How To Fail With Elizabeth Day - S2, Ep1 How to Fail: Jessie Burton

Episode Date: October 3, 2018

We're BACK! How To Fail With Elizabeth Day returns for a second season, and to kick this one off, I'm joined by mega-star, besteslling author Jessie Burton.Burton's 2014 debut novel, The Miniaturist, was published in 38 countries and sold over a million copies and last Christmas, it was adapted into a sumptuous two-part BBC drama starring Romola Garai and Anya Taylor-Joy. Her secnd novel, The Muse, was a Sunday Times bestseller and Burton has just published her first book for children, The Restless Girls.But Jessie actually started out wanting to be an actress, and spent much of her 20s trying and failing to land parts. Writing was something she did on the side, which eventually became her full-time career. It wasn't all plain-sailing, however, and in this interview, Jessie talks movingly about her struggles with anxiety, her breakdown at the height of her success and her failure to grieve the end of a meaningful relationship. We also talk about bodies, beauty, ambition and what to do if your instinct is to put your mum in a bin-bag (this makes sense if you listen, promise). Also featuring Margot, her extremely lovely grey-and-white cat. How To Fail With Elizabeth Day is hosted by Elizabeth Day, produced by Chris Sharp and sponsored by 4th Estate Books The Restless Girls by Jessie Burton is out now, published by Bloomsbury Social Media:Elizabeth Day @elizabdayJessie Burton @jesskatbeeChris Sharp @chrissharpaudio4th Estate Books @4thEstateBooks   Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

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Let's go seize the night. That's the powerful backing of American Express. Visit amex.ca slash yamex. Benefits vary by car and other conditions apply. Welcome to season two of How to Fail with Elizabeth Day, the podcast that celebrates the things that haven't gone right. It's good to be back. This is a podcast about learning from our mistakes and understanding that why we fail ultimately makes us stronger. Because learning how to fail in life actually means learning how to succeed

better. I'm your host, author and journalist Elizabeth Day, and every week I'll be asking a new interviewee what they've learned from failure. My guest this week is the best-selling novelist Jessie Burton. Burton burst onto the literary scene with her 2014 debut novel, The Miniaturist, which was published in 38 countries and sold over a million copies. Her second book, The Muse, was a Sunday Times number one bestseller. Those are the kind of achievements most authors dream of. But after graduating from Brasenose College, Oxford, Burtin's dream was to be an actor, graduating from Brasenose College, Oxford, Burton's dream was to be an actor, not a writer. She spent years struggling to make it, then ended up working as a PA in the city,

and only then began to write the first of several drafts of the novel that would change her life. Yet it wouldn't always change her life for the better. Burton has, in the past past been open about dealing with anxiety and depression I have broken down she wrote two years ago and now I am breaking open I remember reading that essay for the first time on your website when you put it up there and I was blown away by its power and the purity of your honesty reading it. And I think that's the first time we got in touch, actually, because I think it spoke to so many people, that kind of visceral quality of it. And that's why I'm so delighted to have you on the podcast. Thank you for agreeing.

No, thank you for having me. As soon as I listened to your first series and the essay that you wrote in The Observer, I was like, I have to talk to Elizabeth about failure. Yeah, I was so pleased. And success, but you know, the flip side. Yeah, definitely. Well, they go so often hand in hand, don't they? I think they do. They have to. Let's start with the success part of it, though. I've interviewed a few writers on this podcast, and it's interesting asking authors how they feel when they're writing, whether they feel it's a success as they're writing, or whether it's only after you've published a book that you can really assess that?

Well, for me, it's always, well, there's different types of success attached to the book and the process of writing the book. And I think generally, when I'm writing, I can't necessarily tell whether or not it's going to be a good book. I mean, the first book I wrote that was published, The Miniaturist, I had no idea. I mean, I honestly had no expectation. And that's actually an incredibly freeing thing. Because if you've not experienced failure or success, you don't know what you're expecting. You're just actually quite purely attached to the act of writing and the craft of it. So when I was writing it, I certainly didn't think, well, I'm going to sell loads of writing and the craft of it. So when I was writing it, I

certainly didn't think, well, I'm going to sell loads of copies and blah, blah, blah. And I think actually that's quite a dangerous mindset. Success is a personal perception, I think. What is successful to you as an artist or to you as a writer may not be the most commercially successful piece of work you produce, but it might be the one that you're most proud of. So the quantifying of success is actually quite hard, I think, creatively. But I think I tend to veer towards not negative, but cautious and self-critical and patient. Let's see, let's see, it's not there yet. It's not there yet. I suppose it's a sort of perfectionism. Because I remember once reading that you said that suppose it's a sort of perfectionism I because I remember once reading that you said that you wrote from a place of doubt and curiosity in fact I think it was the

email that you sent to me where you were outlining your failures which we'll get on to my essay to you yes which is so beautiful I've just said before we started recording that I'm just tempted to kind of publish it myself in the show notes in its entirety. But you said that you wrote from a place of doubt. And so therefore, when you were being asked all these questions, when the miniaturist became this massive global bestseller, and people were asking you about your work, you felt a bit of a fraud. Can you explain that? Yeah, I mean, I still believe that the best kind of art, generally speaking, is produced from a place of curiosity and doubt and not knowing something and wanting to probe it and wanting to experiment.

