Annie Lord and Ione Gamble on Vulnerability, Writing for IRL and the ‘Influencerification’ of Writers
Annie Lord and Ione Gamble released their debut books this summer and while they cover different topics (heartbreak and chronic illness respectively), one theme that runs between them is an unflinching vulnerability about the author’s personal experience.
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Annie Lord feels like the UK's more sex-positive answer to Carrie Bradshaw. After a viral VICE article, she landed a bi-monthly dating column at British Vogue where the men she pursues are an accessory to her self-discovery rather than the centre of her world. Her writing is like getting a voice note from your favourite single friend after a date but instead of containing mumbled giddiness fueled by too many pints of Guinness, it’s actually full of analysis of the patriarchal expectations on women, honesty about the fatigue that comes with dating and statements that make you question your own dating habits. In her book ‘Notes on Heartbreak’, Annie brings her signature honesty and relatability to the common experience of heartbreak, soothing the broken-hearted among us.
Ione Gamble is Polyester Zine’s glamorous Editor in Chief, she is rarely seen without a tiny bag and the vape that lives within it. This summer she published her first book, ‘Poor Little Sick Girls: A Love Letter to Unacceptable Women’. Maybe we’re biased but it contains a masterful dissection of #girlboss feminism, identity politics and our collective obsession with wellness. It’s an especially soothing read for all the chronically ill babes who will find themselves joyously underlining every other line as they finally read something they can relate to and a must-read for everyone else!
Following their recent book publications, Polyester’s Creative Producer Issey Gladston chatted to Ione and Annie about writing books instead of short-form online pieces, their relationship to their fanbases and the ‘influencerification’ of writers.
Issey
How was it going from writing shorter articles to writing a book, it must’ve been such a different writing process what with losing the immediacy of writing for online versus a book where there is such a gap between getting the work done and it being released?
Annie
There’s such an instant payoff when you’re writing something for online. You get the endorphin rush of people saying they like it and that’s really encouraging. Without that, you can really lose your motivation and start to constantly worry about whether it is good or not, which is difficult. But one thing that really helped me was doing the book in shorter bits. Originally, I thought of doing the book a bit like Roland Barthes ‘A Lovers Discourse: Fragments’, but instead it would be a taxonomy of all the different stages of a breakup like them taking their stuff etc.
Eventually, it changed from that and became a lot looser with longer bits, scenes and going back into memories. But it did help if I thought of it in shorter sections, like having quite a succinct thing I wanted to say about friendship or buying clothes or food or something and that helped me narrow my focus a bit. If I’d thought about it in a wider sense, I would have lost my mind a little bit.
Ione
For me, for the year that I was working on the proposal, I'd already started to write less for online publications, so I was used to not having immediate gratification part of it. But I found, widening out my word count, or just the depths of arguments quite difficult because we're used to writing a couple of 1000 words or thinking of things that maybe grab attention online, so it's quite hard to then expand that thought out into something that is a coherent argument or coherent story. I think the way that I found to help with it was just research to make sure that I felt like I knew what I was talking about.
Although, I did actually find the writing process quite laborious, like more than I thought it would be. Getting used to writing in that long-form, over an extended period with no feedback was definitely an experience.
It wasn't this lovely thing of sitting down for hours getting loads done. I found I really had to force myself to do it. Not to say I'm ungrateful because obviously, I was massively lucky to be able to write a book, but I think it's definitely harder than I expected it to be. What do you think, Annie?
Annie
Yes, so much harder! Like it makes me laugh my mum would be like ‘I’ve read this thing that for some writers they write for so long that they forget they are writing, and it just pours out of them' and I was like, I don't know, anyone that's experienced that. Well, I certainly haven't, it is so hard!
Also with articles, because they’re much quicker to write I feel like you have less time to be critical of them. It's so easy to think an article you've written is really good, but when you've got a book and you've been going over and over the same points, they get worse and worse in your head.
I remember Hannah Ewens saying to me that there are going to be parts of the book that you’re never fully proud of but you’re better to just move on and work on something else, because I would rewrite certain bits, and they'd come out exactly the same the next time. So, it's meant probably just meant to be expressed like that. And even if I want to express it in a different way, it's not coming out that way. So just leave it.
