Dolly Alderton, EVERYTHING I KNOW ABOUT LOVE
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[1:19]Z-I-B-B-Y, three audiobooks for the price of one. I am so excited to be interviewing Dolly
[1:24]Alderton, who's the author of The Sunday Times best selling memoir, everything I know about love,
[1:29]which is just now coming out in the US. It won a national book award, was nominated for Waterstones
[1:33]Book of the Year and a British Book Award. It's been translated into 20 languages.
[1:38]Dolly has been a freelance journalist for The Sunday Times, Marie Claire, Glamour Cosmopolitan,
[1:42]Ella GQ, and many other publications. She wrote a dating column in The Sunday Times style section.
[1:48]She's the co-host and co-creator of The High Low, A Current Affairs and Pop Culture
[1:52]Discussion Show, and Britain's Leading Women's Podcast with one million downloads per month.
[1:57]She also created and hosts a podcast mini series called Love Stories. In 2019,
[2:01]to 2020, she went on a 22-date book tour called Everything I Know About Love Live. She has two
[2:08]scripts in development, including the TV adaptation of this book. Dolly has been featured in Forbes
[2:12]2018-30 under 30, The L List, and many more. She currently lives in London. So welcome, Dolly,
[2:19]thanks so much for coming on mom's time to read books. Thank you so much for having me. I'm so happy
[2:23]to be talking to you too. Would you mind? Please tell listeners what this amazing book,
[2:29]Everything I Know About Love, which for anybody who doesn't have it in front of them,
[2:33]it's a cover. It says, everything I know about parties, crossed out, dates,
[2:36]crossed out, friends, crossed out, jobs, crossed out, life, crossed out, and all that you're left with
[2:41]his love. I hope that made sense. So the title is Everything I Know About Love. Tell me about
[2:47]what this book is about for everybody listening. Yes, of course. While we're talking about that book
[2:52]jacket, I've had lots of mothers of young children say that their children are absolutely
[2:58]fascinated by the book jacket because they can't believe that someone would go out to scribble
[3:01]all over it. That's awesome. That's the first thing your thought is a kid who don't scribble on
[3:07]books. Very true. So the book is, it's so weird to be kicking my head back into talking about
[3:15]the book and what it works. You know, I wrote it when I was 28, and I'm now the grand
[3:21]girl, they're just 31. That's normal though. That kind of is like the dog year thing from one
[3:28]late 23 early 30, sometimes when I pick up the book now and I read from it when I have to
[3:33]do a reading or write about it. I'm just out of who is this maniac in these pages,
[3:38]do I just do not recognize that at all, we definitely wouldn't go for a drink at the pub with.
[3:43]So what the memoir is, I wrote it when I was 28, and it is kind of chronicling at my 20,
[3:54]it's a kind of image story of those that begins with me talking about my teenage life,
[4:01]this about being a student at university, and then the kind of very scary, turbulent, exciting,
[4:10]glamorous, disgusting time of flat sharing when you move to a city, which my city was London,
[4:17]with my friends from university, and kind of carving out who I wanted to be and what my job
[4:22]was going to be, and that kind of collective experience of sailing into the beginning of womanhood
[4:27]with my mates. And then it talks about the kind of various dysfunctions and disasters,
[4:34]mainly manifested through my love life, through my mid to late 20s, and then takes me,
[4:42]and then by the end, because I wrote another chapter for the paper back, which was about turning
[4:46]30, which I have a very racial green meltdown about. So I kind of told us that strange kind of,
[4:55]you know, because I think our parents' generation, you know, being in your 20s really was the
[5:02]arrival to adulthood, and certainly where I am in England and London, there definitely is
[5:09]a sense now that millennials, their adolescent sort of goes on until they're about 30,
[5:16]so that really did feel like a kind of big moment of change. And then so within that,
[5:21]to be honest, when I was writing it, I didn't really know what the kind of big themes or the
[5:26]big overarching story of it was, I just wrote about things that have been important or
[5:31]formative or funny or moving in my kind of short life thus far. And then it was only when I
[5:36]liked to kind of reflect at the final chapter on what the book had been about. I realized
[5:42]it was a love story, not a romantic one. I always thought that my memoir would end with me
[5:48]following in love with, I don't know, Colin Farrell, like, and ultimately it was more of a story
[5:56]the love that we developed with ourselves as we kind of get to know and accept ourselves as we age
[6:03]and also, for me particularly, the love that I've had with the women in my life with my female
[6:09]friend. That is an incredibly protected and more silly answer to your very succinct question.