The kind of novels or the kind of paintings or music that you feel you're being bashed around the head with or, you know, very authoritative pieces of work or didactic pieces of work, they kind of put me off. So, yes, when The Miniaturist did become more or less of an overnight success, I mean, it was number one quite quickly, well, it kind of crawled up the charts, and then it stayed there. And I don't know, I can't quite remember it exactly how it all happened. But yes, there was this kind of assumption from the public that I was prepared for

that and was prepared to sort of issue nuggets of wisdom about how to write or how to make a novel successful or what the history of Amsterdam is because the book is set in 17th century Amsterdam and it was actually very disorientating to be assumed to be an authority on things suddenly when really through my whole professional life up to that point I'd been very much in a submissive or subordinate position. So as an actress constantly waiting for the phone to ring, constantly waiting for permission, and certainly as a PA, often the most effective PAs are the ones who kind of assimilate into the personality of their boss and work for them. So suddenly being

the one in control, allegedly, was actually hugely shocking. And I'm just wary of it even now, you know, I think as soon as you start sort of saying, well, this is what fiction is, or this is how to write a book on this is how I do things, you're in danger of kind of calcifying yourself. So yeah, it's a hard line now to tread, because I'll never have that innocence again. Yeah. And is it difficult now that you are so successful and you are so well known and there must be many, many demands on your time? Is it difficult to create the headspace necessary to write? At times, yeah. I think with The Muse, that was one of the worst times because I was trying to deal with the fallout of The Miniaturist, which is what I detailed in

that long blog post I wrote, which I put there incidentally, because I didn't want an editorial intervention. And I didn't want to cut it. And I didn't want comments, I just wanted to present it as a kind of fait accompli. And I did find it hard to be the public author, you know, with a finished work, issuing little aphorisms about writing and how I wrote the book and then going home and struggling deeply with a blank page and my own issues of confidence and my own troubled psyche at the time, I found that very hard. And I suppose all that heals or helps heal is time or, you know, familiarity with the the situation so I understand that there will be times when I am my private self working on a project it's unnamed you know it's not finished

it's not a product that's a huge difference and then the public author who has to go on the road like I'm trying to win an election campaign I mean honestly it's like take the photos with your baby and you know your granny and it lovely, but it's very odd. Yes. Well, because writing is such a private thing, even though you're ultimately doing it to connect, I guess. Yeah, that's what's so mad about it. I mean, I don't think I've ever met any published authors

or people who wish to be published who are doing it just solely to put it in a drawer at the end of the day and I think it's disingenuous of people to say that that's what they're doing it I mean obviously you have to do it for yourself otherwise what is the point but yeah you're doing it for an audience you're doing it to connect to offer something and everyone writes for different reasons but I guess it's just this weird thing of having to be the physical representative of something that's very metaphysical and experienced away from you you never see anyone really reading your book and also I suppose having to deal with other people's opinions of you and of your work and

that brings me on to the first failure you outlined to me which is your your failure to grieve. It's a very specific example. And the reason it brings me on to that is because you said this thing to me about how you were at school and you were clearly brilliant at school and academically gifted. And the deputy headmaster, apparently when he awarded the English prize to Jessie said, if Jessie Burton doesn't do something with her life, what hope do the rest of us have? said if jesse burton doesn't do something with her life what hope do the rest of us have which okay it's a lovely thing to say but my goodness the pressure i know no pressure i know i know and this is something i've been thinking about recently in my new novel is that kind of what you do with young people about that balance between huge expectation when it's just it should be just

warmth and encouragement and then when it can tip over into a sense that if I don't achieve fully constantly glowingly I'm a failure yeah and did your success at school and at passing exams do you think that kind of replaced the need for you to find your own identity and who you really were? I think so. I think that's been a huge revelation for me over the last two, three years. And sometimes I'm very embarrassed about it that I've got to the age of, well, I was 36 on Friday, but that I got to that point and had never perhaps tuned in emotionally. And I do think it has come from a more or less self-imposed state of doing, doing things that garner applause or garner approval and therefore make me feel safe. I think it's a pattern that was made way back when I was young and doing well at school. And

for most children, that's our life, isn't it? Well, there's a family life, but there's also a school life. At age five, we're at school a lot more than probably we're at home I think I just fell into a pattern that was always rewarding me of working very hard and imaginatively and creatively I did enjoy school I loved it and feeling that there was a formula there of working hard and getting the results and getting everyone's approval and everything the status quo maintaining yeah I also know my personality is quite well what's the word I don't know I take things badly and if I have a historically speaking if I've had a fallout with a friend it's like the end of the world I've not always been able to negotiate the

grey areas of emotional life I don't know why I mean partly I'm an only child so I never grew up around that sibling conflict where you can bash someone around the head with a lego brick and then be friends in five hours time or say something mean but you know that love is there I think I felt a lot of the love I got was conditional yeah and so when the miniaturist was hugely successful the biggest success I've ever had it was like almost too much well I've tried to write a book and oh it's an international bestseller what now who am I do you think you also had that thing that I had because you mentioned that you were an only child I'm not an only child

my sister's four years older than I am but she went to boarding school at one point. And so my life was very much a life of adults. Right. And I was always told I was very mature for my age. And I took that as praise. And therefore, I kind of, I sort of acted up to that. And I tried to be very mature and very kind of grown up and old and seeming. And I think people then slightly forgot that I was a child yeah I think if you're displaying kind of intellectual maturity it can mask not immaturity but a kind of vulnerability totally and it can carry on quite seamlessly until yeah you are 31 and suddenly like oh my god well until you go to Oxford and and tell me about the first romantic relationship yeah well I mean I think about this and I try and work out why it was just so seismic for me that this relationship that didn't work and I think it wasn't the first

