I really wish I hadn’t self-edited while writing the first draft! I’d always go back and edit scenes despite the knowledge that they could be moved or changed or cut – and, what d’you know, they often were. I wasted a lot of time that could have been spent just finishing the thing.

In 2016, you published your poetry collection Graffiti. How does writing your novel compare to your experiences writing poetry? Have you been writing poetry whilst working on The Truth About Keeping Secrets?

I love writing both poetry and prose but for the exact opposite reasons; poetry renounces structure and can really be anything at all, whereas a novel relies on structure. I really enjoyed mulling over the anatomy of the story until everything finally clicked into place.

Writing a novel is sort of like being in a really intense relationship where you can’t imagine devoting any of your time or energy or waking thoughts to anything that isn’t it, so any scraps of ideas I had while writing that I’d normally turn into poems were whisked away to be incorporated into the book somehow.

Do you have advice for other young writers starting out on their writing journeys?

I have no original advice, so here’s some unoriginal advice: read like a writer (so, like a thief), make a habit of it (maybe aim for a daily page or word count goal), and don’t let the fear of failure discourage you from writing completely (you can edit a crappy page, but you can’t edit a blank one). And keep everything you write so you can laugh at yourself later.

If you are affected by anything you have read in The Truth About Keeping Secrets, or are worried about anyone in your life, there are organizations that can offer support.

These include:

Acknowledgements

Acknowledgements

To my agent, Richard Pike: you championed TTAKS from the beginning. Thank you for taking a chance on me, for shepherding me into this wonderful world and assuring me that there was room for my voice within it.

To my editor, Holly Harris: I cannot imagine what this experience would have been like were it not for your commitment to scraping chunks of my brain from the walls and gluing them back together, repeatedly. Thank you endlessly for your enthusiasm, your guidance and your patience. TTAKS and I are so grateful for you.

With that said, a massive thank you to the entire team at Penguin: Stephanie Barrett and Anna Bowles, for such studious and thoughtful copy-edits; proofreaders Petra Bryce and Mary O’Riordan, for your meticulousness and care; Emily Smyth, for turning ‘can it be, like, classy?’ into a cover more beautiful than I could’ve dreamed; and my brilliant publicist Harriet Venn.

Thank you to my beta readers – Patrick, Kate, Delen, Charity, Jessie, Jordan, Robyn, Anne and Anya – for providing incredibly helpful feedback on an early draft of TTAKS.