Writing a debut novel is a strange and wonderful experience. After planning a book for months, you spend hours and hours with a set of fictional characters that are a part of you and wildly different at the same time. Sitting down to write every day would be incredibly tedious if you picked a subject that didn’t fascinate you. Two years after leaving London, I wanted to write a story that explored the sense of isolation that many people experience when living and working in a sprawling capital city. Here are all the steps that led to it becoming my finished debut novel: The Lonely Fajita.
The Lonely Fajita
1. I taught creative writing in a school, but never wrote myself
Whilst an English teacher in Sheffield, I created numerous writing prompts for my students. It takes a lot to motivate teenagers, so I started joining in with the tasks I set to encourage enthusiasm. When the bell went off after fifteen minutes, I didn’t want to stop. When I continued writing at home, I knew I’d caught the writing bug.
2. Writing for the soul
The Lonely Fajita isn’t the first novel I tried to write. Before that I spent a year planning a historical novel, but when I came to write it, the storyline was so depressing it made me feel miserable. Switching to funny fiction felt far more natural and by all accounts, I became much easier to live with!
3. Finding the funny
It’s a well known fact that comedy = conflict + time. I used some cringey situations from my own experience of working in London’s tech start-up industry and fed them into the plot of my novel. My protagonist, Elissa, is doing an internship at a dating app when the novel starts and gets herself into hugely embarrassing situations that are fun to watch from a distance, possibly because we’re relieved not to be living through them ourselves!
4. Deadlines make all the difference
Writing a book takes a really long time, but I know that I work best with a bit of pressure. I told everyone I was writing a novel to guarantee a bit of public accountability. I couldn’t bear the thought of saying ‘Oh, I gave up...’ when someone asked me how my writing was going. It’s the whole ‘eating an elephant,’ approach; one mouthful at a time and you’ll get there eventually.
5. Serious issues are valid, even when writing comedy
Isolation, loneliness, financial worries, estranged family, neglect, and exploitation don’t seem like funny subjects, but one of the best ways to draw attention to a social issue is when it’s disguised as comedy, like a Trojan horse for serious topics.
6. Take two steps away from normal
When I lived in an over-crowded flatshare in London, I often wondered about what it would be like to call a beautiful house in Hampstead home, with cockapoos who trotted down the street rather than urban foxes who raided the bins at midnight. I explore an unconventional solution to this through Elissa, who signs up for a live-in companionship scheme for the elderly. Exploring an unusual solution to a common problem was the spark that ignited my story and captured the interest of others.
7. Pool anecdotes, gossip, and memories
Friends are fantastic to pinch stories from. I pooled as many anecdotes as possible, twisted them, exaggerated others, and shared them out between my characters.
8. Eyes on the prize: entering the Comedy Women in Print prize
I used the submission deadline for the CWIP Prize as a personal deadline, not expecting to place anywhere in the competition. When I came runner-up, I started taking my writing more seriously and treated it like a job. As well as attending a glitzy winner’s event, it gave me a huge confidence boost to keep writing and polishing my work.
9. Knowing why someone would read my book
I had a really clear idea of who my reader was when writing my book, which helped me focus when it came to editing the manuscript. The Lonely Fajita is a funny, accessable, light-hearted book that I imagine my reader would curl up under a blanket with a huge mug of tea to read.
10. Uplifting fiction for difficult times
Writing a book about an intergenerational friendship filled with dark humour and a quirky set of accompanying characters has opened my eyes up to the issues that face older people. We need positive stories more than ever during this time, which is why I love writing fiction that has a message of positivity at its core.
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