How To Be Happy Inside Barnes & Noble

If you go to your nearest Barnes & Noble, there's a chance you'll find a hand written note from me in a copy of How To Be Happy (or I Wrote This For You if a copy of How To Be Happy isn't available). They've been snuck in by a secret team of awesome people. Let me know if you find one.

The Hidden Clocks

Don't stop searching.

There is no comfort in giving up.

There are large parts of you that don't exist yet.

The greatest you you could be, is still waiting to be found.

Get up and look.

The Darkest Glass

If I took away all the irony and cynicism and the sarcasm and the make-believe, all I would be left with was the firm desire that you see me.

The Things I Do Because I'm Me

Would you yell at an apple tree for making apples? Would you scream at the wind for blowing or the rain for falling?

You can't hate someone for being who they are. You shouldn't even yell at a dog for barking.

The In-between Things

For a second, the wind blew so hard, it took the rain's breath away and it could not fall, and you had the only hand I wanted to touch.

The View From The Bottom

It’s not that bad. If you want to be sad, come and write sad songs with me. Or we can sit and watch movies. You won’t have to worry about bringing me down - I am already down. I will watch the blackness swallow you and you can watch the blackness swallow me too.

The Weight A Person Leaves

If I am filled with anything, it is leaves and snow and sunlight and life.

If I am filled with anything, it is seasons.

If I am filled with anything, it is something advancing and retreating.

It is a giant tide that pulls me with it.

I wonder if you kept the same things inside.

I must wonder if, for you, the tide went out one last time, and then came in too far.

The Reason For The Reasonless

I write poetry so that somewhere, life can be beautiful, perfect, fair and good.

I do not know why you do what what you do.

The Movement Of Slow Light

In the end, there's still a rainbow trapped in the edge of the glass that cuts you.

As slow as ships on the horizon.

As quick as a life.

The Art Of Thorns

You realise you can never properly love even one thing, let alone everything.

That's why you get a little sadder as you get older.

You fall in love a little every day with something new, and so your heart breaks a little every day.

The Murder Of A Clock

Before you, each minute was sixty seconds long. But now they are much longer.

Win Signed Copies of How To Be Happy

I’m incredibly proud to announce that my new collection of poetry and short stories, How To Be Happy, is now available at Barnes & Noble. 

To celebrate, I’ll be randomly sending out a signed copy once a week for the next few weeks. Take a selfie with the book at Barnes & Noble to enter.

If you include a note about what makes you happy in the picture, I’ll count it as two entries. 

Enter and tag me or let me know on Instagram, twitter or Facebook.

____

P.S. Thank you to everyone who's already purchased it, it's quite a personal collection of work and I'm never sure how something I do will be received. The fact that it's resonated with some people means a lot and it's the reason I write: It makes me feel less alone. 

Thank you.

The Glass Sphere

Even if you are made of night, try to be made of more starlight than darkness.

The Familiar Corners

In every city, every building has a room with corners that are completely familiar to the people inside it. And if you think about it like that, nothing is strange at all.

What might be unthinkable for you, might be everyday, for me.

The Reflection In Someone Else's Eyes

There is an innocent but selfish part of you that wants to love and be loved because you know being loved will make you want to be worthy of being loved. 

There is a part of you that just wants to see the kind of person you could be, through someone else's eyes.

The Lack Of Complete Beauty

No one is completely beautiful and everyone has an ugly side.

To be completely beautiful, you would have to know this and yet love everyone regardless.

The Art Of Being Born

You're not supposed to remember being born so you can only imagine what it was like, looking at the world for the first time and just weeping at all the ugliness and all the beauty that you saw in it. And crying for the first time, that feeling in your chest and then your eyes suddenly became water and salt. Touching someone else's skin for the first time and realising that at least, you're not alone here.

I don't know if not remembering all of that is lucky or unlucky.

The Haunted Quiet

You're wrong. Happiness isn't forgetting. Happiness is finding new things to remember.

The Immortal Sadness

I know you have a great sadness. I have had a great sadness too and I want you to know: I am alive and one day, you will say this same thing to someone else.

The Uncontrollable

I have learned that your hands disappear when you are a child and the toys move on their own.

I have learned that if you are still enough birds and people trust you.

I have learned that there is a tiny keyhole in my chest and if you unlock it, words and papers and books fall out.