I had it wasn't my first kind of important relationship but I think it was tied up with leaving home for the first time and also going to such a prestigious place as Oxford it was a huge point of pride and status I'm actually the first person I think in my family to go to university straight from school my mum and dad did it later on I'm from a family of like stagehands dancers gamblers ruffians from south london generally that although my family probably like no that's not true we had glamour um so yeah there was a lot of sort of hinging on that and i went from a comprehensive school in south london which was very diverse and your cultural capital kind of came from oh let's make a film this weekend in Portobello

basketball courts, or let's do a play or let's, you know, and suddenly I went to this place where everyone already knew each other. That was kind of where your value came from. And I quickly fell in with a group and I did have a good time. I don't want to sort of paint a portrait of it being really miserable, but at times it was, it was hard to find my gang, my group. And this relationship carried on for three and a half years. And I think it was more or less my anchor. I made the mistake of not making enough of my own friends. I sort of made all his friends and I found them really interesting, funny, exciting company. But then when it all fell apart, I couldn't accept it. And I think I described it to you as a failure to grieve. And I think it is tied up with this,

firstly, a sort of emotional cul-de-sac I was in or like emotional illiteracy. But also I did perceive it as a failure. I couldn't make this relationship work I couldn't make him want to be with me I found that outrageous actually I just carried on pretending I was fine for a good few years and actually what would have been much better would have been putting my hand up and saying this is awful and giving validity to those feelings and not thinking they were beneath me intellectually or that one didn't cry tears over a boy so yeah and

I think about it and I think it really did screw me up for quite a long time well because I guess it was one of the first times that you had put in the requisite effort and it hadn't been repaid yes and understanding that you can't control everything you can't control another person and furthermore you can let someone into your life who's going to turn it into utter chaos and that was another thing I didn't realize rationally I could understand okay well I'm not going to see him I'm not going to be with him but then the fact that my decision to involve myself with him made such a mess of my life yeah but I could have mitigated those circumstances I think I could have tried to well grieve better to understand that it was okay to cry that it was okay to find this painful but I pathetically thought that it was pathetic to be upset because I had a pattern

of not stiff upper lip but just success being a success in my life and so this was an outrageous anomaly and did you keep in touch with him after the breakup or was it one of those brutal ones where well we were still at the same college for a year. And I kept seeing him, you know, I knew he was with other girls. I mean, we were really girls, really. We were still very young. I mean, I know we probably were women, but, you know, in terms of an emotional sophistication. And then it went on and on, on and off for another four years.

I couldn't get him out of my bloodstream. I couldn't. I didn't know how to it wasn't healthy and then I ended up going out with his best friend oh my god I know that was stupid this is an intense period of your life and I remember my friend Teasy her name is really Victoria but her brother couldn't pronounce her name when she was young so she's Teasy and I remember her saying don't do this Jess don't go out with this other and I was like but I love him of course I didn't I mean maybe I did a bit but I just was

I was so hurt and I didn't have the emotional faculties to know how to look after myself to know that it was okay that that I did deserve better treatment. Yeah. That it wasn't healthy to go running off up the road after him, that I was debasing myself, that I was offering myself cheaply without dignity. I never made the same mistake again, basically. It's so difficult, isn't it?

Because you can be incredibly successful as a woman in a professional or academic capacity yeah and yet for so many of us it feels as if we believe our ultimate happiness and fulfillment can only come in the guise of a romantic relationship yeah as much as there is public discourse and instagram discourse against that very deep-seated message I think it's still there you're still valued if you're in a couple girls women still place a high premium on the attention of a man or the fact that they might be loved in that way yeah there are arguments and there are good examples I've seen of people breaking that, but it's very hard to shake. Where do you think it comes from? Do you think it's the curse of the rom-com? It's an interesting one. I mean, partly, yes. I think the stories that we are fed,

probably our generation, I don't know what girls aged 9 and 10 and 11 are reading in great swathes right now, but they were often American high school or rom-coms where boys and girls seemed to sort of date and the pinnacle of a girl's life was being picked and even if you were the cool gang like Winona Ryder and Heathers she still had a boy I mean eventually she sort of shakes him off too so maybe that's a bit more of a radical message but it's a hard one to shake off and I know so many women like you said who it's like their Achilles heel and maybe we have to have some Achilles heel I don't know yes because we're otherwise we'd be too fabulous we would be too fabulous but I do remember listening to I think it was that your interview with Olivia Lang and

you said your friend when she was broken up by a guy and she's like, what a fool. Like, what a loser. He's lost out. And it's like, that's so sensible to think like that. Yeah. But it takes a long time to get that confidence. Well, it's sensible and it's radical.