[6:15]That's okay. I loved it. I love hearing your point of view about it. You know, the great thing
[6:20]about this book is you include scenes like, you know, taking a taxi in the middle of the night
[6:25]to try to find some guy you were having a hankering for at that particular time and ending up with
[6:31]no money stranded across London or wherever you are to really poignant scenes where you talk about
[6:38]losing a friend to eating issues that you had to dinner dates where you have to, you know,
[6:44]out of some philosophical vendetta sort of have to get going to the bathroom and get money
[6:51]wired to you so you don't allow a man to pay for you. I mean, it's all over and it's perfect
[6:56]because that is exactly what life is like, especially in your 20s, which for me was a lot longer
[7:02]ago than it was for you. And I wish I had sort of chronicled life in my 20s the way you did.
[7:08]I mean, I think that's the brilliance of this all is like, does anyone remember and who can write
[7:13]about it so well and it's such a relatable, funny way. And anyway, I thought it was fantastic as
[7:18]well. Here's the key, Gibby, if you have to be a really self-obsessed theatrical person to write
[7:25]everything down that happens to them in pathetic little diaries for their entire life, that's
[7:30]the key. That's the secret. Okay, now I know. You were too busy actually living life and being engaged
[7:37]with your glorious life. I was just having an amylizing it. I don't know about that, but
[7:44]so why is this only now coming out in the US? Because America didn't want me to be.
[7:51]Yes, I can't believe it. No, it isn't. And do you know what? It's not something that I took a
[7:56]fence to. I think that there's like, there's a bit of a disconnect with the current
[8:00]close in between American and English culture because like, we've moved growing up. All I wanted
[8:07]to be as a teenager was American. It was all I dreamed of and all my friends were the same.
[8:13]All we did was watch American show. All we did was watch MTV and Nickelodeon and love, you know,
[8:20]falling off with American bands, other than the Spice Girls. That's the one great export that
[8:25]we gave to us to in culture when I was going up. Thank you for that.
[8:30]So it's quite a common thing, I think, in England, that Americanism is synonymous with
[8:37]modernity and excitement and coolness and yeah, something really exciting. So familiar
[8:45]it's very normal to watch something American or read something American, which is
[8:51]listed with Americanism or is very much embedded in American culture and just to Google what
[8:57]something is. So I've, you know, never lived in America, but I know what an ATM is. I know what
[9:04]Alan Monie is. I know what, you know, candy is. I know that jelly is not the same wobbly stuff
[9:10]that we eat here. And I know that pants are definitely like respectable items that you wear
[9:16]on your bottoms rather than what we call niches, which, you know, undergarments. So I think that
[9:24]for some reason, English because maybe it's because there's so much more American culture that
[9:29]we can see. That it's very easy to do that kind of, we have like an embedded Google translate,
[9:36]I think, whereas I think English doing it the other way around, English to America,
[9:42]it just looks much more esoteric. And, you know, culturally America and England, I have
[9:48]lots of friends who live in America and a lot to kind of exile with these moves over to America.
[9:53]The transatlantic thing that is particularly when you're talking about these cults, I think,
[9:58]it is very, very different.
[10:00]There are like lots of, you know, generally speaking.
[10:03]So I think that there was just a nervousness.
[10:06]Understandably, I couldn't understand it
[10:08]when American publishes reading my books
[10:11]that it was just too specific to Englishness of it.
[10:15]It was just too angry, so.
[10:16]I think that's, I mean, I totally disagree.
[10:19]And I'm glad that finally that this is coming out here.
[10:21]I mean, I feel like we have so much fascination here
[10:25]with things there, all that the Royal Family
[10:27]and Downton Abbey and the Crown.
[10:29]And I don't know, I feel like this is a focus right now
[10:31]on all things UK-related, but what do I know?