I have learned that there are a thousand monkeys with typewriters in my heart, and each one is madly in love with you.

The Sound Of Stars Exploding

I am asking you to listen to the promise in the static on the radio or the scratches on a record:

There is the chance for something not quite perfect to happen here tonight.

The Landscapes Of You

I fall into you.

I stand at the edge of you and fall into landscapes of you.

Let me hit the ground of you and break apart on you.

I am not pushed.

I jump.

The Inkblot Test

Tell me what you see, when I fold my heart in paper, crush it, and open the pages again.

The Universe Isn't Open For Business Today

You cannot trade your suffering for less suffering.
The universe isn't open for business today.
You cannot trade the good you do for good done to you, or actual goods of any kind.
You cannot trade your time for more time, you can only sell it once.
You cannot trade your love for love, love is not a transaction.
You cannot trade.
Your money’s no good here.
The universe isn’t open for business today.

The Box Of Songs

One day you will turn to me and say, "We have become the pronouns in the lyrics of all my favourite songs."

Thank You For Your Support. Here’s A Free Book.

[Edit: IT'S OVER! THE BOOK IS GONE! I'll do something similar again soon - follow me on twitter, facebook, instagram or elsewhere to stay up to date. Thanks to everyone for the, quite honestly, overwhelming response -  the book will be available on Amazon and elsewhere soon.]

Since I started writing I Wrote This For You in 2007, all I ever wanted was a chance to take what Jon and I were doing on the blog into the real world and turn it into something physical, something that could live next to someone’s bed or at the back of a bag, something that could be dog-eared and underlined and be given and received. Something that could be touched and loved.

At the end of 2011, that became a reality. I Wrote This For You, the book, has been and continues to be a remarkable success. Since then, we’ve done another two I Wrote This For You books, I Wrote This For You: Just The Words and I Wrote This For You And Only You. I wrote a science fiction novel called Intentional Dissonance, a short collection of poetry about the NSA and just this weekend, as you may know, a new collection of poetry and short stories that didn’t fit inside I Wrote This For You called How To Be Happy.

So, to say thank you for supporting me and for buying my books over the years, for sticking with me when I had a nervous breakdown and stopped writing, for just being you - I’m giving away a small book that I’ve had lurking around at the back of my hard drive for a while but only for the next 24 hours.

It’s called 300 Things and it’s a collection of things that I hope. Click here to download a free .pdf copy of it.

Thank you for your time. I know it's valuable and I, again, sincerely thank you for choosing to spend it with me.

- Me

What is How to be Happy?

How to be Happy is collection of short stories, prose and poems that I’ve written over the years that don’t fit inside I Wrote This For You, contained within a novel about being asked to write a book about, well, How To Be Happy.

It’s a book about a book about how to be happy, and a collection of short stories and poems. I am the main character in it and it’s both completely true and utterly fiction. You can read it to find out more about me. You can read it because you like my poems and short stories. You can read it to learn what I think the secret to happiness is.

Or you can read it to discover something else, which is what I was trying to do in the first place.

You can click here to buy it right now in print on or kindle.

The Way I Know You

Let me know you but only ever at a distance.
Let me know you before you're human and you're flawed and you're all the things you really are.
Let me know you easily, without any real effort.
Let me know you before cities are built in our hearts.
Let me know you but only enough to love you.
Or let me know you after all the hard work is done.

The Height Of A Mountain

They will say, if you get back up, we will knock you straight back down again.

And you will get up.

And they will knock you straight back down again.

And you will get up.

The Moment After Everything

A tattooed doorframe marks where you grew older and now you are too old to die young and beautiful.

Now you must try to die old and beautiful.

The Flickering Light

"I had trouble sleeping" is just another way of saying you spent the night fighting ghosts in the dark.

The Monsters Are My Friends

I want someone to lean across one day and say, don’t you hate it when everything’s really beautiful and it hurts at the same time, so I can say, yes, I hate it. Then me and them belong to a club, and we are never, ever alone again.

There are clubs, everywhere, that I don’t belong to.

The Million Ways To Fail

Here's how you fail: You fail with your heart on your sleeve.

You fail like you mean it with every part of you.

You fail attempting the impossible and the ridiculous.

You fail in front of others and you fail and they laugh at you and you fail and you feel nothing and regret less.

You fail sincerely and earnestly and you risk everything at every opportunity.

This is how you fail: You fail beautifully. You fail with grace.

