back up blog

photo @superlativelyLJ Oh I have missed you, my love , she concludes, at the end of LEMONADE , and with it I cried heavy, loaded, sobs of relief, because I have missed you, too. I thought she was talking about her husband, at first. That she was coming back to him after an affair, ready, after many tears and so much anger, to try again. I don’t think she does mean that, though, and the realisation, when it hit, is what had the emotion push for escape. I think she has missed herself. I think she is tired and renewed, broken and healed at the same time, and that’s because she’s willing to slice open – wrist to elbow - and bleed in the name of truth. And I also think she has only just learnt that doing this once isn’t enough. That our becoming is endless. That the work of humanness is exhausting, and it is beautiful, and it is true for all of us that growing pains do, indeed, hurt. Nobody is immune. Hero-worship is so very dangerous when we think they have the answer to everything it is w

Where do I even begin on this week's podcast guest? Ella Kahn is the woman with my dreams in her hands. My literary agent, Ella reached out to me via Twitter almost a year ago to the day to say, "I saw your blog post about the book you wrote. Can we talk?" And talk we did. From a hotel lobby in Bali I Skyped her, then got very, very drunk. Alone. Because I knew something special was happening. That my playing field was about to be upgraded by a million percent. I wasn't wrong. As far as I'm concerned Ella is superwoman, which is why it was a no-brainer to ask her about her becoming... Becoming Ella Kahn Prior to co-launching DKW in 2012, Ella worked at Andrew Nurnberg Associates as an Assistant Literary Agent for three years. She loves the creative side of collaborating with authors, pitching exciting projects and handling negotiations. Ella represents upmarket contemporary and historical fiction, science fiction, and some non-fiction. She also represents a wide

It was so weird for me to edit this week's The Becoming Podcast, because there's a chunk in the middle about "burnout", but I've only just become aware of my own fizzling out . I knew the clues were there, hidden away around corners and under things, but in this interview, recorded weeks ago, now, I find myself casually talking about burnout and laughing lightly and maybe, actually, this is when the seed was first planted. Where I first began to understand. Talking to my friend, recorded over Skype, because she has the kind of brain that lets you see yourself without scaring yourself. Heather makes me understand so much. I had to share her with you. Listening again, now, I'm reminded of the good fortune in having friends as smart as this. Friends who help me to navigate my becoming like they do. I hope she'll help you navigate the same. And so, here's episode two of The Becoming Podcast: Becoming Heather Taylor Portmann Heather is a strategist, coach a

photo by  @babeswithgin I was in the basement of a Japanese restaurant with my three best friends when it happened. My throat got tighter, like an invisible something was pressing on my windpipe. The walls of the room loomed inward. A voice I’d never heard before but that came from within me, a little man sat just inside my right ear, said sinister, shocking things about my worthlessness. My pointlessness. My un-love-able-ness. My friend was speaking, telling a story about I-don’t-remember-what-now, but I couldn’t hear her. The world was smudged with Vaseline. I was surrounded by the people who love me most, and totally, utterly, alone. It was terrifying. When I snot-cried assembling furniture in my new house, and every day thereafter, I thought I was just tired. When I stopped sleeping, I presumed it was excitement and worry, both, about the book . When I ate packets of biscuits at a time because I didn’t want to leave my desk long enough to prepare an actual meal, my reasoning was, I

The point is this: I’m so terribly, terribly bored of writing about myself. Talking about myself. Being in my own head. On the other side of finishing the memoir – a process much lengthier, more detailed and bizarrely unending than I could ever have presumed, and one I will write about, soon – I won’t even talk about work on the phone to my mother. You really want to talk about tulips for ten minutes? she laughed down Facetime yesterday, and I did. I really did want to talk about tulips. And Kelvin, my delivery man from Morrison's. And about how adding ginger to my green juice has made the world of difference. Anything except, work. I also wanna talk about other people. Not behind their backs – I mean, face-to-face ( skype-to-skype) about what they think and they feel and what they’ve been through. I knew I wanted to talk to folks about their becoming even before Hodder bought the book. I talked about it in the acquisition meetings. I said, we consume art because we’re looking for