This is an email newsletter from Holly Ringland.

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So. Here we are. This is like the first day of school. I'm peeking around a corner to ogle at you while I shuffle my feet, awkward and fidgeting, winding up the courage to step into being seen, all the while madly hoping I'm not going to waste your time. I guess this is standard stage fright, commonly experienced before emerging - be it on an actual stage or, more humbly, clicking send on an inaugural email newsletter. Stage lights up, please. Ahem.

Welcome! Thanks so much for signing up.

This theme of making good work visible and shared has been the driving force in my creative life for the last three months, resulting in sucking up stage fright to throw back the curtains and fling my inner artist into the light of Being Seen. I have my beloved father-in-law to thank for that, which I do with my whole heart.

Getting down to the marrow of my stories is happening, thanks largely to the development of key creative practices: choosing The Artist's Way, Daring Greatly, showing my work and stealing like an artist.

These are wonderful, tumultuous, brutal, beautiful experiences.
Thank you for joining me.

1. GEOGRAPHY IS NO LONGER OUR MASTER

Glarsgew! I went to Scawtlund on a wee adventure and got blissfully lost, and gratefully found.

Squaring my shoulders before the Home Office of a foreign country, being asked what I do by someone holding my freedom of choice and fate in their hands and answering "I'm a writer" was another thing entirely.

2. THE CONTOURS OF MY SECOND HEART: WRITING LIKE A MOFO

It is an unquestionably terrifying thing, tracing the edges inside to find that second pulse and create from its centre.

I was sent the perfect, tough-love, creativity war cry:

Holly, write like a motherfucker.

3. STEALING LIKE AN ARTIST: USING MY HANDS

I remembered what it means to get my hands dirty, and remake the line between my heart and my handwriting.

4. HOLLY SOLO: FLYING ALONE WITH MY INNER ARTIST

Taking myself on artist dates - table for one, please.

5. 3 BOOKS, 3 FEATHERS, 3 WAYS TO LIE

I've never looked at vulnerability, creativity, shame, or courage the same way again.
Thank god.

6. LARGER THAN LIFE, AND TWICE AS REAL.

I have wanted to burrow away and live less, not more.
You, however, wouldn't let me get away with that.
You taught me better, as a person, and as an artist.

7. STORIES FEED OUR WILD MINDS

I knew a boy once, a long time ago, whose favourite retort was, "That's it, go off and stick your head in the clouds, live in Holly-land with all your stories." It's only taken me 17 years to find my comeback: yes thanks, I will.

8. STEALING LIKE AN ARTIST & SHOWING MY WORK

I have accepted the call to adventure:
Holly vs. Social Media, or, I will be brave enough to be seen.

1. Taking my office outside.

2. Aerogramme Studio's 35 Beautiful and Insightful Quotes on Short Stories.

Ray Bradbury's is my favourite as a tip for living life:

“Write a short story every week. It’s not possible to write 52 bad short stories in a row.”

3. Robin Black's debut novel, Life Drawing.

I reviewed this gorgeous book for the folks over at Bookmunch.

4. Joe McAdam

I bought this Scottish solo musician's CD a couple of years ago when I met him busking in the city. I've been listening to Joe on repeat lately. His cover of Dancing in the Dark still gives me goosebumps.

5. I remembered how I spent hours as a girl, when my sole reasons for creating were love, and fun.

6. Winston Chen's article on the TED blog, about the TED talk that inspired him to take a year off the grid with him family to live on a Norwegian island.
Photo: Winston Chen

7. My latest pulp crush: Flow Magazine.

Oh how I swoon over this Dutch publication, the latest English issue complete with a tear-out work book and an article on self-compassion and the transformative power of writing. Roar.

8. Boyhood.

Richard Linklater has bewitched me since I was fifteen when I coveted Dazed & Confused. Boyhood, Linklater's epic and a cinematic work of art, took me apart frame by frame, year by year, and piece by piece before putting me back together, somehow more whole. In this film Linklater and his memory-inducing method of storytelling pull on every heartstring I've got. Ellar Coltrane is exceptional. Take yourself out to the movies. See it.

9. This wonderful and ambitious art project: an attempt to draw all the buildings in New York, by James Gulliver Hancock, an illustrator originally from Australia currently based in Brooklyn, New York.

10. #ReadWomen2014

I'm half way through my year of reading the ladies, and I'm loving it. I'm keeping a round-up list to later share. Alice Hoffman's The Museum of Extraordinary Things is my latest heart-topper: my love-letter to its tale coming soon.