It's hugely radical. This is my friend Tess, who's become the kind of unwitting, sort of marginal hero of this podcast because so many people quote it back to me yeah because I do remember like you being so stunned when she said that because I just thought oh maybe I can actively make the decision to think that the next time it happens to me and I and I kind of did and it kind of worked that's so brilliant yeah yeah it's funny because I do see

so many women try and work out what's wrong with them, why this man doesn't want to be with them. But I am getting better and I did, weirdly, parallel to these sort of horrible times I was having, I didn't want to be with him if he didn't want to be with me. There was that going on at the same time, but what I'm saying is that I didn't do any work on myself, basically, and I didn't try and understand that I still had a lot to offer to

somebody else but even like I didn't want to offer myself to someone else either like it was just you see how I just slipped into that yeah I just said that yes that's exactly the problem why was I even thinking like well I'll you know I'm so brilliant when the right man comes along yeah you did say in your email to be fair to you to be compassionate to yourself you did say actually looking for the next boyfriend is never the solution. No it well I learned that because I ended up doing that and no and so three years ago this November actually I broke up with my long-term partner of eight years and I absolutely made sure that I did grieve and I wasn't embarrassed by my emotions and I burst into tears when I felt like it and I texted friends when I said I was feeling a bit low

I had conversations with him as well because we wanted to stay friends and we have and I remember I was doing a show at the National probably at four years before that and my friend was breaking up with her long-term boyfriend and she would turn up at stage door in floods of tears every day. Sometimes she'd do the show crying. And I just remember being stunned by this. And at first was really annoyed by it. And then I realised it was annoying because I was jealous that she could do that. And she thought that that was okay. Whereas I wouldn't have done it and getting in touch with myself not wanting to sound too touchy-feely was really important I think that's so true and a lot of what you say resonates so deeply with me and the fact that you call it grief is I think spot on

there is no grief quite like heartbreak and I can say that having experienced the death of people I've loved heartbreak is is so tricky to deal with because it does go to the root of who you think you are right exactly and ultimately rejection by someone who's still alive exactly you're weighed and judged wanting it's brutal and also because you say in the sort of spectrum of grief the death of a loved one or somebody important to you there's a sort of spectrum of grief, the death of a loved one or somebody important to you, there's a sort of rule or set of, you know, and people treat you differently. But heartbreak, I mean, I read somewhere

that it does actually rewire your brain. Like severe heartbreak can change your brain patterns. I just thought, yeah, that definitely happened to me. I mean, I was doing stupid things, really dumb things, like going out with the best mate. That was really stupid. But self-damaging things that I would like to think I wouldn't do now. You mentioned there that you were doing a show at the National. And that brings us on to what I mentioned in the introduction, that you really, really wanted to be an actor during this time. on to what I mentioned in the introduction that you really really wanted to be an actor during this time and I found that as awful as breakups are they do sometimes generate really fertile

periods of creativity yes they certainly do was that your experience there well you know that one was so traumatic it's only echoing now in my writing I've found like I can deal with it now I did break up or another boy dumped me by phone thanks you know who you are I know by phone we were like we were in I think I was in year 12 and he was in year 13 and he said you know I don't think we should go out anymore on the phone I went yeah okay fine and then seven months of poetry like some pretty good poetry actually and it won the London School's Poetry Prize oh my gosh actually no I'm exaggerating runner up but that's almost better because it leaves room to improve exactly room to improve so yeah no absolutely and it's actually

and I'm sure you know this it's quite hard to write about love to pinpoint love fictionally to put it into words whereas Heartbreak it's kind of fueled English literature certainly and European and probably non-western literature since time began rejection and feeling who am I now but you were being sorry this is such a terrible link I was about to say you were being rejected all the time you were being rejected left right and center because you were being an actor and you had to do auditions which to me just just I hate the thought of having to do an audition yeah I mean they're not the best I mean some people like them I've spoken to a few directors and casting directors and they often say the best actors the ones who are bad at the audition which is is good to know if anyone's out there worrying that they're not doing good auditions as actors but

yeah no I mean rejection professionally was a huge part of my professional life yeah. So you spent a lot of your early 20s? Yeah so I went to drama school after Oxford I did a postgraduate at Central School of Speech and Drama and still harbouring those dreams that I was going to be the next Kate Winslet and it's that realisation as the years progress oh I'm still not I'm still not there and it was very interesting to see as the decade went on who from my year was hanging on or who was seeing the light or the writing on the wall and adapting and I think I said to you in the email I always wrote and I always sort of wrote without much

thought whereas I always wanted to be an actress so it was like a journey there was a distance between me and my goal yeah I got an agent and I did some understudy work at the National and Ensemble work but it never broke out into where I wanted to be and I guess I am an ambitious person and I I like working I like making work I like working, I like making work, I like making people happy through my work be it performance or writing and it was hugely demoralising and I know in the grand scheme of things it's not the end of the world but my family, we didn't have any money, it wasn't like oh Jess you can do some interning for free or whatever no I had to go and earn a living and pay my rent like most people do and it was drawing me away from having time and money to spend on doing projects that I could have done were I to have had a trust fund or and I think

that was a shock when I left Oxford. Oxford was a sort of suspended reality of a perceived meritocracy where everyone was equal and then of course we left and then I suddenly discovered X was working for Michael Howard conservative MP and this person was at the spectator and this person was at the times and this person and I was just like how oh your godfather oh your mom you know and I didn't have any of that and that kind of fed my anger slightly as well of course I was just like this is so grossly unfair and I can't imagine what it was like for some other people who couldn't find work like I did as a PA which paid well but yeah it was you

