back up blog

I am waiting. I am waiting for this book. The book that has had me raw and embarrassed, in so very many ways. It’s my most flawed version, the one in Becoming. The story is personal, and humiliating, and upsetting. And I think that’s why I’ve clung to the details for as long as I could. My publisher would email: so, when do you want to do the big cover reveal, Laura? And I’d recoil at my screen, folding into myself, thinking, not yet. Do not make me share it yet. Let’s not tell people they can pre-order it, or read more about it, just now. Let this story belong to me for just a wee while longer. People – friends, family, readers who I have met, and who I haven’t - are going to know deeply personal, shameful, and upsetting moments of my life, and only now is that truly sinking in. I wrote myself out of a debilitating heartbreak and into liking myself, I think for the first time ever, when I worked on it. I like myself because of what happens in this book, not in spite of it. And yet, I ...

The thing is, is that she is so flawed. And that is… appealing, to me. I’m talking about Mickey, in the Netflix show LOVE – a series I finished last night. I started to write a Tweet about it, to talk out all the wild, enthusiastic, confused thoughts I had on watching the final credits roll, but knew it would become twelve Tweets. Then I thought, yeah but Laura, why do you care so much? So I figured I’d do what I do: blog it out. My neurons are firing at a million miles per hour over this show. The premise is insanely simple: over ten episodes, two imperfect, normal characters meet in a weird, totally plausible way, struggle to get together in a straightforward manner, do a bit of back and forth, and then come clean about being into each other. We’re left wondering what will happen next, if anything at all. It is messy and complicated and exactly like real life. I’m working on a couple of scripts myself. I’m so terribly, terribly bored of writing about me and ~my feelings~, but I am ...

He kissed my neck before he kissed anywhere else. Loitered – lingered – close, beside my ear, so that I could feel his breath warm my ear against January cold on the meander home. That takes confidence, lingering. Teasing. This was before I learned that the ones who get a bit tongue-tied, the ones who are a bit unsure, are actually the ones with the biggest hearts. The kindest thoughts. The most honourable intentions. But on this afternoon at half past six, I hadn’t learned that yet. I kissed him back, the part-time rapper. We’d sat opposite each other for five hours, talking over red wine and pale ale from the bottle, and the Saturday afternoon passed. I’d almost cancelled. I almost cancel every date I eventually go on. Last week I had a horrendous break out across my chin, angry red boils in competition with each other for attention, PMS at its ugliest, and it made me want to cancel the 4 p.m. coffee with the twinkly-eyed actor. But I didn’t. It felt important not to. It felt importa...

“I mean… wouldn’t it be cool to just hang out with everyone? Like, all at once?” one of us said. The other replied: “What, like a Twitter-Meet?” “Yeah,” one of us continued, “But like… not in a pub, and not shit.” The other one said: “But also, not some wanky media thing where it’s all about who you know and how many followers you’ve got, and wearing a name badge.” “Yeah.” “Yeah!” * What I reckon is more true than any other truism, is that you’ve got to give yourself permission. That’s how this happened. We decided, sod it. We’ll build our own opportunities. Because you can want something, know you’re worthy of it – that you’d excel at it – but nobody will ever come and tap you on the shoulder to tell you it’s your turn. That actually, yes, you'd be really good at hosting a panel discussion at a women's event. That they've been waiting for you.  One of my favourite quotes is the one about having the confidence of a mediocre white man. It can be so hard to do, to say “I de...

“You’re being a snob!” she exclaimed to me - genuinely flummoxed, I suddenly understood. “You’re really telling me that any man without a university degree isn’t in the running to date you? That’s horrible.” I hadn’t meant it horribly, but then maybe that makes it worse. I didn’t give my long list of criteria a second thought, because some stuff is just obvious, isn’t it? Education: preferably an M.A. Career prospects: makes more money than me. Relationship with mother: calls every Sunday. Without realising it my list also included the ability to dress well without supervision, lives preferably alone, capable of sitting through a four-course meal, would get on with my cousin Paul at a family wedding, speaks a second language if not two, understands wine, will give me the password to his Netflix account. Is it any wonder my one eludes me when THE MAN WHO FITS THAT LIST DOES NOT EXIST. The person who fits that list does not exist. I DO NOT FIT THAT LIST. My friend, the one who was takin...

Like Amy Schumer said, we used to have Khloé. Khloé knew who she was, which is to say – Khloé was the one with the most rounded personality. In a family famous for being famous, she wasn’t the “beautiful” one. Kim was the stunning Playboy pin-up. Kourtney was the petite and natural girl-next-door. Khloé had something the other two didn’t: she had balls. She was funny. Where her sisters made headlines for what they wore or what they did, Khloé seemed to get press for what she said . I liked that. I could write a book on the value I think the Kardashians have for their marketing-savvy, matriarchal, female-positive and only-deal-in-kind-words way, but my starring role would’ve gone to Khloé. She made me feel good about myself. I’ve never been the hot one either, y’see. I’m not the girl you approach at the bar, the one in the bandeau dress with the waist-length hair. I was at a dinner party recently – Thanksgiving, actually. It was thirty strangers brought together by an American friend vi...

"Do you do stand-up, then?" she said, testing lighting and angles and other things I won't pretend to understand. It’s about the best compliment she could’ve given, really, since I’ve harboured longings on giving it a go since about 2007. It made me warm to her immediately. I thought, thank goodness SOMEBODY has spotted my immense and undeniable talent for being spontaneously hilarious.* (*My immense and undeniable talent for “The Laura Show” when confronted with more than one set of eyeballs.) She asked me to smile, and tilt my chin, and contort my shoulder, and I knew then she’d been overly complimentary so that I was putty in her hands, and as such would do whatever she told me to. Move my back like this? Swerve my hip like that? WHATEVER YOU NEED, PHOTOGRAPHER LADY WHO HAS COMPLIMENTED ME SO! Whatever. You. Want. The Tweet had fluttered towards me only the week before. “Laura,” the features director of the national magazine had crammed into 140 characters. “Can you fo...