[10:35]Well, do you know what?
[10:36]I think that I am going to be very, very, very lucky
[10:41]to be rising off the totally beautiful and breathtaking
[10:44]coattels of Fleabag success in America.
[10:48]And I'm hoping that because America
[10:51]welcomed in this gorgeous hot mess of the character,
[10:58]that maybe they will be more acclimatized
[11:00]to a 20-something woman running around London
[11:04]having completely ridiculous sex and crinking
[11:08]every pub out of every bottle of wine possible.
[11:11]Not, I mean, I could only dream of being 1% as talented
[11:16]as people of British, but I do think that maybe I'm
[11:20]going to be lucky that that's something
[11:21]that at the moment, people, that kind of British
[11:24]transgression in young females is something
[11:27]that they're more familiar with.
[11:28]And I don't know, she's wetted their appetite really well
[11:32]over to you because it's actually
[11:33]incredible, incredible piece of work.
[11:35]Yes, so thank you to Phoebe for paving the way
[11:37]for more amazing.
[11:39]Yeah, yeah, yeah, I've got shims like you and Phoebe
[11:42]for so much.
[11:44]So I found it interesting.
[11:45]All the things you have done to raise awareness of,
[11:48]you, your brand, everything.
[11:50]You have things like the Dolly Mail, you have,
[11:53]you took your book on the road and made it a live show.
[11:56]You now have two podcasts.
[11:59]Tell me about your brain and how you're coming up
[12:02]with these ideas and it's the whole process.
[12:05]Do you just come up with ideas all the time
[12:06]and then debate which ones to pursue?
[12:08]Or how does it all happen for you?
[12:11]Would you know what?
[12:12]You're speaking to not an interesting time
[12:13]that I've never ever been in my career before,
[12:16]because I've always been one of those kind of multi-high
[12:18]finite people that I've always had lots of different things
[12:23]on the go in my early 20s in the 20th.
[12:25]I had a full phone, actual grown-up office job,
[12:27]where I was a TV producer,
[12:29]and then I was a freelancer writer in the evenings
[12:32]and at weekends, and then I went fully over to pre-launch
[12:35]where I think when I was consistent beyond that,
[12:38]I was, yeah, start to podcast me for four years ago,
[12:43]and then I did a newsletter for a while,
[12:45]and then I was always writing scripts.
[12:48]And so I think first of all, the reason why
[12:53]I've always wanted to straddle lots of different types
[12:57]of writing and conversations and interviewing,
[13:03]kind of formats.
[13:04]So one wasn't really enough,
[13:07]I think to keep me stimulated initially.
[13:10]I'm just quite a greedy person, I think I just wanted
[13:13]to try all in, I'm like that across every aspect
[13:17]of my life, I think I've always been someone
[13:19]who really just wants to do it all intensely
[13:23]and feel a lot of the time.
[13:25]And I think that I just really channeled a lot of that,
[13:28]kind of ravenousness into pursuing lots
[13:30]of different avenues with work.
[13:32]And to be totally honest,
[13:33]and I went, when I first went freelance as a journalist,
[13:35]I couldn't make a living just from doing journalism.
[13:40]So I had to think on my feet a bit
[13:42]about how I could make money,
[13:44]because I did want to make money,
[13:45]I really didn't want to be scraping by a month by month.
[13:50]So yeah, I've been, like last year was sort of the peak
[13:54]of it and it was crazy, I was doing,
[13:57]and I also must carry out this,
[14:00]because I know busy bragging is really fucking annoying.
[14:03]So I don't know.
[14:04]I don't know.
[14:06]Lots of people have to juggle lots of different things
[14:08]as well as incredibly difficult,
[14:10]family and financial situations.
[14:12]This is very much my choice,
[14:13]but it just, it did slightly get to breaking point last year,
[14:17]where I was doing loads of 22 day tour of my,
[14:21]of which was like a live version of my book to promote the book.
[14:25]And then I was doing,
[14:25]it was published in lots of different languages,
[14:28]thankfully, so I was having to do press
[14:30]in lots of different countries.
[14:32]And then I had two scripts in development,
[14:34]one of which was the TV adaptation of the book.
