Emily Howes: 'If you can face down your critical inner voice and finish, the sense of achievement is like no other'
BY Emily Powter-Robinson
29th Feb 2024
Emily Howes worked on her debut novel The Painter’s Daughters during our Writing Your Novel – Three Months online course in 2021. After studying with us she gained representation from C&W agent, Susan Armstrong.
We spoke to Emily about her time studying with us, the Thomas Gainsborough paintings that inspired her writing and how she knew she'd found the right agent.
You worked on your debut novel The Painter’s Daughters during our Writing Your Novel – Three Months online course in 2021. How did studying with us impact your approach to writing?
It genuinely changed my life. I can’t tell how wonderful it is to find yourself with a group of people who are also taking on the slightly mad endurance sport of novel writing. The sense that I wasn’t alone, and beginning to talk about it as a realistic rather than foolish idea, made all the difference. I didn’t know what to expect, but it gave me so much confidence and a feeling that I could, maybe, do it.
Many of our students find lifelong writing friends on our courses. Are you still in touch with anyone you met on the course?
Very much so. We have a Slack group which is still active, and even three years on we all support each other through the ups and downs of our different processes. I had a writing day this week with Becky Alexander, whose novel Someone Like You came out in January with Storm, and I talk constantly (too much?!) with Ally Zetterberg, author of The Happiness Blueprint which comes out in Mira in the US in April. Those of us in London meet up when we can, and regardless of the stage we are all at, we give each other all possible encouragement and advice. Five of my original group will be coming to my book launch at the end of February.
What’s the best piece of advice you received from your tutor Charlotte Mendelson during the Writing Your Novel – Three Months online course?
I remember her saying go towards the darkness, in my particular story, and that really stayed with me. I could hear her voice with me as I carried on writing beyond the end of the course. I also found that she was such a voice of kindness and support, which I think affected the feeling of the group itself by setting the tone, and is probably half the reason we are all still in touch today.
Your debut novel The Painter’s Daughters is out today with Phoenix (an imprint of Orion). It has been described as a stunning debut novel of love and sisterhood – inspired by the two daughters of artist Thomas Gainsborough. Where did you first learn about Thomas Gainsborough and what made you want to tell the story of the Gainsborough sisters?
I vaguely knew about Thomas Gainsborough as the painter of impossibly fine portraits of impossibly fine people, and was particularly struck by the quality of the beauty he painted in women: wispy, silky, and delicate. I preferred Manet’s gutsy bar maids. Then one weekend, looking for something to do, I stumbled into an exhibition about his portraits of his family and friends at the National Gallery and found this extraordinary leap from his paintings of his daughters as little girls to his grand joint painting of them as women. The paintings of the sisters as children were so intimate and tender, and as adults they looked stiff, constructed and unhappy. I wondered what had happened, went closer, read the label that summed up their lives in two lines, and knew instantly I was going to go home and write about them.
Thomas Gainsborough’s relationship with his daughters is most famously documented through his paintings, many of which are now on display in The National Gallery in London. Did his artwork form the main basis of your historical research for the book?
It absolutely did, because there is such an atmosphere to the paintings. I had my whole cast, from Gainsborough Gainsborough to Ann Ford, pinned up over my desk and would just stare at them sometimes, trying to let something of that seep into my writing. It was amazing to be able to see my characters in front of me, and see that someone had told a story about them already. Then I could find a way of telling both the story of the person I could see, and the person who had shown them in way he chose to. The paintings were full of clues, and starting points, and once you start unpicking them stories unfurl, and you begin to imagine.
Your short stories have been shortlisted for the Bridport Prize, the Bath Short Story Award, the New Scottish Writing Award and you won the Mslexia Novel Award for The Painter’s Daughters in 2021. Do you have any advice to share with the aspiring authors reading this, particularly those who are thinking of entering a writing competition?
I’d say you’re probably going to get knocked back left, right and centre. Stories that are actually quite good won’t float people’s boats, novel competitions will discard your first 5k with polite cover emails, and all the evidence will point to the wisdom of probably packing up the laptop and giving the idea up. Then someone, out of all the many no thank yous, will say yes. You just have to keep going, like a steam roller. I’d also say that I hesitated to write a novel, and stuck to stories, feeling that any rejection would be lower risk. Taking the plunge and going for long form was a great move for me, and I would say just back yourself. In many ways, the whole thing is a battle with your self-belief, and if you can only face your critical inner voice down and finish, the sense of achievement is like no other.
In addition to writing fiction, you have a Masters in Existential Psychotherapy and work as a psychotherapist in private practice. How much of your real-life experience did you draw on when developing The Painter’s Daughters, particularly surrounding the novel’s focus on mental health?
For me, as an existential psychotherapist, a lot of the questions that are in the novel are also part of how I understand the work of therapy. What kind of world are we thrown into, and what does it feel like to exist in it? What does freedom mean for us, and how can we find it for ourselves?What have we been told we want, and what do we really feel? Existential therapy also looks carefully at the conditions we are in when our mental health begins to suffer. Peggy and Molly, in my book, live in such a pressurised atmosphere of class and gender expectation, with such a high level of fear that has developed from ‘madness’ being an untouchable and misunderstood thing, that their situation is exacerbated. I could go on for a long while about this, but basically, I find the two to be very intertwined and that thinking about each one enriches each other.
You’re represented by Susan Armstrong at C&W Agency – how did you know you’d found the right agent for your work?
Sue is just so lovely. I think you have to know instinctively that you’ll be able to go to someone when you feel unsure, and that they will be a champion for you. I absolutely have that with Sue, and knew straight away that that would be the case. She always listens to my strange writer worries without dismissing them, and always has time for me. She also put a beautiful response to the novel in writing, and I was really struck by how many other voices had contributed from the agency, particularly from the rights department. It made me feel that not only Sue, but others who would be working on the book, were enthused enough to take the time to write something down for me.
Finally, what’s next for your writing journey?
I’m working on my second novel, Mrs Dickens, the story of Kate, Charles’s wife, which will also be published by Francesca Main and Phoenix. In the course of her twenty-two year marriage to Charles, Kate Dickens had ten children, climbed Vesuvius, and wrote a cookbook. Then he left her for an actress. It’s a novel about who controls the narrative, and what it is like to be written out of your own story by one of the greatest storytellers who have ever lived. I’m about halfway through, and can’t wait to share it.
The Painter's Daughters is out today!
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