know I got to age about 27 28 and I was really miserable because again going back to my dear deputy head you know remembering what promise I had had and what I'd been told I had and feeling deeply that I wasn't going to make good on it also none of my closest friends are really in publishing or acting you know one is a radiologist and one is a an early years literacy specialist primary school teacher and they were thriving in their fields and I was drowning in mine. I just felt very much as if I was failing. I was failing. Hi, I'm Matt Lewis, historian and host of a new chapter of Echoes of History, a Ubisoft podcast brought to you by History Hit. Join me and world leading experts every week as we explore the incredible real life history that inspires the locations, the characters and the storylines of Assassin's Creed. Listen and follow Echoes of History,

a Ubisoft podcast brought to you by History Hit, wherever you get your podcasts. Will no one rid me of this troublesome priest? This is a time of great foreboding. These words supposedly uttered by a king over 800 years ago. These words supposedly uttered by a king over 800 years ago set in motion a chain of gruesome events and sparked cult-like devotion across the world. I'm Matt Lewis. cult-like devotion across the world. I'm Matt Lewis.

Join us as we unwrap the enigma and get to the heart of what really happened to Thomas Beckett by subscribing to Gone Medieval from History Hit. Do you remember one of the worst auditions from that time yeah I mean there were some really bad ones I remember I was probably about 27 there were two there was one for a French car and I was a mother of like a 10 year old and that's what starts happening the women stay age 27 and their children become like age 11 and 12 and I just remember I just didn't get it but I remember the that shock of that aging and then the other one was a yogurt commercial where I had to eat a yogurt in the audition and because I was having so few commercial auditions, I ate the whole thing. And she's like, you're not really supposed to eat it. And I was just like trying to look like attractive while stuffing a yacht player wherever it was in my mouth.

And I just thought, what are you doing? You know, and this wasn't even for plays. And there was an audition at Elstree Studios. I think that's in Hertfordshire. I can't remember, but it's out. And running in my lunch break, where I was working in a private equity firm, asking someone to cover me,

an hour and a half train there, five cursory minutes for one line in EastEnders and then the train back and hoping, hoping, hoping and of course never hearing anything. And I was just so miserable. I went for 12 months without any audition. And then I got a part in a stage adaptation of Persuasion by Jane Austen.

I mean, there's a reason why you don't stage Jane Austen. It was so bad because you lose her voice. It's just the dialogue. And it was like Midsummer Murders, but in corsets. It was so bad. And I just thought, I'm bored. And I was behaving badly on stage. I was corpsing and trying to make my cast members laugh. And I was like, Jessie, what are you doing? I have a short attention span. I was too naughty. So I was actually looking for other jobs. I was thinking maybe I could retrain or maybe I could, I didn't know as what, but just the words retrain. And then I thought I could maybe try and write three days a week or be a PA for three days a week. And the other two days of the working week thought I could maybe try and write three days a week or be a PA for three days a week and the other two days of the working week I could dedicate to writing because I think the writing

became that last hope and I don't mean to be dramatic about it but I really think what I did was replace that dream of of acting that dream of a successful acting career and then replaced it with the possibility of a successful writing career which is is exactly what I did I just turned my attention and started the long road of hope again and is that then what you did you did three days as a PA and two days writing no I did actually carry on writing after work I work five days a week in jobs and so I would try and get cover at Christmas time often or maternity leave and honestly some of these jobs I did in the city I don't even know what the person I was covering did like I would just sit there sit for 10 hours going slowly and I don't know what these people do you have to wear a suit

yeah well that was the other thing I kept trying to sort of I had to go into the shop and buy like a black skirt or a blouse but I always ended up buying a red skirt and a flowery blouse because I couldn't bear to buy corporate clothing it was like an admission and they would often try and contract me permanently and I'd resist constantly because I felt as soon as I do that then I'm theirs and I'll yes I'll have a pension plan and but I can't I can't I can't let go and so I would work on the train, I'd write stuff on my phone, or I would write stuff during the job, you know, make it look like I was working hard, which is naughty, but also enterprising. Like, you know, you had to do what you have to do. And then as the first draft began to become a full novel, I would try and find jobs,

which I was doing two or three weeks. And then I'd take two weeks off and live off that money and go back and forth and back and forth the difference was that through my 20s I didn't build anything because I wanted that dream of acting I didn't do any other professional stuff that could have built on anything the only thing I had was to be a PA which I just intellectually I think I would have found that quite difficult. I think what's amazing about that story you've just told is how much hard work and graft you put into it and I'm sure you are asked this many times as I am about you know how do you write a novel yeah and how do you get published? And my answer to it is always, you have to actually write it. And you sort of have to make the time that you did. That's an

incredible dedication and drive that you had. Yes, I am very driven. You are ambitious, you said earlier, which I think is such an important word for women to claim. Yeah, I want to do things and I've never not done them and it's a great quality of mine but it can also hammer me into the ground sometimes with exhaustion yeah I think yes you do have to want it I went to a party at the weekend and this man said you know oh I've started novel three or four times and I just sort of think yeah but just write the bloody thing then you know, there's no secret to it. It's the will. You have to want to do it.

And it's not very pleasant a lot of the time. It is an exercise in failure because what's in your mind's eye is never, ever on the page. You know, in my mind, I've written wonderful books. And then they come out and I'm like, oh, my God. That's not what I wanted to say. So, yeah. But you see see I had nothing to lose and I was quite desperate I was quite scared because I was scared of losing that self

that I had been since I was five and then of course what happened was that self cracked because I just pushed so hard and I had achieved. I wouldn't change anything about the miniaturist and the subsequent novels because, God, what a wonderful, perfect privilege. But sometimes the best things that happen to you are also the worst or the hardest to process in real time. I think about it and I think I am a deeply different person to how I was.