[14:38]And I was writing a weekly column,
[14:39]and I had a weekly podcast.
[14:40]And then I launched the new podcast series
[14:42]called Love Stories that was in conjunction
[14:45]with publications of the book.
[14:47]And I was trying to put together a proposal for my novel.
[14:50]And I just,
[14:52]I just forgot my social rating, but I just couldn't.
[14:55]Because the other thing is as well,
[14:57]it's like, you know, the greatest,
[15:00]I can't write anything,
[15:02]and I know you're anyone if I'm not living life,
[15:05]because you can't like go,
[15:09]and you can't write about things in a vacuum.
[15:13]I can't, the only novel I would have been able to write
[15:16]last year is like,
[15:17]what it's like to be interviewed by lots of people.
[15:20]And what's it like to have lots of meetings?
[15:23]And what is it like to go to, you know,
[15:25]sleep in lots of regional British hotels
[15:28]and basically every press town was available.
[15:31]And, you know, I am such a,
[15:34]it's quite a sort of romantic notion,
[15:36]but all my favorite writers endorsed this
[15:41]when I've wrote, you know, Zadie Smith says this,
[15:43]AA Gill, he's a British writer,
[15:45]he's very important, he says this,
[15:46]the thing that you have to do
[15:48]if you want to write truthfully and movingally
[15:50]and in an entertaining way,
[15:52]and in an poignant way,
[15:53]you have to go live,
[15:56]you have to go love and feel and lose and observe and taste.
[16:04]And, you know, enjoy it all and feel the pain of things
[16:10]and observe, observing, observing is a really important thing.
[16:14]And you just need space in your life to do that.
[16:17]So that's, and I just can't,
[16:19]if I'm not, all the other stuff is fun,
[16:21]but if I'm not writing then I'm sort of miserable and useless.
[16:25]So I decided this year to just do a writing year
[16:29]who literally should be all I do now since September
[16:33]as I'm writing a novel and I get up, go for a walk,
[16:38]get a coffee, look at the sky, come back,
[16:42]sit in front of the laptop, write, go out,
[16:45]see my friends drink a bit too much wine,
[16:47]share gossip, have them slag off their husbands
[16:50]and boyfriends to me, write it all down in my notebook,
[16:52]come back and go back and start again the next day.
[16:56]I've never had the luxury of this much space
[16:59]before just focusing on one project
[17:01]and I'm open to the high level every week,
[17:02]my podcast for the week for that only one day.
[17:05]And I've got to say, it's nice this way of living.
[17:08]I really, really do see the appeal of this kind of,
[17:12]having a sort of big relationship with just one project
[17:15]or just one pursuit, it's really, I'm really enjoying it.
[17:19]I love that.
[17:20]I know, I feel like I can be a bit all over the place myself,
[17:23]myself, so hearing this advice for you
[17:25]and very much taking this to heart.
[17:26]I feel like I try to do a lot of different things
[17:28]because I get very excited about, you know.
[17:31]And you know what, like I thought I'd be panicked,
[17:33]I'm not panicked.
[17:35]I'm still waiting for that for that pomeau.
[17:37]I was like, oh, I see, not enough people had known
[17:41]what I'm doing, my work's not reaching enough to panel.
[17:44]I'm not being inventive enough.
[17:45]I should be being more innovative.
[17:47]I just don't feel like I just feel pure adoria every day
[17:50]and it's just being able to kind of like a love affair.
[17:53]So I kind of just like decided to marry someone
[17:55]and be monogamous for a year, having seen,
[18:00]got sitting from person to person to person to person
[18:03]and, yeah, I'm just enjoying the monogaming.
[18:06]Well, tell me about this new relationship here
[18:08]and what is this book about?
[18:11]So it's called Ghost and it's the sort of predominant stories
[18:17]about a woman in her early 30 who decides
[18:20]to try dating for the first time.
[18:22]She's met all of her 20s and in a very sort of comfy
[18:25]relationship, so she's never already dated before
[18:29]and she decides to date in her early 30s
[18:33]and she comes with victim of ghosting,
[18:35]which I'm sure, do you know what ghosting is?
