How to Evolve: Start Here

If life gives you shit, remember methane is fuel

Me in Malta when I appeared at the Malta Literature Festival in 2017.

Hi there. I’m Ros Barber.

I’m an award-winning novelist with carpentry skills, a historian with a PhD in English Literature and a BSc in biology, and a trauma therapist who used to program mainframe computers for big corporations. In my twenties, I fronted a band and had a song played on the John Peel show; in my thirties, I was the smallholding beekeeper responsible for this baby change sign.

I’m a lifelong convertible sportscar enthusiast and, for the last quarter century, a domestic abuse survivor. I am equally passionate about power tools and quantum biology. I’ve been a Senior Lecturer and a cleaner. I’ve raised four children, though they deny this. I have in-depth knowledge of 16th-century playwright and spy Christopher Marlowe, am Patron of the UK’s Marlowe Society, know rather a lot about 18th-century pirates … and used to make my own clothes.

If this combination of facts doesn’t make sense to you, welcome to the life of a neurodivergent polymath.

I’ve written this post so that if you are new to my publication (welcome!), you will have a better idea of what I do. If you’re already familiar with what I do (I know some of you have read my stuff for bloody years and I love you), I have added some entertainment and a handy index to my best pieces, which are now entirely free to read and share.

First, let’s clarify what I don’t do:

• Read your manuscript and tell you if it’s any good / give free advice about publishing. Sorry! There are loads of people who do this for money, and I used to be one of them (25 years a creative writing tutor), but now, I’m trying to write and publish as many articles and books as I can before I run out of energy and die. I’ve learnt a lot of stuff, and if I don’t start sharing more of it, I’ll have wasted the chance to make a significant difference to life on this glorious blue/green marble of ours.

• I no longer engage with people who don’t treat me (or people I care about) with respect. I block them. Life’s too short to spend time being irritated by people who aren’t important to you. So if I annoy you, too bad. Go find someone you admire.

How to Evolve isn’t for those who:

• think science knows everything there is to know

• can’t abide swearing

• think men are superior to women

If you fall into any of those categories, don’t waste your time.

So what do I do?

Every Friday (so long as I’m not side-swiped by life, e.g. unexpectedly ill, taken into police custody, or kidnapped by otters), I will drop a personal essay in your inbox. The only price is your email address. I will respect it on a par with one of those too-gorgeous notebooks writers’ friends sometimes give them; I’ll aim only to write things of lasting value. Categories include:

• Memoir that is more illuminating than me-moir. Having survived a dysfunctional childhood and an abusive first marriage, I love to demonstrate how reframes and access-all-areas insights turn a shitshow into rocket fuel.

• Recent experiences pre-chewed and fully digested into PGOs (Personal Growth Opportunities). Given how helpful and relatable this practice has proved to readers, I call this “Setting light to my life to illuminate yours”. Very few holds barred; honesty guaranteed.

• A Writer’s Life in all its glories and disappointments. Yes, from time to time, I will talk about things like my creative practice, or why I’ve had six agents, or how you can stop someone adapting your novel into a pile of dogshit.

• Human Consciousness and Evolution and why we have strong reasons to be hopeful about our future. Plus, how you can help speed up human evolution to the point that we maybe even stop starving and murdering each other.

Listen to Pilar. She says nice things about me. Maybe you’ll agree with her!

Inner Circle for Paid Subscribers

All my Friday essays are free, but I will sometimes add a little bonus for paid subscribers at the end. This is partly gratitude to those who are helping me pay my bills and partly a necessary privacy screen for the juicier stuff. Things I might paywall:

• behind-the-scenes looks at fiction-in-progress

• the comments section, if it gets unmanageable

• stuff that isn’t for the uninitiated (quantum magic, etc.)

Don’t feed the trolls was a fundamental rule of Usenet communities back in the 1990s, and it holds true to this day. So, behind closed doors is where it gets really interesting for those who like a bit of weird and wonderful. Below the paywall is also where I share transformational tools that took me from being a suicidal, single and sacked waitress (January 2000) to a dream house and decent life partner two years later (and an award-winning novel ten years after that).

Writing Challenges

Paid subscribers also get Writing Challenges. Writing Challenges are for everyone, not just writers. Language is how we structure our reality, and our ideas about ourselves. With carefully considered prompts and writing exercises, you can explore foundational stories from your life in a new light, gaining insights into your experiences and transforming yourself by reframing — and hence changing the meaning — of your personal stories.

At the end of each challenge, you’ll have a chance to send me a personal essay for publication on How to Evolve. If you have your own Substack, we can cross-post it, which will give you a boost. I will pick the essay(s) that I feel will resonate most with this community.

Plus Find Your Voice

As a paid subscriber, you also get access to the Finding Your Voice mini-course. Saying the stuff you haven’t dared to say is the first step. Learning to speak up, speak out, or speak your truth is empowering … and it’s the path to healing if you are carrying wounds.

How to Evolve’s Philosophy

I’ve come to believe that we are all carrying wounds, even if we have diminished their importance or denied their existence. The minute we arrive in this world, full of baby joy, we have experiences that knock us out of confidence and trust. These experiences can have long-lasting effects. They often begin with normalised parenting practices, like leaving a baby to cry (no judgment; I did this too). In the words of Philip Larkin,

They fuck you up, your mum and dad.   
    They may not mean to, but they do.   
They fill you with the faults they had
    And add some extra, just for you.

With effective DIY tools developed in the last few years (not cordless drills, but things like EFT tapping), we can make good on every bit of life experience that knocked us out of our innate happiness. In my experience, this allows us greater clarity of thinking, heightened compassion and more meaningful connection. As we find joy and peace in the process of healing our wounds, we evolve into new levels of consciousness. And as we add our newly sparkling drop to humanity’s giant ocean, we help our fellow humans evolve, too.

I hope you’ll join us. Maybe we can turn How to Evolve from a Community into a Movement.

++ If you liked this post, let me know with a like! ++

Letting someone else speak for me. A rarity in real life!

Index of Selected Posts

Illuminating Memoir

• Firehose Your Fears

• The Half a Million Pounds Wife

• The Penis in the Pâté

• No one Knew I Was in an Abusive Marriage. Including Me.

• Before He Ruined Me

• A Letter to My Dead Brother

• The Big Lie that Trapped Me into an Abusive Relationship

• The Carrot on the Piano

• I Suckered Myself Into Saying Yes to Marriage

• Exorcising My Arse

Recent Personal Growth Opportunities (PGOs)

• Dear Lonely Man on the Internet

• Accidentally Kissing My Hairdresser

• Karma and Dough Balls

• I Laughed Myself Out of a Neurological Disorder

• The Dog Walk of Appreciation

• An Otterly New Approach to Life

A Writer’s Life

• Have You Tried Writing in a Whole New Genre and Actually Being Successful?

• The Creative Process in a Nutshell

• I love agents. I wish I could stop eating them.

• What to Do When Your Novel is Adapted into a Pile of Dogshit

• How to Become a Full-time Writer

• Spanking Out the Novel

• Authors and the Truth About Money

• What Hilary Mantel Did For Me, In a Year of Wolf Hall

Human Consciousness and Evolution

• Humans 2.0

• Resurrecting My Invisible Friend

• Reasons to be Cheerful Part 1

• Reasons to be Cheerful Part 2

• Trigger Blessing

• Please See Me

• The Future of Humanity Institute Has Closed

• What to Do About Terrible People

• You Made This Shit Happen

As you know if you’ve been here a while, I truly value your comments, and read every one. I will respond to as many as I can.