My boyfriend at the time said it he's like you have changed and I say how have I changed he's like well you're more serious that's a shame but he said you've had to deal with a great deal of things and a lot of different responsibilities and people want things from you and are answerable to you and are looking to you and you've had to learn how to stand up for yourself and I guess I'm possibly reaching here but what that sounds like to me is that you've learned how to set your boundaries yeah better I would say in the last sort of 18 months because what happened after the miniaturist was a slow I don't really know what a breakdown is but I suppose it is I mean the observer when the muse came out the second book they sort of

that's the headline I was like oh my god like half of my family didn't even really know what had happened to me they put that you'd had a breakdown in the headline yes that she had great success and then I don't know if they said nervous breakdown oh gosh how very 1950s of them I know but you know I recently saw a documentary about Muriel Spark Kirstie Watt presented this wonderful the primes of Muriel Spark and she was so frank talking about her breakdown and I that gave me great courage because I just thought well if she's just like sitting there with her you know Versace glasses and you know amazing clothes then I can do it it's fine anyway what I'm saying is boundaries.

So that was a complete lack of boundary and lack of, I suppose, differentiating the private self who was used to failure and the public self who had to be this constant emblem of success. And when I wrote that piece, I was trying to bridge those two together or trying to broach the subject of what success really is. And it kind of happened again. After the Muse book tour, again, it was heavy duty. It was a lot of dates in the UK and then the US and then back to the UK.

And I just don't think it's healthy for anyone to have to talk about themselves. I know I'm doing this with you, but this is fine. But I mean, publicly with people just sort of owning you I think it's very damaging to the creative drive and the same thing happened again I got very anxious we had to pull me out of big events because all the smaller ones had accumulated to make me very burned out again so for me my anxiety comes when I'm tired and just worn out and I don't have my faculties around me. So this time around, I've got a book coming out in September for children. And I think the publishers are much more aware. And as they are, I think for all authors more, I think people are talking a bit more about it. There just has to be a limit to what you do. Will you explain to me the form that your anxiety takes? Okay the worst

physically I can remember was the September of 2016 when I was doing an event with Alex Clark lovely woman and we were sitting and it was for Q Festival and she was asking me what my book can you just tell us a bit about news and I just remember my ears just ringing hugely like this high pitched ringing, my heart yammering, my palms very sweaty. And I couldn't remember really what my book was about. And I remember, I swallow, that all happens. And then there's a huge sense of guilt and embarrassment that people have come to hear me and all I want to do is bolt. Those are very immediate symptoms. But behind the scenes, I think I've always been quite anxious person, but I didn't really know what it was. And I think in some ways I'm quite glad my parents didn't have it diagnosed.

I didn't become stigmatized with anything. It was just the who am I feeling. have it diagnosed. I didn't become stigmatized with anything. It was just the who am I feeling. But a doctor when I was about 15, I took myself to him because I was getting sick of these derealization, they're called, where you just sort of step out of your surroundings. You challenge the reality of them. Your mind is like, well, who am I? Who is this voice in my mind? I would recognize your face, but I wouldn't know what you were. It feels like everything's a bit like the Truman Show or the eternal sunshine of a spotless mind is one of the closest things I've seen to how it feels.

And it's an incredibly frightening feeling. And I've had that since I was about nine or ten. And then it's the huge fear of doing something embarrassing and also intrusive thoughts. Those were hugely difficult for me to handle when I was growing up I would sort of think and I think Bryony Gordon's talked about these a lot and it is something that is to do with OCD I've never been officially diagnosed with that but you think hugely transgressive thoughts so I used to be very frightened that I had the capacity to kill my

parents so aged 11 12 and this apparently happens with kids some kids when you hit puberty there's this sudden awareness of your power god that's so interesting yeah and you suddenly realize oh god well i could go to the kitchen and get a knife and do this and in my mind because i have a very overactive imagination that catastrophizes as much as anything i could see that I was all I could go into the room and I could do that and then I could put them in bin bags and then I could go you know and I was horrified that the mind had the capacity to think these things and eventually I just hated myself so much that I just didn't give myself a break I didn't laugh at it or I

didn't take the sting out of it I was just mortified and I eventually told my mum and I just can't imagine if I had a kid like come like mum I'm really nervous I'm going to kill you in the night and she just said well you're not going to do that are you and I think I feel like I had to tell her that at least warn her in advance power you know if I'm at the door with the knife yeah you know but yeah try and lose its power but I think my anxiety is just these melee of things it's so interesting that you talk about catastrophizing because I think I do that hugely in intimate relationships something will happen and I'll invent an anxiety-driven narrative in my head that is the worst possible case scenario what

might be going on right and I think what's been interesting about it of late is that sometimes I confuse that because it's so convincing you're right the narratives you spool yourself in your own head yeah can be so convincing that it's really difficult to detach that narrative from a what is actually going on and be your own instinct yeah because there's this rightly there's this whole conversation to be had about women particularly women but also men being able to drown out the white noise of society and being able to listen and trust their own instinct yeah but it's so hard to do if you have this competing if your instinct is like to put your mum in a bin bag I know how do you separate the two I know it's like how do you

trust which bit do you trust how do you trust anyone well that's a big question I know and it is hard I mean I've learned a bit more to be like oh yeah here comes the intrusive thought but I just know that I don't really mean that and it's just my mind it's fine and I have got a lot better in managing that but in terms of persuading yourself of things that aren't real or aren't really happening, getting yourself tied in a knot without checking in with someone as to what their reality is.

