Describe your writing practice?
I don’t have much of a writing routine to speak of, to be totally honest. I just let myself write when I feel like writing. The closest thing that I have to a routine is amassing a huge amount of research and quotes and conversations with people on any one topic, and then I’ll tend to go away for a while and think about lines to myself while I’m doing something mindless, like putting out the washing. I don’t start to write until I have a clear idea of the first line as a jumping board and then I’ll let it all tumble out from there quite organically. I do this for podcast scripts as much as for writing articles and chapters of the book.
I don’t start to write until I have a clear idea of the first line as a jumping board and then I’ll let it all tumble out from there.
Often if I have no starting point at all, I’ll just write out the sections that I know I need to cover in an order that I can predict will make some sort of cohesive sense, and then just leave the skeleton for a while. I can’t force myself to write. I can’t force myself to do much of anything—I’d probably be a lot wealthier and more productive if I could.
Has your writing practice changed over the years? If so, how?
I’m not sure that my practice has changed much from working as a journalist in a newsroom or even from my earliest days of writing columns for magazines. I’m always a bit disorganised and just write when I feel like writing, and know that I’ve got something to say.
How do you encourage inspiration to strike?
If I’m feeling really stuck on a topic or struggling to find the right tone of voice, I’ll often just sit down with a book. It can honestly be any book and any author—I just need to take notes on how other people have done it, and I find that strikes up my own writing voice in my head. I know that other people keep journals and I think that’s probably the smartest way to find your voice, expand vocabulary, and formulate ideas…but frankly, I cannot be bothered. I’ve tried to do it many times and just find talking to myself through the page really, really boring.
I’m a compulsive oversharer, and I always try to keep in mind that other people’s boundaries are more important than my own.
How do you navigate the shift from journalism to more personal writing?
I’ve always felt fairly comfortable sharing intimate details of my life. The complications lie in telling intimate details of people who are connected to those stories. Writing the book was obviously tricky to navigate, in that I always wanted to do right by my mum as well as the rest of my family; I felt I had to honour their privacy and not speculate too much about anybody’s reasons or responses to the stories that I’m publishing. I’m a compulsive oversharer and I always try to keep in mind that other people’s boundaries are more important than my own.
What’s next for you?
At the moment I’m just working on getting podcast projects off the ground and doing my best to promote The One Thing We’ve Never Spoken About! Hopefully I find a job or another long term project soon, I’m not great with boredom…
The One Thing We’ve Never Spoken About is available from 31 January at your local independent bookseller.
