As I get ready to “launch” my first novel, Yours Hopefully, I wanted to share some of what inspired me to write it.
Feeling homesick
A first reason to write this story set in Valais, in the mountains where I grew up, is that I miss them so much. Summer is especially difficult; because the Alps are my favourite place to be during the warmer months, but I don’t get back as often as I’d like. To me, few things beat the smell of the larch forest, or the cool glacier water streaming down the mountain on a scorching hot day.
So, while the story itself is pure fiction, the place is very real.
One summer kept running through my mind as I put down a first draft; it wasn’t a particularly happy summer. I had just had my heart broken – my first love wasn’t into me anymore, or so his best mate had told me. To mend this broken heart, or maybe to get some space from insufferable angsty old (young) me blasting Dookie on repeat, my parents sent me off to the caravan they had parked at the lake resort that inspired Valvert, also where said first boyfriend was holidaying.
And for a fortnight, I had complete freedom: I swam in the lake, at the local pool, hiked and camped up in the mountains, drank in an abandoned building like the one Em, Seb and Izzy call their den. I realised while I wrote that even though the boy is long forgotten, the place – that place, that summer – is still with me, like a fluffy comfort blanket. It’s a beautiful place to heal, fall in love, get your heart broken and do it all over again.
Taylor Swift
Before doing research for this book, I had heard of Taylor Swift, but never listened to her. My first experience of Shake it Off was watching Sing with my kids. But I was in the car with my daughter and her friends, and they had control of the stereo. They played Midnights, and it was ‘Lavender Haze’ I think that made one of them sit up – she almost cried while belting it out from the backseat. From her, it was unexpected enough to get me thinking more about Taylor Swift.
I started off fully detached, but by the time I finished watching her documentary Miss Americana I had gone native. I listened to all her albums when I wrote the book. Folklore in particular. But it was the drive and absolute conviction in her eventual success that I found most inspiring. Her road to artistic emancipation got me thinking about mine, and well… that is the underlying theme I explore in the book and the rest of the series, so I won’t say too much here.
Endometriosis
I had something of a revelation while drafting the novel. Because at first, Em was afflicted by another condition. In my attempt to explore how pain can knock someone off course… I hadn’t even considered my own. That baffled me for a bit when it (finally) occurred to me.
Eventually I realised how much I wish it didn’t affect me. My attitude to chronic pain had until then been a kind of crash and burn. Do all the things I should be able to do, pay for it later, with much frustration.
But more than that, I understood at last that because nobody else can see it, I sometimes wonder if I have the right to acknowledge its existence. Am I crazy? Am I weak? Is it pain I should be able to take and carry on as normal? Of course I know in my head that I’m not crazy, weak, and that pain is real and debilitating. But for all the years I’ve known I have endo, I hadn’t operationalised any of these facts. It doesn’t help that most people around you stop engaging after a few times you can’t do something, or when you’re unwell because of it… the lucky ones don’t know what it’s like to live with almost constant pain from something nobody – not even you – can actually see. I am lucky, because I was diagnosed early, and still, it has taken me most of my life to own it; to give myself the space to do the things I can, when I can do them, and no longer apologise for it. I hope Em gets there too.