I mean, it's good to talk, I guess, and have the sting taken out of all of those things. But it's the kind of whole conundrum of life, isn't it? Clashing realities and the stories we tell ourselves for so long and then they don't serve us anymore. And you have to learn how to tell yourself a different story because everything is telling yourself a story. So I know what you're saying is the dodgy narrative actually part of my instinct. Is it part of my subconscious protecting me? But maybe you're making those

stories up because you're frightened of being hurt and you want to get there first chassis you're right you're right it's it's funny isn't it because you make up the story and then you make up the excuse to yeah i do it too like pre-empting it's a survival mechanism you just don't want to be hurt so you're kind of running your urself if you like through that scenario so that you're ready if it does happen but what happens is it's not going to happen so why waste now well yeah and why waste the time the essay that we've been speaking about which is it's still available on your website it's still there yeah I honestly honestly advise everyone

to read it I thought it was such an amazing piece of writing and you had photos accompanying it yes it was so it was a very powerful thing to do because you were talking about how you looked in those photos and what you see when you look at them can you tell us about that yeah I think the first one was me at my desk in the middle of the well well, depression. And it's awful. I mean, it's really bad as well because on Google Images you can still see it. I'm like, oh my God, why did I do that? I mean, I hate them all anyway.

They're all bloody awful, those photos. I'm so much better at selfies. I don't know. What is it? Well, I mean, because we're both relatively tall and it's just all about angles. I know. And that's another thing incidentally about being a novelist when you're suddenly expected to know how to dress or how to look it's just bullshit

like if you're an actress you get all the full works anyway that's an aside yeah that photo I did decide to put because I felt quite that people had an idea of who I was, which is fine. You sort of clutch at straws. And I think people read the, went to Oxford, did, you know. And yes, that's a huge part of who I am. But it's actually a very minor point on my life CV. And I just wanted to put that photo up. And it's me looking pretty dead behind the eyes, to be honest with you. So that was January of 2015.

And by March, I was diagnosed with depression and I just looked dead in the eyes I just looked pale and miserable I'd taken myself off to I think Gran Canaria because I thought there might be some sun in January I was you know I took myself off on a like flight and it was so cold and I'd taken summer linens and cotton and I just had to wear all my clothes all all the time and the cook took pity on me and would leave my food outside my door because I didn't want to sit it was a bit like an Ian Forsten of where everyone had to sit for dinner together I hate that so much I was like actually no please no let me just eat in silence those months I think were my lowest point

because by March was when and February I think I burst into tears on the phone to my agent saying I can't do this anymore and she sort of swept into action and cancelled things that I had all going on that summer that were pressurizing me and then the last photo is me in Colombia in January of the next year, 2016. And I was newly single. And I was, I suppose I could say I was single for the first time as a sort of proper adult. And I had financial independence, which was a huge help. But I'd finished the Muse.

I was happy alone. I was in the Colombian rainforest. And I was just so content. I genuinely, I think, I keep thinking back to those days and just trying to remember how it was to feel like that just purely in the moment I don't think I live very much in the moment it's very hard to and I don't think we should beat ourselves up too much about not doing it because we're always constantly being told to but bloody hard but in those days there was nothing to do but just be and I think it helps when you're out of your normal context and I think I just came to realize you know I'm never going to be the best novelist

in the world that doesn't exist neither am I going to be the worst and there are going to be people who hate my work and there are going to be people who love it and all that really matters is that I'm well and the people I love are well and I know that I had that lovely moral lesson given to me because I did become very successful financially and also professionally and that allowed me to realise what really mattered which was being healthy and loved

and loving those people and and making sure they're all all right which is a bit pious I suppose but no it's not pious at all because it comes from actual experience yeah it comes from hard one life that you've been through yeah yeah I mean I have been listening to other people on this on your podcast thinking well you know I haven't had that I haven't had it that tough but I mean I think there is no hierarchy of suffering no I know I know can I ask you about Frida Kahlo go for it because um because I'm a big fan of yours on Instagram so I know that she's a seminal influence on you yeah she's someone who for me is very interesting as a female artist because of the attention she pays her own body and I wanted to ask you about you and your body and how you

feel about it in the context of us just having discussed like how horrible it is having your photo taken horrible yeah yeah I mean she she's so hugely inspirational to me I mean there's just so many reasons why and I suppose one of the main reasons is because she took what was perceived disability, her leg, her fractured spine, her permanently damaged reproductive organs, and she made them into an act of defiance and made people appreciate her for lots of other things rather than pity her. I haven't thought that much about how to present my body, if you like, or my face publicly, because I feel that it's sort of been done without much of my permission. In the first place, there's just always this assumption that

you'll have your photo taken and you don't have any editorial control over that picture. You'll have your photo taken and you don't have any editorial control over that picture. I've had photo shoots where they've put on so much makeup on my face that I look like Bette Lynch. No shade to Bette Lynch. She was a great icon, but I'm not Bette Lynch. I'm feeling a bit that's out of my control. And I think that's why I do enjoy Instagram because, yes, I can curate the image a bit more and show the colours I love and the jewellery I love.

