Every party is actually two parties.
There’s the one inside, with the DJ everyone wanted to see, and the posture of who you’re supposed to be, everyone wearing the version of themselves they packed just incase. And then there’s the one out by the bins. The one that carries the liminal moments when we step away from the awkward and uncomfortable dance of social performance and find ourselves in the raw, crisp, midnight air of honesty.
Neither there, nor here. Not home, but not quite away, either. Not at the party, but almost.
When the music’s roar fades behind a closing door, the pretence falls away, the chill nips at your skin, and someone wafts a box of Marlboro under your nose, as a stranger taps you on the shoulder and asks you for a light. You lean over to light theirs before returning the favour to yourself, and then, inside four minutes, they’re telling you about the divorce. People who don’t even smoke stand about in borrowed jackets, ignoring their drinks, and their friends, finally saying the one true thing they’ve been carrying about all night.
The best conversations of my life have happened next to a wheelie bin, outside a bang average party, with someone whose name I never caught.
This is that space.
The internet, if you haven’t noticed, is the biggest, and arguably shittest, party ever thrown. The DJ doesn’t know if he’s here to play reggae or techno, someone’s in the corner arguing with their ex, and the photo on the invitation, it turns out, was entirely manufactured by AI.
The Smoking Area is the fire door.
Out here we deal in everything that would die on the feed: opinions you can’t monetise, that one paragraph you cut for being a bit much, whatever you wrote and deleted and rewrote and finally posted the shittiest version of, and someone still misunderstood you anyway. And the theory you’d only ever say after two drinks, to exactly one person. Especially that, actually. Nothing out here has to wear the little suit. You can kick your heels off and let your feet rest for a minute.
This space is for the too-muchers, the weirdos, the back-door boogiers, the ones with loud opinions about things that absolutely do not matter, the ones who never went home before dawn, the ones who can hold a dinner table hostage with their laugh, and go home to obsess over the one random thing they said. The ones whose Notes apps have seen some shit and drafts folders read like confiscated diaries.
The air out here is technically worse, but somehow it’s the only place you can finally breathe.
Why “The Smoking Area”?
Because, while I haven’t lit a cigarette since probably 2011, there is something about that space that I miss. The loud, untz-untz-untz repetitive music, 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 always knew they’d find me in the smoking area, chatting to my new best friend, sharing life stories and dreams and goals and avoiding the chaos inside. And if that’s not a metaphor for how I live and work, now, still to this day, I don’t know what is.
What you’ll find here:
The same things you’d find in any good smoking area: conversations that start with commas and end with mortality. Essays on writing, creativity, business and staying a person on the internet. My own two-drinks theory, aired completely sober: that marketing used to be an art, and I’d like it back. And a writing prompt at the end of every essay, because nobody stands out here just listening. I’ll always pass the cig to you.
What I’m committed to delivering:
For paid subscribers:
Deep-dive storytelling lessons and writing practices
The exact frameworks I use in my work as a copy + creative writer
Behind-the-scenes insights into my creative process and business
The real-time, unsanitised lessons from turning words into a livelihood
Access to my private writing library: templates, prompts, and creative practices that don’t just make you a better writer, but a better thinker
Other things I should probably charge a lot more money for
For free subscribers:
Personal essays, stories and musings on whatever feels alive right now, which is usually creativity, self-censorship, creative revolutions and other such dramatic topics (I am a Leo, after all).
I aim to write 1 x paid + 1 x free essay per week, but I work in seasons, so sometimes it’s far more frequent and sometimes it’s nothing. I don’t believe any of us should be expected to deliver at the same output, day in day out, every single day of the year. I model the kind of creative life I want to believe is possible for you, too. I’ve built a pretty successful existence from it. I refuse to play the internet’s games of “consistency”. But, when I do show up (and I do show up), I promise to make it worth it for you.
Who the hell even am I, and why on earth would I be here with you in The Smoking Area?
I suppose the answer begins with my mum.
Growing up, she had books everywhere. Piled into every available space, teetering on nightstands, stacked beside the couch, even creeping into the kitchen.
Instead of a bedside table, she had a leaning tower of books, with mugs of half-drunk tea perched precariously on top. One wrong move and cold tea would spill everywhere, which, naturally, happened often. You’d hear her from the other room: “shit, shit, shit, shit” as yet another tea tsunami flooded the bed.
She never finished just one book at a time. She liked to start three or four or five so she’d “never finish one too soon”
We didn’t have much money growing up, but we had stories. Whole worlds lying around the house. Whatever was happening in your actual life, there was always somewhere else to go. Someone else’s mind to climb inside. Some exquisitely arranged collection of words that could name the thing you hadn’t known how to say and offer you a place to escape for a while.
I think that’s where I first learned that words aren’t just a nice way to describe a life. They can alter the experience of living one.
I’ve spent the twenty or so years since, learning what language can do when we stop using it to sound correct and start using it to tell the truth and connect with others. It can make someone recognise themselves, give shape to an idea that has been nagging at them for years and help us say what polite company, professional wisdom and the internet’s endless committee of strangers would prefer we kept to ourselves.
That’s what The Smoking Area is for.
It’s the place just beyond the officially sanctioned conversation. Where people tell better stories, admit what they really think and occasionally say something they’ll still be thinking about on the way home.
That’s why I’m here. And, perhaps, why you are too.