[18:37]Yes, I actually, do you know the book Ghosted
[18:39]by Rosie Walsh? She's also British.
[18:41]Oh, no, don't tell me there.
[18:44]No, she was on my podcast too, about a year and a half ago.
[18:49]Maybe, yeah, her name's Rosie Walsh
[18:50]and it's a novel called Ghosted.
[18:52]But she stopped talking about it's about a man
[18:54]and the woman's been ghosted,
[18:56]but there's a whole backstory that you sort of like a mystery
[18:59]that you learn about as it goes on.
[19:01]Oh, cool.
[19:03]I mean, it's really like, it is very dramatic.
[19:06]It's like, I mean, I was amazed when I was kind of cooking it up.
[19:10]I was like, I feel like something went about that March
[19:13]and someone who has been the victim of ghosting
[19:17]more than one time.
[19:20]It does feel like it's the only time I like where
[19:22]I felt like I was engaged in a thriller.
[19:24]I remember my friend being like,
[19:26]I got a bird in it, she was, he got him.
[19:28]Where's he disappeared to?
[19:30]How could you have had all this closeness
[19:32]and all this intimacy, isn't it?
[19:33]You know, John, so well in this person, as a varnish,
[19:37]you know, it is a very dramatic kind of premise
[19:40]and very haunting as the word that accurately suggests
[19:46]and it can really haunt you for a long time
[19:48]if you don't get your answers.
[19:50]So that's the kind of main thrust analysis I remember.
[19:54]And the second story that runs through,
[19:56]which is about her father who is suffering from disease.
[20:00]So it's her kind of, you know, dealing with a vanishing man in her love life and potentially
[20:08]kind of metaphorically and physically vanishing man in her family.
[20:13]Wow.
[20:14]That sounds great.
[20:15]Oh, thank you.
[20:16]You know what?
[20:17]The first path was a list and I loved every minute of all this and then I took three
[20:22]weeks of over Christmas and just ate so many rows to take those and ran so much red wine
[20:28]and now I've come back and I'm like, oh, second half, this is a little bit tougher
[20:32]isn't it?
[20:33]Oh, my goodness.
[20:37]Talk to me a little about your podcast, the high low and how that you've grown that to
[20:42]be.
[20:43]I'm like so jealous that you have like a bazillion downloads per episode.
[20:46]No, I'm kidding.
[20:47]But how did you grow that to be such a huge success and like what are your tips?
[20:51]What do you think people respond to the most?
[20:53]So kind of kind of your podcast has been going for about two years.
[20:57]Do you know what I reckon it was about two years since I probably went a bit bananas
[21:01]with the high low and apparently this is a pattern that is you see over and over again with
[21:07]podcasts because it's still kind of examining how podcasts build, you know, such a new method
[21:13]of entertainment and everything, we need to think about everything with podcasts, how
[21:19]we make revenue from it, how we build, listen to how we build trust, it's such a different
[21:23]meaning to anything you've seen before.
[21:25]And someone said to me once, kind of podcast expert and it's such a boring answer that
[21:30]it's so true.
[21:31]The key for building a massive audience with podcast is longevity and the more content
[21:37]that the larger your back catalog and the more that you're putting it out, we can
[21:41]week or week, it's just as simple as that's what makes it the most successful across
[21:45]the board.
[21:46]So I think that's a boring answer.
[21:49]We started it.
[21:50]We had a prototype podcast that we did for about six months and that was like four years
[21:55]ago and then the high low has been going three years.
[22:00]So it'd been added for a while and I think we're such a small place here in the UK,
[22:07]obviously, so it's not the same thing.
[22:10]And our tiny community island, but there weren't that many women doing two-hand podcasts
[22:17]whereas the American podcast market, I think there are much more women doing what we do.
[22:23]I think we're quite lucky we were one of the first pairings to do it and we still sort
[22:29]of are one of the first pairings that we're particularly talking about the news.
[22:32]And I also think the thing that people, because to be totally honest with you and I shouldn't
[22:37]say this in the summer come just being self-deprecating, I'm quite amazed at how well it's
[22:43]that I still can't believe the figures of the downloads we get.
