When Elizabeth Gilbert gets in touch
and you find yourself on stage with her.
An old boss once said to me that your biggest mentor in life will probably be someone you’ve never met. I have many people I can talk to; a robust support network of which I’m proud. But I always knew that in my line of work I would probably never have an obvious mentor. I don’t work in a traditional team, I haven’t had a boss for years, I don’t have a strategic ‘ladder’ to climb. It’s hard to know who to follow or look up to because I never wanted to fit into a box.
Many parts of my life are indeed conventional (I got married! I have a mortgage! I often follow fashion trends! I bought some second-hand Prada shoes because I saw Greta Gerwig wearing them in a New York pap shot etc!) but many parts of my life aren’t that conventional: I don’t want children, I’ve done everything I can to avoid working in an office, I don’t have one stream of income, I don’t really enjoy big festivals or nights out, I don’t like people telling me what to do. It’s an annoying and petty trait to have sometimes; but it’s also why I am an early adopter in my job in the media, and I like to gently rebel against a system that still seems to prefer people to just fall in line, do the same thing on repeat, and be quiet.
There’s a book called Eat Pray Love Made Me Do It — a celebratory anniversary book that came out in 2016, ten years after the original book Eat Pray Love by Elizabeth Gilbert was first published in 2006. Life journeys inspired by the bestselling memoir. You get to read some inspiring stories from the readers, of which there are many. It’s a lovely collection: one reader finds peace with loss, one decides to not have children, one decides to embrace motherhood, one finds new love overseas. The book inspired so many people to do things a bit differently. Because this is the power of Liz Gilbert — and of anyone living in their apologetic truth — it’s quite infectious to see someone breaking the rules of convention.
Liz Gilbert inspired me to do it.
(This! Writing, creativity, ideas, being a person who experiences life and then makes something tangible out of it). For years, she was my mentor I’d never met. I remember watching her Ted Talk “Your Elusive Creative Genius” in 2010. I was working in a job I hated and I watched it on repeat. Every single time I watched it, a new layer of wisdom emerged. In a world of Ted Talks and podcasts and blogs and articles (and yes you have to filter out the bullshit) we can be inspired at every turn. We can steal minutes or hours to indulge in our dreams and fantasies. I watched countless interviews on YouTube with Liz. I listened to her podcast Magic Lessons. I knew there was another way. It was as though I was in a dark room and just had to feel my way around and stay open-minded.
In 2015, I was working at Glamour magazine, a women’s ‘glossy’ which was part of Condé Nast, situated opposite the iconic Vogue House in London’s Hanover Square. I was twenty-five and absolutely over the moon to have a condenast.co.uk email address. It felt like a huge moment. I’d pivoted from working in PR into working in magazines by taking a huge pay cut. Having grown up on a diet of sitcoms and movies set in writer/magazine worlds like Sex and The City, The Devil Wears Prada or How To Lose A Guy in 10 Days, being in a building like Glamour HQ was beyond exciting. It was worth the Tesco value beans for lunch. The editor sat in her corner office, the fashion editors wore expensive flares and heeled boots and gossiped about last night’s date at Chiltern Firehouse and colleagues called in any product they wanted to include in their round-ups. In my first few weeks on the job, I was sent to Egypt on a press trip to review a luxury hotel.
I loved that job in my twenties, but I knew there was something else pulling at my heartstrings. Funnily enough, luxury hotels can actually be pretty depressing if you’re with a crowd who just want to take selfies and nothing else. I was never going to be someone who enjoyed going to Fashion Week because I found no one really wanted to talk properly, it was more about the optics, the showbiz, the cartoon world of glitz. I also didn’t really care about celebrities. I just enjoyed the writing — reading, editing, tweaking, publishing, commissioning. (Basically what I do now, on The Hyphen.)
That year, I wrote a Glamour review of Liz’s brilliant creativity guide Big Magic and I was invited by Liz’s publishing team to a special lunch in central London to celebrate the book. I couldn’t believe it; I was going to meet Liz Gilbert in person. I don’t remember too much. I remember
being there and other established journalists who were clever and high-up the ladder actually editing magazines and being bosses. I was the youngest one there and was just absolutely wide-eyed with wonder that I had been invited. I remember Liz giving me a lip balm as a gift. I took it home with me and vowed not to use it, so I could keep it forever.Big Magic made me do it. I gobbled up that book, and then I would go for walks listening to it on audiobook. The idea of creativity being something you can love and it might just love you back, and how any creative project is so worth it no matter what because you get to be changed by doing it; you’ll become a different person on the other side of it. I listened to Liz talk on The Ted Interview podcast about ‘living an enchanted life’ because it feels better — I played it like a favourite song on an album.
So, I wrote my first book on the side of my job.