The Smoking Area
Where we say the things we are not supposed to say, out loud.
That moment you step outside a suffocating club. You walk past the bouncer and the man with questionably dilated pupils explaining crypto to a woman who did not, at any point, ask for that information, into the cold air of the smoking area. There, in the first real conversation of the night, a stranger becomes your best friend for life in approximately ninety seconds.
That is what this is.
We are all just collectively sharing a cigarette outside a party that’s too loud, too hot, and full of questionable characters.
This is where we gather. The it really is that deepers. The feelers. The writers, the founders, the builders, the thinkers, the storytellers, the creators, the otherwise unclassifiable dissenters who have been trying, for months or years, to wedge their best thinking into the content pillars, the brand voice guidelines, the fourteen-slide carousel with the CTA at the bottom, only to find that whatever comes out the other end is, spiritually speaking, a warm smoothie. Technically drinkable. Not the outcome anyone actually wanted.
Why “The Smoking Area”?
Because, while I haven’t lit a cigarette since probably 2011 on a smoking terrace somewhere in Ibiza, there is something about that space that I miss. The loud party that doesn’t stop, the sweat dripping off the walls, the options for connection being: dance or shout, and deciding to go and sit outside in the freezing cold so you can chat instead.
I was always the one disappearing at the club. My mates knew they’d eventually find me in the smoking area, chatting to my new best friend, sharing life stories and dreams and goals and avoiding the chaos inside.
If that’s not a metaphor for how I live and work and create, now, still to this day, I don’t know what is.
I’m Lois — I’m a writer. It took me far too many years to own that and it’s something I wear proudly now. I’m a “natural born” storyteller (that’s what my lil ol’ Irish Nana would tell you). I’m a professional disturber of The Peace. I was the joker in the class who’s report cards always read, “talks a bit too much. Her mind is always in the clouds”. I’ve built my entire life around words: writing them, teaching them, setting the little buggars free into the world and watching them change things, mostly me. And, I’ve made it a bit of a thing to help visionaries, creatives, founders and other writers find The Thing and say The Damn Thing. Through storytelling, teaching, creative community building, writing retreats (where I take clients deep into the jungle, we go whitewater rafting, hiking, writing and remembering).
I studied journalism and creative writing up to masters level, and naturally went into advertising instead. I’ve been working as a copywriter for the better part of two decades. But, I still fancy myself a poet.
My first real taste of rejection came from Queen Elizabeth II.
I’d sent her a heartfelt letter containing what I genuinely believed was groundbreaking poetry — work that would surely have her reaching for the royal telephone, summoning the editors of Britain’s finest publications.
Stop the press, she’d declare. I’ve discovered an eight-year-old literary genius.
Her Majesty’s response was terribly polite. And painfully generic. My first lesson in the gap between creative ambition and cold reality. A gap that would become very familiar territory.
I grew up working class in the north of England, where writing was what you did instead of getting a proper job. So I became an advertising executive (while writing headlines at a daily print newspaper). A digital marketer (while writing web copy, uniquely). A social media specialist (while writing for global brands). A ghostwriter (while finishing bestselling books for other people). And most recently a copywriter… which was the closest I got to owning the thing I simply always wanted to be.
A writer.
When my best friend qualified as a doctor, we flew to Costa Rica for two weeks to celebrate. I have never lived in England permanently since.
I’m writing this eleven years later from a kitchen table in a treehouse. The toucans arrive before I do. The sloths, magnificent in their indifference, have been teaching me something I keep almost understanding. The love of my life is making coffee in the next room. Our two kids are conducting what sounds like a formal diplomatic dispute with a gecko that has been man-handled into a coma.
Somewhere in all of this I built a writing business. An income from these here words. One sentence at a time. In a country whose Spanish I still speak with the confidence of someone who doesn’t realise they’re being funny.
I got a first-class degree in journalism and spent fifteen years making other people sound like themselves, which I was good at, and which cost me something I’m only now fully accounting for. This is where I write now, for me. About creativity and voice and the strange, slow work of becoming someone you actually recognise.
I run this Substack the way I run my life. Cycles and seasons. Seasons of push, seasons of rest. Seasons to say and seasons to think. I don’t use AI for any of my writing. I write eccentrically. I have been overusing the em dash for twenty years. So please don’t show up here on a witch hunt — the bouncer will simply kick you out.
At the end of every piece I share here, you’ll find a question, exercise or writing prompt designed to pull you straight from reading into writing. Because your stories aren’t something you should keep swallowing down until they’re perfect enough to tell.
Pull up a chair. Light your metaphorical cigarette.
Let’s talk about the things we’ve been too busy pretending not to notice.
