No One Asks Why You Don’t Do Crack
On Instagram, instinct, and getting my tyres slashed.
If you read my work, you’ll know it tends to come from the heart. Sometimes mortifyingly so.
That’s the kind of writing I want to read: work that gets through the noise and says something true.
In August 2024, I deleted all my social media accounts. Some were nearly twenty years old. I told myself that if my life imploded during the ninety days Facebook takes to erase you, I’d know leaving was the problem.
It didn’t implode. It became infinitely better.
I wrote. I read. I finished the first draft of Lover. I saw what was possible when I removed the demand for “content” from the writing process.
And the people who wanted to find me, did.
Social media has been gamified so thoroughly that leaving it now looks, to some people, like a cause for concern.
Dating app users have sued Match Group, accusing apps like Tinder and Hinge of using addictive, game-like features to keep people compulsively swiping. Meta and YouTube have faced legal findings over products designed to hook young users and keep them there.
I think of social media the way I think of drinking: one of the few things people feel entitled to ask you to justify not doing.
No one says, “You don’t do crack cocaine? How come? Are you okay?”
But when I left social media in 2024, people asked exactly that.
How come?
Are you okay?
I promised myself I’d only return once I was a published writer. In November 2025, that happened. Since then, there’s been the tiresome business of trying to exist online as one. I even bought a gimbal and a tiny microphone.
Yesterday, trying to drive engagement, I posted a story about a dress I’d made because, for reasons known only to the algorithm gods, my fashion work gets more views than my writing.
A few hours later, I was lying awake asking myself: what the fuck are you doing?
Whatever I look like on the outside, my inner life is vibrant and full, and social media punctures it. I leave Instagram and TikTok feeling like someone’s knifed my tyres. I’m tired of adverts, AI slop and unsolicited advice. Of maxxing, micro-dosing and monetising. Of the pressure to turn myself into “value” so someone might lift their thumb and like it.
If you read my work, you already know I’m too soft for all of it.
It doesn’t reflect my writing. Worse, it betrays what I believe writing is for: pleasure.
Last night, I cleared my Instagram and posted a message not unlike the one you’re reading now. Naturally, I had the same anxieties I had in 2024: how will people find me? How will I reach people with what I’m selling?
Back then it was pretty dresses. Now it’s long-form essays, which are famously much easier to monetise and in far higher demand.
It’s hard to explain this without sounding bitter, but according to my Substack stats, the traffic from Instagram to my writing couldn’t fill a canoe.
So no, I’m not exactly bracing for impact.
My Instagram and TikTok accounts will stay active for links to my mailing list and Substack.
This mailing list, and its host site Substack, will remain active. I’ll continue to use it for original writing, career updates, and anything worth saying at greater length.
Mailing lists are one of the most important things an author can have — they’re direct, reliable, and not at the mercy of algorithms — so choosing to be here like this is a real form of support. It means more than you might realise.
If you’re receiving this email, you’re already subscribed. There’s nothing you need to do.
I am no stranger to epiphanies. You learn very early in sobriety that no one is coming to save you. I am trusting my instincts and separating myself from the problem. I’ll find a better, less deranging way to reach readers.
If you read me, you’ll always know where to find me.
If I come back to the apps, it’ll be with my traditionally published novel in my hand.
GR x
Here’s what’s coming this June:
📖 The Life of a Showman: ACT IV — (Subscribers Only - that’s you!)
🗓 06.06.26
📖 The Devil’s Thread: Sew No Evil — Substack + Subscribers
Listen to The Devil’s Thread in full, with an audio recording of the complete essay, bonus material, film imagery, and photographs from the real-life sewing woven through the story.
🗓 13.06.26
📖 My winning flash fiction short story Time to Go — Beyond Words, Issue 64
🗓 June 2026 (copies are available to order now)
📖 My short story Chilli con Carne — Beyond Queer Words, 11th Edition
🗓 end of June 2026 (copes are available to order at the end of June)
📖 Alice: Chapter Six — (RCBC Borrowbox + Subscribers)
🗓 28.06.26