The Saying Of When

When you love like the last good thing.

When you love and forget every important thing you were going to say.

When you love and forget everything.

The Delusion You Suffer Under

Nowhere on your body and nowhere on the Earth is it written: You were made to suffer.

The Goodness Of Knowing

You know we are only as good as the time and the love we pour into each other. Pour yourselves into each other.

Here Is A Short Letter To You

Dear You,

My humblest apologies for not writing in forever. It might not have actually been forever but it certainly feels that way.

I have been juggling so many different things, it's been hard to find myself and hence, you.

I'll be explaining myself in full at The Book Lounge in Cape Town on the 23 of June, I will do my best to periscope the event so even if you're not in Cape Town, you can still watch and listen.

Sign up for the event, and to get reminded, on Facebook by clicking here.

Arianna Huffington quoted I Wrote This For You in her New York Times #1 bestseller, Thrive, and she was kind enough to invite me to blog for The Huffington Post - here's a link to what I've already put up there and I've also added a link on the right of the page.

 I've been putting the finishing touches to How To Be Happy, my new book, which is not a self-help book, and you can win a copy of it by clicking here.

Sometimes I do things in the morning and they come to life in the afternoon and they get published in the evening. I'm investing a lot of my creative energy right now into projects that require a more longterm approach, I believe these will be great, wonderful, amazing things but it also means you might not see me as much.

Please be patient. Everything is worth it in the end.

Sincerely,

Me

The Rule

Here's what you don't say, "I sometimes wonder if the universe is a movie and if it's really all about me."

You don't say, "I am still competing with everyone I competed with as a child."

Or, "I fall in love a little with everything."

You never say, "I think everyone else knows something that I don't."

Or, "I can be distracted when you're not here, but not happy."

And don't ever say, "I just want you to cry like I cried."

You never say the most important things. That's the rule.

The Horrible Thing That Happens

If you’re lucky, the horrible thing that happens gives you some distance from the world and it lets you to look at it in a way no one else does.

 If you’re lucky, the horrible thing that happens makes you move closer to everyone around you because you understand how bad the horrible thing can be, and you know there's a chance someone else might have felt something as horrible as you have.

So you are not careless with others.

You try and make sure the horrible thing don’t happen to them. 

Because you’re the lucky one.

The Sky Has Weight

If you carry someone in your heart for too long, it will become heavy.

The Secrets Hidden In Stone

Here is the most beautiful thing in the world: There are people doing great things that they don't know are great yet.

They sit in their bedrooms, not knowing they are writing the most beautiful song you will ever hear. They go to their jobs, hiding great novels somewhere in the depths of their computers. They paint, not knowing how important their picture will be.

They do all this with no promise of any reward or any recognition, and so there are truly great, secret things, everywhere. Waiting to explode.

It is the most beautiful thing in the world.

The Scars Light Leaves

Don't be me. 

I'm already me. 

Be you.

I've had to be me my entire life to write what I write.

You've got an entire lifetime to work out what you will do, with being you.

The Fire Is Where We're All Born

All the most beautiful things are pulled from the ground.

All the most beautiful things are made in a fire.

All the most beautiful things are hit again and again.

All the most beautiful things are shaped with hard hands.

Nothing about you is ugly.

You are made of the most beautiful things.

The Sound Echoes From Room To Room

In sacred halls they'll keep you, and whisper if you listen: Every heart sings a secret song, softly, in your ear.

The First Sounds

Before language, there were only sounds, and we had to tell each other everything we could with nothing but the noises we could make with our mouths.

What sound could you have made for, “Look at all these lights in the sky. Isn’t it amazing?”

What sound could you have made for, “My chest hurts when you are not here.”

What sound could you have made for, “I am hurt, and I am slowly pouring out of me.”

What sound would you have made for, “I do not have a name for the feeling I have when I’m with you, but it is a feeling that I never, ever want to end. Please don’t go to sleep forever.”

The Notes Etched Along Our Arms

Why would you take all the skeletons out the closet?

I remember the music still trapped in their bones.

I could've hummed it for you.

I could've sung us to sleep.

The World Takes Tiny Parts Of Us

Every day you should ask yourself,

“What is the most important thing I could be doing today and why aren’t I doing it?”

And then be prepared for the answer to be,

“Being patient with my soul, being kind to my heart, and being ok, with being me.”