[22:46]And I back up, I back us and I think we do a good show, but I still sort of flummets
[22:53]that of anything I've done in my career, this is the thing that's like really, really taken
[22:57]off and quite a massive, like my own bending way and sometimes Pandora and I, my co-host,
[23:03]we were reading, so we now get 300,000 listens a week and we were reading something
[23:09]about circulation of British newspapers and the circulation of British magazines.
[23:17]And then we were talking about what seemed like big numbers and what seemed like not
[23:21]so big numbers and we were like, oh, well, you know, folks still get, I can't make
[23:24]it exactly, there's like a hundred and something thousand a month, we're like, that's massive.
[23:28]And then we were like, oh, we're triple that.
[23:31]We have, and it's not people, it's not people's eyes, people's ears, but it's kind
[23:36]of, it's kind of mad when you think of that because it's just suddenly feels like conversation
[23:41]that I have with this woman in her living room with the microphone every week.
[23:44]You know, it's important to remind yourself of those, of that relationship, because that's
[23:48]a huge responsibility in terms of what you're saying to people, and not only that,
[23:54]it also is, can make you very vulnerable, so this requires a lot of thought now when we
[24:00]talk, whereas at the beginning it was just, you know, we had like 80,000 people listening
[24:05]mainly our parents, right?
[24:07]But yeah, I think the other, I think the reason why people may be, I mean, this is how
[24:13]to clarify about how well it's done today, I think it's quite difficult to work out exactly
[24:17]what the formula's been that's made it work.
[24:19]I think, I think the fact of the said that it wasn't a saturated market.
[24:24]And then I also think, you know, we're in a culture now online of supreme self-assured expertise
[24:34]on everything is the currency, that's what people want.
[24:39]People want to not be corrected, they want to not contradict themselves, they want to
[24:43]not be humiliated in shame, they want to be perfectly politically correct, they want
[24:47]to be like a good person who's entirely fair and ethical all the time across every single
[24:52]subject and every single group, every single person who is a first group, and it doesn't
[24:55]matter if they're trying and learning, they have gold-style behaviour at all times, and
[25:02]I think, I think people are a lot really scared of their own fallibility in terms of their
[25:08]knowledge and curiosity and empathy, and what the highlight has always tried to do is
[25:13]provide a space of where you can ask a stupid question, and you shouldn't, well, always
[25:22]been thoughtful and obsessive and curious, you shouldn't be scared of gaps in your knowledge
[25:30]and being called ignorant or contradictory, should not silence you, a fair of being called
[25:36]that, should not silence you in learning more about the big, varied, fantastic, interesting
[25:43]world that we live in.
[25:44]That was excellent advice, thank you for that pep talk, especially with the US election
[25:51]around the corner, I feel like I don't know, I'm always afraid to say anything, so anyway,
[25:55]thank you for that, I appreciate it.
[25:57]I know, I know.
[25:58]So I was actually in the UK, I was in London very recently, and I was dragging my daughters
[26:03]to a bunch of bookstores, and I was like, wait a minute, dolly, who I'm interviewing, wrote
[26:08]the UK introduction to, I feel bad about my neck, I have to go find this book.
[26:13]So anyway, because I read, obviously, it's one of my favourite books, Nora Efron's, I
[26:18]feel bad about my neck, collection of essays and everything, and I got the new copy, so I
[26:22]could read your introduction, which was so fantastic, I read it on the plane, that I was
[26:26]like, I wish I had time, because now I'm dying to reread this book that I haven't read,
[26:30]I don't know.
[26:31]So anyway, it was fantastic, how did that come about, are you wrote the introduction?
