Ask me anything, part one

Answering your questions on the journalist life, novels and more – plus, details of this weekend's Creative Hour.

The British TV show Press Gang was also highly influential in my desire to become a journalist. Look, that’s now-famous actor and director Dexter Fletcher on the left! Smouldering then, and still hot now.

Full subscribers can hear me read this post aloud here or on any podcast app.

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Thank you everyone who sent questions for today’s special Ask Me Anything post! Before we get to that… this Sunday 26 February I’m hosting another In Writing Creative Hour for paying subscribers at 5pm GMT (that’s 9am PST).

The Creative Hour is a Google Meet get-together that I usually hold a couple of Sundays a month. We meet online, have a chat, and then write for the best part of an hour in companionable silence; think of it as a virtual library environment, just with a bit more moral support from your In Writing community. It’s a very nice way to get some work done at the weekend.

If you’d like to join us, do upgrade your membership (if you haven’t already) and look out for an email first thing on Sunday, when I’ll send out the link.

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Thanks for all your messages about last week’s episode of the In Writing podcast with novelist Ayobami Adebayo – I was happy to see that others found her as soothing as I did about the winding journey of writing a book.

Tomorrow there’ll be a new episode with the Vogue columnist and essayist Raven Smith. He’s often referred to as The Funniest Man on Instagram, and he is very funny. What I loved about this interview, however, was his self-awareness about how he previously used humour in his writing, and how his voice has evolved as he’s tapped into something more sincere.

Something strange happened, because in those early days I just think I was so precious and so argumentative about what I was writing, and so keen to push what I thought was my voice, which was incredibly sassy and glib and aloof. I felt like that was who I was going to be as a writer. And I think with confidence and time has come, ‘Oh – just say it like it happened, and people respond to it better.’ I enjoy writing it more – it just creates a different kind of proximity. … I think I didn’t have the confidence to be properly vulnerable.

I hope you’ll get something out of it – let me know what you think. And if you are enjoying the new episodes of the podcast, I’d be so grateful if you’d share them with friends or on social media, or leave a review on Apple.

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And now to today’s main event! By the way, if you asked a question about the podcast, don’t worry – I’ve made a note and will include it when I do the second part of this AMA, which will be a podstravaganza, to be published at the end of the current series.

I’ll begin with a question from Tor Freeman:

Can you remember an early favourite book that you read, that made you think writing would be something you'd like to do?

Ooh, good question. I read a lot as a child, and I wrote a lot of stories. Also, my dad was and is a writer, so I had somebody around who was modelling the fact that this was a job, which I think helps hugely.

The only book that stands out in terms of making me imagine myself as a professional writer is – and I will not apologise for mentioning Anastasia Krupnik twice in the space of three weeks – Anastasia Has The Answers. I was also a big fan of Jo March in Little Women (another writer, obviously). Stories do open children’s eyes to the possibilities in their future, which is why of course it’s essential to have proper representation of all kinds of people in our kids’ books.

Then again, I also loved Harriet the Spy¹, and yet I didn’t become a spy², so who can predict what will be influential in our twisty-turny lives?

Two subscribers asked related questions, so I’m going to address those together. Sunshine Kamaloni (owner of the world’s most delightful name) asked:

Are you working on a fiction project? How do you balance that with your non-fiction work?

And Lizzie B asked:

1. When did you first start writing your novel?

2. Did you always want to be a journalist? What was your journey?