Past to Present with Lucy Jane Santos: April 2025
Welcome to the April edition of my newsletter.
History Business: Get Yourself a Little Red Book
Although it doesn’t look like very much this is one of the most precious secret weapons in my Freelance Historian Toolkit.
The official name for this style of hardware is a ‘Positive Data Log’ but for obvious reason I call mine ‘The Little Red Book.’
TLRB sits on my shelf near my writing desk so it is always close to hand – as all weapons should. Otherwise, they take too long to deploy and the villains of this piece – self-doubt, anxiety and imposter syndrome – can overpower you.
We all know that freelancing and freelance writing especially can be a solitary and sometimes incredibly discouraging process. There are times when all of this uncertainty, rejection and self doubt just sit heavily – both in your mind and in your heart. Festering and building.
When I started out on my own about 15 years ago it was in the lucky position of knowing plenty of other freelancers who had been doing it for a long time already. And being rather nosy, I spent a lot of time asking for tips on surviving this style of work. The answers to these are something I built into my working life right from the beginning and – looking back – am so grateful to those people for sharing their experiences.
Put simply a ‘Positive Data Log’ is a way of documenting all of your achievements and good experiences in your working life. It can be written in a book, an audio recording on your phone, a series of emails to yourself… Any way that works for you.
But the key is that you record everything positive that has happened to you as a freelancer. So that good review for your book, a nice email from a client or a kind comment on a post. Personally, I would even write down when someone compliments the shoes I was wearing at an event.
The reason this is helpful is because it helps counter all the bad things that will (sorry) inevitably happen. Whilst these can also be incredibly powerful – teaching us how to be better at our work and building resilience – unfortunately your brains seem to put a lot more store in them than the positive aspects. Which is why it easier to remember all the times in our lives where we have faced rejection or just felt out of our depth or humiliated.
Just by looking back over those past times TLRB helps you to remember – by force really– all the good things and by reflecting on those instead it helps to gain some perspective and joy in what you are doing. Because we are all doing wonderful things and that should be celebrated.
So please do get yourself a little red book of some description.
You will not regret it.
Events
Last month was actually pretty busy with in person events. I was a speaker at Atom 2025 festival as well as giving two talks for the Art Deco Society UK Centenary Celebrations. The final talk of the weekend was about a new strand of research - our nostalgia for Art Deco and the 1920s/1930s.
Looking forward to the summer am pleased to announce that I am in the process of arranging some new events with the New York Adventure Club and will send over more details of those when they have been confirmed.
Cocktail of the Month
My cocktail of the month will be the DNA cocktail, which was created at The Atlantic Bar and Grill, London in 1999. Check out my account BlueSky on Saturday 3rd May for a deep dive into this potent and delicious drink.
And the best cocktail I drank over the last few weeks was a DNA at Brasserie Zedel(which is where The Atlantic Bar and Grill used to be - I do like to go back to the scene of the crime, as it were!) The current bar staff didn’t have it on their menu but they were kind enough to interpret the scribbled post it note I had bought along with the ingredients. Absolutely delicious.
Speak soon!
My books
Chain Reactions: The Hopeful History of Uranium
Half Lives: The Unlikely History of Radium
Nobody’s Perfect: Behind the scenes of Billy Wilder’s Some Like It Hot (Forthcoming, 2026)