[26:34]That's so lovely of you, thank you so much, I was so nervous about writing out this
[26:38]obviously, it's a book that means so much to send your women and you won't be able to
[26:43]to win showcase and represent why it means so much to send your women in the fact it is
[26:49]like, I think it is one of those books you can reread and reread and reread because it takes
[26:56]on a different meaning at every age of womanhood, it was a totally different book when
[27:00]I read it now, it's when I first read it in my early 20s, and it came about the opportunity
[27:05]came about since it introduced it because, I mean, I've just been harping on about Nora Efron
[27:10]for years and I'm a deeply obsessive person, and you know, when someone is formative or
[27:17]inspiring to me, I basically will tweet and write and reference and talk about them from
[27:25]now until eternity and so I think people have just heard and talked and I quite heard a lot
[27:30]in my writing and so I think people have heard me and I write about film, I just bladed
[27:37]and bladed and bladed and bladed until someone got the message that I absolutely love
[27:42]Nora Efron, so I think that, you know, I accidentally sort of not accidentally really pushed
[27:48]in a gender. You like, willed it to happen, you just put it out there and... Exactly, yeah.
[27:56]Back to your book for a minute, you documented your previous eating disorder very openly and candidly
[28:02]and said it was just due to a stroke of luck that you met Leo, your former boyfriend, otherwise
[28:07]you would have kept on getting thin and that there was no secret sauce to your recovery, it was
[28:11]just sort of an accident that you recovered. I just was hoping you could tell me a little bit more
[28:15]about that time in your life. Yeah, it's so funny. Now, I'm really glad I wrote that when I did
[28:23]because I think that conversations around bodies are being really, really marshaled at the moment
[28:31]and I think that there's probably a time not for a way, in fact people probably already think this
[28:40]where writing about that chapter could be seen, writing about that chapter in my life to be seen
[28:45]as problematic for some people because I am very honest about the fact that I had never really
[28:54]thought that my weight that much. I was quite big kid, I was quite a big girl, a teenager and that
[28:59]never really, I think they didn't bother me that much to me pre-op for me and then I had a big heartbreak
[29:06]and the only way that I could kind of gain any sort of control or the sense of love of
[29:11]love of ability was getting incredibly small and incredibly fast and the thing that I think people
[29:19]maybe might find difficult about it and I think this is something that lots of women
[29:23]have spoken to me since about it and said it's something that resonated with their lives.
[29:28]Yeah, it was, it was like really fun being with that ill and being that thing,
[29:34]even though it was torture and really acted up my body in a way that I still feel I am still
[29:42]recovering from much more later. The fact is I can't ignore the world that we operate in as women
[29:49]and what we're told makes you worthy of love and what makes you feel important and powerful and
[29:55]seen and it did make me feel very powerful and I think
[30:00]The, I can't remember exactly how I worded it in the birth, it was something like my health was plummeting, but my stocks were up.
[30:08]And that, that was the thing that was really difficult.
[30:12]Is that everyone, I was thinking to differently.
[30:14]I moved through the world with me when I sat then.
[30:16]And that was, that was a very addictive, false sense of control in a world that had kind of been turned upside down to me.
[30:27]Yeah, I mean, to be honest, I've spoken to, I've spoken to friends because writing that chapter and people reading it.
[30:34]I had lots of people close to me say that, you know, I was very young, I was 21.
[30:38]And my mum dealt with it as best as she could while knowing that I, there was nothing really she could have done while I was in that headspace.
[30:46]She just tried to keep me safe as possible.
[30:48]And I think lots of friends didn't have to handle it.
[30:51]There's an awful thing that happens when, when like, disaster strikes, when you're, when you're early 20s, you've got no ones equipped really to deal with it.
[30:59]And lots of friends said that they read that chapter and they regret that they weren't more forthcoming with that concern to me or that they didn't.
[31:06]They weren't more interventional.
[31:08]But I think if I carried on that way, they probably would have come as hard work.
[31:12]The intention would have had to come for my friends and my family in a bigger way than it already had.
[31:16]But as I mentioned, I fell in love with someone who cared for me very deeply, very early on, which I haven't ever had before.
[31:25]And he came aware that this was an issue in my life and I was open with him about it in a way that I haven't been with anyone.
[31:34]And then, you know, managed to get to a post of recovery.
[31:38]And then, again, the other thing that I think people sometimes aren't safe or uncomfortable to read about in the book is I'm very honest about the fact that since I was in my early 20s, I have lived a lifestyle that is healthy and sustainable and sensibly content.
[31:57]And if you put yourself through that kind of raising the punishment and self control and sorry self control is the wrong word, not self control itself deprivation and self sabotage.