And I think what's most important to me as a woman who makes art is to show that you can be interested in fashion and decorate yourself and narrate yourself, narrate yourself through your body and also be taken seriously as an intellectual. And I will always do that regardless of what the press will do about which image and all of that it's so binary that idea that you know we have to be wearing sackcloth and never wash our faces and sort of it's just totally anathema to me that. But I haven't thought in great depth.

I think in some ways I am lucky because I'm not picked on for my weight. I'm not oversized or anything like that. And I don't tend to get too much attention that way. I don't know why. I love that thing you said about narrating yourself through your own body. That makes total sense to me. It just feels to me like women aren't going to be let off the hook with it so we might as well go full hog with it a male writer can just turn up in

a scruffy old shirt and they'll think it's oh well you know he's been thinking deep thoughts that day yeah you know if we do it's like oh hello letting yourself go exactly but again that's an interesting thing because i must have been conditioned from a really young age to love lipstick and mascara and the full wall paint and i've got a four and a half well she's five tomorrow my goddaughter she loves it she wants highlighter pens we don't do full varnish but she wants the highlighter pens on her nails she's got i went to see her today she's got a big Frida crown and it's not anything her parents have done so we don't know where it comes from and she's only just started school so it's that conundrum what do you think you have learned from your three episodes of failure do you think you know yourself better as a result

yeah I do I think I've come to know myself a lot better maybe in the last two and a half years. It's been super accelerated self knowledge. Whereas I think I just drifted. I just sort of was hitting side to side as I moved through my 20s, which I think is fairly normal. I mean, I feel that there's a kind of feeling that young women think they have to know everything and be everything and they don't. And I've much more enjoyed my 30s than I did my 20s. I think I've learned that it's okay to fail. It's essential to fail because how else are you going to learn from mistakes? So do take those risks. Do try something that you don't know whether you'll succeed at. And it's something actually, to quote Donald Glover, of all people,

but he said he hires for his TV show only people who've never written for TV, who don't know the rules, so they don't know whether what they're doing is going to be a catastrophe. So there's just that freedom of expression. So I think I've learned to try and retain some of that innocence of those TV writers or me before the miniaturist was successful. And I've learned it's okay to grieve, it's okay to feel rubbish. Also, to understand that not everyone is going to understand what you're going through, and you can't blame them for that. And you can't really change other people, blame them for that. And you can't really change other people, but you can change yourself and your setting and your scenario. And I had a therapist post-miniaturist, which was incredibly

helpful. And I still think about a lot of what came up in those sessions with her. And I think it's informed my fiction. And what I'm writing now definitely is about this kind of concept of failure and I write all women deserve the privilege of failure but few women get it and I think I write something like self-doubt in women is the plague of locusts I cannot wait to read this book yeah what's it called well I haven't got a title at the moment you failed failed to write a title I'm so bad at titles me too all right good another one because I always write like this is a great title and then and then pick a book I'm like so the title I'm like you hate it don't you I've never been able to name any of my books I mean it's fun in fiction I don't know if you find this you like writing characters who are perhaps I think you write more sort of nuanced fiction than me.

Mine is sort of like these sort of theatrical characters who are kind of archetypes or fantasy types. Certainly in The Muse, there was this character called Marjorie Quick, who's kind of my ideal older self, who sort of doesn't really care what people think, but not in a really obnoxious way. And I would like to be more like that. care what people think but not in a really obnoxious way and I would like to be more like that and I do like creating those characters who are kind of we're aspirational to that behavior yeah for because I do have quite a lot of young women reading my books so it's always heartening to me when they stick to a character who isn't worried about everyone liking her and because you know these are all mistakes I have made the need to please people the need to put up a good front a cool professional happy blah you know it's not the reality and I would

just like to point out because we are drawing to a close although as ever when I talk to you I feel I could talk to you for many decades that was quick I know it's gone so quickly. I just want to point out to people listening that you did end up with a part in the TV adaptation of The Miniaturist. I did. So you ended up creating your own role as an actor, but by becoming this best-selling novelist, which is a beautiful kind of narrative serendipity.

Yeah, I mean, yeah, exactly. You want to be on the TV? Write the novel first. But that's like what Phoebe, because I loved Phoebe's one. She was actually the same year as my ex-boyfriend at RADA. And she did the thing, didn't she? No one was giving her the parts, so she wrote them herself. Exactly.

This is Phoebe Waller-Bridge. Yeah, sorry. I totally agree with that. You can't wait around for permission from people. Completely. No one gave me permission to write that book. Doing the podcast has actually been really interesting for me because it's the first thing I've done over which I've had complete creative control. Yeah. And it was just something I sort of thought was interesting. I just went

ahead and did it. And it's been such a good lesson that that kind of thing is possible. Yeah. Yeah. And that if you're thinking it, the chances are that other people will connect to it too yeah you just have to be honest and come from a place of truth exactly well you have to take the risks you have to make those leaps of faith but the ultimate beauty is that having faith in yourself is just a hugely radical act yes jesse burton that is such a perfect place to end on i'm going to let you go and play with your lovely grey and white cat, Margot. And I just want to thank you so much for coming on this podcast and talking so eloquently and so intelligently about failure and success. Oh, thank you for having me.