Hattie Crisell: 'Great rewards come from being brave'
BY Emily Powter-Robinson
7th Nov 2024
Hattie Crisell is a a contributing editor of Grazia magazine and has previously been acting features director of Grazia and acting fashion editor of The Times. She's also written for Bustle, Elle, Vogue, You, The Telegraph, The Evening Standard and The Sunday Times Style, among others. Alongside this, Hattie produces and hosts the podcast In Writing with Hattie Crisell, interviewing writers of all kinds in their studies.
We spoke Hattie about her new book In Writing: Conversations on Inspiration, Perspiration and Creative Desperation – which is based on her hit podcast and includes contributions from Wendy Cope, Elizabeth Day, Kit de Waal, David Nicholls, Maggie O'Farrell and many many more successful writers. Hattie shares her advice for aspiring writers, and discusses what we can expect from the latest season of her podcast.
Your book In Writing: Conversations on Inspiration, Perspiration and Creative Desperation is out now with Granta Books. Based on your hit podcast, it is an inspiring and fascinating glimpse into the creative process with some of our best-loved contemporary writers. What made you want to write this book?
I sometimes feel the podcast has been a secretly selfish project, in that all the interviews I’ve done with writers over the last five years might have benefited listeners, but they have been life-changing for me. I have found so many of the conversations profoundly helpful, and as the episodes and seasons built up, I started to feel that I had a really rich resource, and that I could offer more with it.
Writing this book was a way of pulling out some of the most insightful, honest and reassuring moments of the podcast and grouping them by theme rather than by author, so that if a writer is sitting at their desk feeling despair (and I include myself as someone who might do this), they can reach for the book and look up whatever is bothering them – ‘rejection’, or ‘structure’, or ‘inspiration’. All writers have essentially the same worries, so they will find something that will give them a new perspective and a sense of comforting solidarity.
I also did new interviews for the book, which gave me an excuse to talk to even more of my favourite writers, like Meg Wolitzer and David Sedaris. I wrote about my own experiences as a writer (and human) too – so in some ways, it’s a more personal project than the podcast.
What are the three most important messages for an aspiring writer to take away from your book?
Number one: writing is hard for everybody, even the most talented, experienced and successful authors, so don’t assume that because you’re finding it hard, you’re bad at it. The difficulty of it is built in.
Number two: the time you spend working is the important period. Remember that this puzzle of writing the finest sentences and building the most satisfying story, and all the effort that you’re putting into it, is an end in itself; it’s meaningful because you make it meaningful. Pay attention to the joyful, exhilarating days, and remember them. You’ll be glad you did later, because none of us can be sure whether our work will find a publisher or be read or well-reviewed – so understand the value of the experience without any of those nice garnishes.
Number three, and I think this is a message for any human, not just an aspiring writer: great rewards come from being brave. Many of the skills that writers develop are just good skills for life – putting yourself out there despite the risk of embarrassment; listening to criticism without letting it define you; accepting failure and trying again.
In Writing is the companion to your very successful podcast of the same name. How did you get into podcasting and what is your favourite part about it?
In 2018 I was working at Grazia magazine when I was asked to take over the Grazia podcast for a while. I had been listening to podcasts since the mid-2000s, when they were really very basic, so I felt like I knew the medium inside out. I jumped at the chance to learn the technical side, and that gave me the confidence to start making In Writing the following year.
I really love the intimacy of an unrushed one-to-one conversation, and I hope that comes through to the audience or reader as well. I find that if you really listen to somebody and try not to interrupt – which is sometimes difficult – they will start to share all sorts of interesting feelings you weren’t expecting.
You speak to so many incredible novelists, screenwriters and poets both in the book and on your podcast. Who would be your dream guest - dream rules apply so they can be alive or dead or imaginary?
I always say this but I would really love to have Zadie Smith on the podcast. I listen to her on other podcasts and find her such an original thinker. She’s resisted my invitations so far.
As a contributing editor of Grazia magazine and a freelance journalist, you must be very used to writing to deadlines. Did you impose similar deadlines to keep yourself on track when writing your book?
I am terrible at getting anything done without a deadline. I got lucky, really, because with a non-fiction book you can sell it based on a proposal and a couple of sample chapters, and then once you have a publisher, they give you a deadline to write the rest. If I’d had to do the whole thing on spec, it probably would never have happened.
Then I got lucky again, because my agent was heavily pregnant by the time I worked out what kind of book I wanted to write. She informed me that I had a month to write the sample chapters and the proposal before she went on maternity leave, otherwise I’d have to wait for her to return. That was a pretty compelling deadline, and I worked all hours to meet it, but it felt very exciting. Then of course I had a hard deadline to get the full manuscript to my editor at Granta, and that was motivating because I don’t like people being cross with me.
What are you currently reading?
I’m recording new episodes of the podcast, so I’m reading lots of books by my guests, but I can’t tell you what they are because I don’t want to reveal who the guests are yet. Then I have some enticing books waiting for my attention: Rumaan Alam’s new novel Entitlement, and James Joyce’s Dubliners – I read a lot of contemporary Irish fiction but I’ve never read any Joyce, so it’s about time.
What can we expect from the next season of In Writing?
With every season I try to have a mix of people you’ll have heard of, people you might not have heard of but should, and writers working in different modes and genres. I think this is going to be a really good season, but then I would say that.
In Writing: Conversations on Inspiration, Perspiration and Creative Desperation is out now.
Listen to the new season of the In Writing podcast.