This is just the beginning

Moments from my wild and writerly life (November 15-21)

Hi friend! If you’re new here: once or twice a month, I send a weekly dispatch from my daily life in the UK. It’s a collection of stories and things I’ve noticed—at home, in books, on my walks, in the world, and within myself. My hope is they feel reflective and calming, and inspire you to notice more in your own life. Writing them certainly helps me notice more in mine… 🕯

Sometimes I try to look for themes in my weeks and shape my dispatches around them. This feels very “on the nose,” but it’s been a big writing week for me, friend. So I thought I would bring you into my inner world, as I start working on something new. This one feels a bit more vulnerable than usual, because sharing even a snippet of a new creative idea always leaves me feeling vulnerable. But I’m trying to let people in more and trust it will be ok. Thank you for reading, and for supporting my writing. ❤️

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Saturday, November 15, 2025

It’s 11am and I’ve found myself in a new-to-me park. I’m only in the area for a short time, and whenever I go anywhere new, my favourite thing to do is walk around and see what I might discover. As it turns out, there is a lot to discover here. This park contains a children’s play area, a skate park, tennis courts, many walking paths, a huge green field that could host at least a few team sports, a cafe, a duck pond, and even a freaking outdoor aviary (where, of course, I chatted with all the birds! And they flew to follow me around a bit and whistled back, woo woo!).

“I feel like I’m in London,” I tell a friend in an audio message. This is the same friend I sent a 20-minute long audio message to yesterday, 10 minutes of which were to share my next non-fiction book idea. This is the idea I said I wanted to work on at the start of the year. The idea I pitched to my agent (and got a yes!) in summer 2024. The idea I felt passionate about, but was missing one key detail of: the structure. The format. The how in how I would piece it together. It’s taken all year for me to figure out what the structure of this book will be. Now that I know it, I can’t stop thinking about it.

I just want to go home and write.

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Monday, November 17, 2025

It’s Monday morning, the start of a new writing week, and I feel excited in a way I haven’t since… well, probably since 2019. That’s the last time I worked on a non-fiction book proposal that I felt confident about.

I sit at my laptop and open two documents: a PDF of my agent’s book proposal template + a blank Word doc. I do not re-open the proposals from my first two books, or the one I was working on earlier this year. I might later, to make sure I haven’t forgotten anything… but right now, I want to start fresh: with the ideas and new structure I can’t stop thinking about.

So I open a blank doc and I type these words:

TITLE

Subtitle

by Cait Flanders

Only I don’t write TITLE and Subtitle. I write the words I know fit in these spaces. The ones I dream of seeing on a book cover. The ones I hope you might read and connect with one day.

On the next page, I create a blank table of contents (headers with no page numbers) for the proposal itself.

[Insert → page break.]

And then I type the header for the first section: Overview. The Overview in a non-fiction book proposal gives potential editors a high-level view of what your book will be about. It answers a lot of the who-what-when-where-why questions, including: why now? And why are you the best person to write it? It also answers the question of how you’re going to piece this book together. Back to that whole structure thing. I finally know the answer to this question, so that’s where I begin—and it feels so good, friend.

I know how easy it is to make a mess of these documents. And I know that will happen eventually, and that it’s all part of the writing process. But for today, I just want to focus on filling in the blanks in the Overview. When I feel done for the day, I send an audio message to a friend and tell her what I’ve come up with so far. And I still feel excited.

Day 1 update: 777 words + a smile on my face

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Tuesday, November 18, 2025

I’m home alone for the day, so I decide to work at Tall Man’s desk—which is actually my dining room table from The Lighthouse. I get my laptop, stand, keyboard, etc. all setup. I turn on the LL Bean Yule Dog video, for some cozy background noise. And then I open my proposal and dive back into the Overview. I add more notes, and turn some of those notes into proper paragraphs, but I can’t find my same focus today. I’m acutely aware of the fact that one of the stories I will be including in this book happened exactly 6 years ago today. It was an experience that changed me in an instant. It feels ok to reflect on it all now, and I am grateful for that—but still, it’s top of mind. And the timing of finally feeling able to write about this experience today—exactly 6 years later—feels impossible to ignore.

After a couple hours, I close my proposal and open another blank doc to get some of these reflections out of me. Moments in the aftermath I’d forgotten about. What I said when I told my agent and what she did for me after. How I showed up for myself, right after, hours after, days after. Things that are only part of my life today, because of all I learned and healed in therapy. How special my relationship with TM is, and really, how special all my relationships are now… I look at this new doc and think: some of this is likely going to end up in the book. But I don’t need to write about it today. I just read back what I wrote and think: I’m so grateful for where I am right now.

Day 2 update: 1,333 words + feeling good