t listened to the three seasons we put out yet, here’s your chance.

You can find the Doing Diversity in Writing podcast here or wherever you listen to your favourite podcasts. The full show notes and list of resources mentioned in this episode can be found here.


In this episode of Doing Diversity in Writing, we explained why it is so important to have a conversation about diversity and representation in fiction.

Here are some of the topics that came up:

  • the fact some characters are overrepresented while others are severely underrepresented in fiction
  • positive, and less positive, examples from our childhood and adult reading
  • Mariëlle’s #ownvoices project My Voice, My Story
  • some of the reasons our literary canon is the way it is, even though things are slowly changing
  • how representing diverse characters is not just about quantity, it’s also about the quality of those representations