In January 2021, somewhere in the middle of the UK’s second lockdown, I began shadowing the bestselling author Lisa Jewell. In many ways, it wasn’t an ideal time for shadowing someone – the streets were so empty, it would be easy to spot a stalker, and if you did track your target down, you couldn’t stand within two metres of them or enter their home without opening all the windows – so I started on Zoom, watching her on webcam.
Luckily, this was a consensual stalking. Lisa, after months of consideration, had agreed to let a complete stranger into her life. I would follow her process through the writing of The Family Remains, her second-ever sequel, from one January to the next: reading her drafts, interrogating her about her back catalogue and ultimately becoming part of her creative process.
I think it’s fair to say we both learned a lot, about each other and about writing, and perhaps also about ourselves. Here are some of my own take-aways, specifically on how to create a bestseller within a year.
1 FIND YOUR SPACE AND TIME
Lisa lives and writes in a beautifulcroissants. Not so, of course. Lisa mailed me in between folding her family’s clothes, painting her nails and cleaning the fridge, between dealing with teenage-daughter emergencies, between walking dogs and taking sick pets to the vet.