“It’s so interesting that in the cultural media at the moment it's fashionable to be like ‘you shouldn’t trauma bond with people’ and I'm like, why not? It’s so fun and also a very feminine thing. It's a way to immediately get like deeper with someone. I think that's important.”
Ione
I remember we had someone on the podcast talking about how to write a book and they said that you have to make sure that you actually like what you're writing about because you have to talk about it for literally three years!
Annie
Yeah, I find it really funny as well. I saw a tweet the other day, and they were saying that writers make more money now not actually from writing. It's weird that it's such a part of the job now to go on podcasts and do interviews.
I’m an outgoing person and I really enjoy talking about the book but it’s so weird that it's assumed that a writer could do that. Like why are writers on podcasts? You’d think it should be a separate job like being a personality or a speaker and stuff but it’s just this weird add- on to being a writer now.
Issey
Yeah, I was going to ask about this the ‘influencerification’ of writers and I wonder if it's because we have this cultural narrative that writing is glamorous and mysterious with imaginations of writers sitting in coffee shops with words pouring out of them. It feels like there’s such a desire to see glimpses into this almost fetishized aspirational lifestyle, do you feel that pressure to create a personality and to have an online presence?
Annie
Yeah, a little bit. It's weird because I still feel quite new to social media because I only got Instagram in 2019 after the breakup, such a cliché! And I got Twitter quite late as well. So, I still feel a bit rubbish at it, all that stuff kind of baffles me a bit but I also feel like it’s so natural for our generation to consider themselves in a personal brand sort of way without even trying, so it does kind of feel normal in certain ways, which is a bit weird.
Ione
I think that the cult of personality with writers has always kind of existed, if you think about Fran Leibowitz, she did that one book, and then her whole career is going around and talking. It gets a bit more complicated when it's people of our generation because now you couldn't just live your whole life of one book because people get so tired with that content that then you need to find other avenues too to monetize it. I think we are kind of culturally very used to wanting and in on these people's lives, but I feel like previous generations have been able to have more of a balance.
I do think it's fun but I obviously feel self-conscious, like what's the right line to toe? But at the end of the day, I think doing a book is such a thing that so many people don't get to do that I'm literally probably just gonna post it until the day I die.
Issey
Was there comfort or pressure in approaching writing a book since you both came from a space where you had a fan base, and you knew that people liked your writing? Like Annie with Vogue and Ione through Polyester. Did it provide some relief knowing at least someone was going to buy the book or was there a feeling of expectation there?
Annie
Yeah, I was so nervous about the book coming out, up until a couple of people read it and told me it was good. From then on, I felt relaxed up until it came out. Because before the only people who read it had worked on it. So, I was waiting until someone else said, it's good. I don't know if I thought too much about what people who like my writing would think, it would’ve freaked me out.
Ione
Yeah, I think I don't know. I suppose I didn't think that I had a personal following before the book because most of my work was through Polyester. I think there's still a disconnect with people who don’t know Polyester that well knowing that I run it. I've never been the type of person that puts myself like front and centre of it. So, I didn’t know if there would be a built-in readership, so that made me nervous.
It’s so embarrassing but I remember when Harry Styles did that Better Homes and Gardens interview and he said something like “I got to the point where if I was doing something when it did well, I wasn't surprised. I was just like, Thank God”. I realized I had that too, such an expectation of the book that when it was done I felt like okay, fine, I can move on kind of thing.
I realised that that is such an Aquarius thing to say! I’m also an Aquarius and had this expectation that even though I didn't ever think it would go terribly I was worried that it would just disappear like a lot of nonfiction. So, I am happy that people have responded to it. And I think especially because it's so personal like your book, Annie.
Issey
On that note how do you both feel about the books being so vulnerable? With each of them it really feels like you’re kind of holding someone's hand through something which I really, really love.
