Ask the Author: Helen Lewis
Answered Questions (5)
Helen Lewis
A few years ago, when a devastating pandemic was a much more theoretical proposition, I read Emily St John Mandel’s beautiful, lyrical Station Eleven, about the days before (and decades after) a devastating global flu outbreak. I fell in love with it so hard that I forced at least half a dozen friends to read it too. Now her next book is finally here: The Glass Hotel.
Helen Lewis
Keep going. Even if you can't sell it, nothing is wasted. You're learning all the time.
To find an agent, look up who represents the writer whose career you'd most like to have. If they're too high-powered to take on new clients, try someone junior in the agency.
To find an agent, look up who represents the writer whose career you'd most like to have. If they're too high-powered to take on new clients, try someone junior in the agency.
Helen Lewis
Having readers! I've been a journalist for 15 years, so I'm used to a lot of feedback (some of it . . . less than nice) but the quality of response to a book is very different. People carry books around with them from house to house. They scribble in the margins. They pull them off the shelf after five years.
Because Difficult Women features a lot of activists who are still alive, or whose friends/allies/enemies/frenemies are still alive, I have heard from so many people who lived through the events I'm describing. That has been incredible. I opened my inbox a while back to an 88-year-old who sent me a photo of herself with two of the women I'd written about. I love that. Becoming a writer is all about human connections, and I had made one.
Because Difficult Women features a lot of activists who are still alive, or whose friends/allies/enemies/frenemies are still alive, I have heard from so many people who lived through the events I'm describing. That has been incredible. I opened my inbox a while back to an 88-year-old who sent me a photo of herself with two of the women I'd written about. I love that. Becoming a writer is all about human connections, and I had made one.
Helen Lewis
I get very, very unhappy. It's like insomnia, isn't it? The less you feel like writing, the more you start to worry about how little you've written, and the more panicked you get about the idea you might never feel like writing again.
You have to break the loop. Get up from the desk. Go for a walk. Call a friend. Do something you enjoy. The hardest bit is that you have to do that trusting that although it looks less productive in the short term, it's actually making you more productive in the long term. Trust yourself.
You have to break the loop. Get up from the desk. Go for a walk. Call a friend. Do something you enjoy. The hardest bit is that you have to do that trusting that although it looks less productive in the short term, it's actually making you more productive in the long term. Trust yourself.
Helen Lewis
I had been talking about a feminism book for *years* because it's a subject I cover so much in my journalism. I talked about doing one based around places, or objects, but it never quite clicked.
And then I asked myself: what's the feminism book that needs to exist? My answer was: something you can read *second* - ie, there are loads of fun essay collections, or books about one specific issue, or memoirs, but I felt there was a gap for the book that tried to lace it all together, once you'd got interested in the subject. Like the "Previously On...." catch-up at the beginning of a TV show that's now in its fifth season.
Then a friend suggested the title Difficult Women, and it pinged. I could talk about how hard it is to get stuff done, and how activism is often personally painful. And how we have to live with the idea that we owe a lot to people we wouldn't like.
And then I asked myself: what's the feminism book that needs to exist? My answer was: something you can read *second* - ie, there are loads of fun essay collections, or books about one specific issue, or memoirs, but I felt there was a gap for the book that tried to lace it all together, once you'd got interested in the subject. Like the "Previously On...." catch-up at the beginning of a TV show that's now in its fifth season.
Then a friend suggested the title Difficult Women, and it pinged. I could talk about how hard it is to get stuff done, and how activism is often personally painful. And how we have to live with the idea that we owe a lot to people we wouldn't like.
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