back up blog

Episode 5 of The Becoming Podcast is "Becoming Chelsea Fagan". Chelsea is co-founder of The Financial Diet , a site dedicated to talking about personal finance - because let's face it, nobody else wants to. Fun, engaged, and whip-smart, Chelsea has an unmistakable voice and is one of my favourite ever Twitter follows. Here, she discusses financial security, being a former "hot mess", betraying feminism and freaking people out by talking cash. Wise and insightful and frank things Chelsea says include: “During one era, I was fired from every job I had” “I think it has to be less about career and more about being able to take care of myself..." “I felt like being financially supported for a while was a betrayal of feminist values” “Sincerity is not the internet’s language” “It’s really hard to be cool or disaffected about money…” “If you think about a choice you made, or something you did, and you don’t want to talk about it… it’s so important to look at why” ...

This is a blog post about seeing myself called a “cum dumpster” in ten different languages, on fifty different websites, right beside years-old photographs of me taken in a bikini, lifted from the archives of my Instagram. It starts with a 6 a.m. email, read in my best friend’s bed in Ditmas Park, Brooklyn. “They want to serialise the book!” I whisper, wide-awake with a body clock set to London. She rubs her Eastern Standard Time eyes and rolls over. “That’s great,” she begins, hoarse with sleep. “What… what does that mean?” Serialisation is when a newspaper – their features pages or, if you’re really lucky, one of their glossy weekend supplements – print a section of your manuscript. I’d had my fingers crossed that it might happen. What I wanted more than anything was one of the red tops to pick it up – one of the tabloids. I wanted a paper that middle England reads to talk about BECOMING. An “every woman” paper. I’d already written for a glossy mag and a fancy broadsheet about it. Ta...

photo via  @amyadventures_   “Laura,” my brother said, reappearing after a brief absence. “Dad’s taken all your mates to the pub. You might… well. Come on.” I understood the spaces between his words but I didn’t want to leave. Because. Because, if I left it would be over, and it was everything I wanted it to be – had dreamt it would be, for farther back than I can remember – and to stand there, just a few moments more, meant it was still happening. I was still on the third floor of Hatchard’s Piccadilly, booksellers to the Queen, surrounded by piles of a book that I wrote. If I lingered a little longer, I was still at my book launch. * I don’t know what I am proudest of, the book or that one hundred separate bodies approached me over the course of the night to say, “Wow. You know so many incredible people!” That is true – I do know so many incredible people. I know so many incredible people that the girls from the publishing house told my parents, book parties aren’t normally ...

Episode 4 of The Becoming Podcast is "Becoming Alice Judge Talbot" - blogger, digital consultant, Telegraph columnist and one-time swimwear model, Alice is one of my favourite people to have dinner with. We talk about independence after heartbreak, post-natal depression and anxiety, the struggle to take advice, online dating and what it takes to finally find love again – especially when you’ve already got kids – and loneliness. Heart-warming and lovely and insightful things Alice says include: “I never thought I had to be strong… you just get on with it. You do it.” “It’s important that I still go out there and find myself. I can’t limit myself because I’m in my thirties and have two children.” “You have to learn yourself again without somebody there at your side. It’s like being reborn.” “The me that goes on a date is different to the me who blogs.” “Saying you need help is much braver than plodding on and refusing to ask for help.” “Becoming yourself is a constant thing. It...

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 ...

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...