[32:09]It's very, very difficult to unwire yourself completely from their thoughts and those thoughts do kind of stick around for a long time.
[32:19]But I don't regret writing it because I think to pretend that we live in a world where fitness isn't fetishised and being honest about how disastrous and what the long term effect can be if someone even recovery, I don't think not being truthful about that is helpful or like a feminist issue.
[32:43]I think it's like much more helpful to talk about the gnarlyness of that.
[32:48]Well, that was a good idea.
[32:49]No, no, that was one of my favorite parts of the book. So I'm glad you kept it in and I found it interesting.
[32:55]You wrote about it from a different perspective and I don't know. I loved it. It was one of the most memorable parts for me. So I'm glad you kept it.
[33:01]I know we're kind of running out of time. Do you have any advice to aspiring authors other than moving to London and getting up and going for a walk and spending your day writing.
[33:12]And then gossiping with friends at night, which sounds like heaven. Yeah. Yeah. And I must say it took me like I'm doing 10 years to get to a point where I could do that.
[33:24]And I'm very aware that this is a moment of freedom and luxury in my life where because of the success of my life that I can do that. And it might just be one hot moment.
[33:33]And then I won't be able to do that again. And, you know, I still managed to like write books and write screenplays and juggle lots of things and be very, very happy while doing it during a time where I have lots of things on the go.
[33:46]And I couldn't decide. I would long to just sit on a lot of double day, but I couldn't. And what's the main advice?
[33:53]I have, you know, the first, I didn't interrupt post about the other day. I did a picture of a notebook that I bought.
[34:01]I went to New York when I was like 24. And I was there with friends. Can I have an idea to write a book like an on fiction book.
[34:09]And I had no money associated to those who are going to be with everyone 20. I was so scared when I was out there for a week seeing her. And I had to really like plan, particularly what I was going to do today.
[34:25]So I wouldn't just completely run out of cash. And I think I decided I gave myself five dollars to buy one thing for myself while I was in New York to remember the trip.
[34:36]And then I was in Greenwich Village in a stationary shop. And I found this beautiful, like just a full note pad exercise book that I bought.
[34:44]And then I went into that in a cafe opposite plaza. And I sit to coffee incredibly slowly all afternoon. So I should stay at the table. And I wrote loads and loads of ideas for a nonfiction book about my 20s and everything.
[35:01]And it fills the whole book. Just all sorts of lots of it when I came to sit down and write the book after I got my book deal for years later. I used lots of little bits that lots of chapter way.
[35:13]But there were lots of the beginnings of sorts there and stories that I ended up using. And then just before New Year's this year.
[35:22]And some of the times did a little bit of a big paper here on a Sunday, did a piece that was about the best selling nonfiction books of the last year. And my book was number nine.
[35:34]And it felt so tricky to knew that we kind of found that that exercise book was my kind of mad scribble bin. And literally like coffee splatters from that cafe.
[35:45]And it reminded me that anything life changing any creative projects that will be life changing situation changing will take you to new places will connect to lots of people will somehow define who you are will be a really important.
[36:04]But you leave on the world, whatever that creative project is it will always begin in an exercise book. It will always begin on a tiny tiny page, whether it's a post it or an iPhone note or an extra $5 exercise book.
[36:19]That's the genesis of that's the source of everything. And you can't skip that bit and get straight to the exciting part.
[36:26]How the small piece of paper that you're currently scribbling on that is the seed that you're planting in the ground ground now for like the most glorious thing that can grow.
[36:36]Wow, love that great visual.
[36:39]Well, thank you so much, Dolly. Thanks for coming on the show and sharing all your amazing experience with me and I hope to meet you in person sometime soon.
[36:47]Me too. It was not true pleasure.
[36:49]You too. All right, enjoy the writing.
[36:52]Thank you. Okay, bye-bye.
[36:54]You've been listening to moms don't have time to read books with Zibi Owens. Please make sure to sign up for my newsletter at zibiowens.com to get more updates about episodes like these and also lots of live events.
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[37:18]You can follow me on Instagram at moms don't have time to read books. Thanks so much to Steve and Ryan at Texturesound for the sound editing.
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