Annie
At certain points, I would just pretend I wasn’t writing it. Like if I felt a bit stuck on something because I kept trying to write it and then getting cringed out or something by what I was saying, I just pretend no one was ever going to read it and that unlocked me a bit. Then I told myself I could take stuff out after but once I’d done it I’d be like I'm not going to take it out now, it sounds good. Also, I think generally I’m not a very private person, like when I meet people I’m so open and such a massive oversharer anyway. I feel like the way I like to try to bond with people is to say something embarrassing about myself, it’s a good way of endearing yourself to people and a cheap way of making someone bond with you. And then with the book it’s almost like cheating, it’s funny because you might think something is really weird and then you write it but that’s when people feel most seen!
Issey
Yes! For me a moment like that which I loved in your book was when you said you could smell Moya’s eczema cream, it made me laugh because my sister always says that about me too. It was so lovely because I think in books a lot of the time when illness is mentioned, especially when it comes to something that affects your appearance, it's used as an allegory for being a bad character. Whereas it was lovely to see how understanding someone’s illness was tied into the intimacy of the friendship. Ione how did you feel about approaching vulnerability in your book?
Ione
I’m an oversharer too and it’s so interesting that in the cultural media at the moment it's fashionable to be like ‘you shouldn’t trauma bond with people’ and I'm like, why not? It’s so fun and also a very feminine thing. It's a way to immediately get like deeper with someone. I think that's important.
I feel like previously a lot of “women’s issues” books are like:
How To Get Over It And Be A Badass How To Boss Your Illness How To Win At Your Breakup.
And I'm sure that is helpful for a specific mindset but I felt like advice by showing not by telling sticks with you a bit longer. So, all I was thinking when I was writing it was that I needed to write something that would actually be truthful. The authors I like are the people that don't hold back because at the end of the day, you'd only be holding that for yourself and that wouldn't really help you or your readers process what they’re going through. It also wouldn’t make good writing because you can immediately tell when someone's not actually saying what they want to say or how they feel.
I think that when you're writing it, instead of writing it for the people that will be reading the book, you have to write it for yourself and be truthful in experience, I suppose. That's definitely the approach I took, especially because I was talking about illness and like shitting the bed or whatever. If I started to think, oh, hundreds of people are going to know that I shit the bed then I wouldn't have written it.
Annie
Yeah, that's so true! I was also aware that so many books about heartbreak that are similar to ones about grief in the way that they always seem to begin when the person is putting their life back together. They sort of refer back to the time when they’re on their knees crying as a blur and I get that because it is so hard to put into words but I also didn't want to skip over that bit. And I tried to put that stage into words. And I kind of guess the way I did it was talking about how it can't be put into words a little bit. It can be quite isolating when you're in that place having there's no account of what it feels like. So, I feel like I wanted to give it a good go.
But at a certain point, I did get a bit freaked out about the vulnerability. I'd read Elizabeth Smart's ‘On Grand Central Station’ and I sat down and wept. Then I was l googling the book after I read it to try to understand it a bit more and I came across a review that said she was a bad writer because she was so sentimental and there was too much emotion in it. I started getting freaked out that that's what mine was like because it is very raw and very emotional. But now I’m like why is something sentimental seen as something bad? That just means that there’s so much feeling in the writing and I like stuff like that!
Ione
I think that’s also such a sexist thing and also elitism in some way. Like our emotions aren’t as valid unless we distance ourselves and contextualize them through academia or through theory. As if our feelings aren't real things like they can be dismissed as if they don't make up huge parts of our lives. So much of a marginalized person’s experience is reduced to something unserious, or that should just be gotten over. I think it just goes back to writing what feels true to you and in that case, I don’t think it’s good to get too much distance from it.
Because do you really want a hyper examination of how someone has gone through an illness or breakup and what they've necessarily like learnt from it? I feel like that would be more isolating in a way because we all have feelings.
So, I think it's really good that books like Annie’s exists now and hopefully, it will widen out in the culture. I would love to see it because I'm sick of seeing characters that are female or marginalized on TV and in books reduced to one-character trait – like being heartbroken or ill. Instead, everything could be placed in the context of both of these experiences and have so much more richness to narratives as we see them intersect with every other part of ourselves and our lives.
Questions: Issey Gladston
