Sophie Kinsella on writing routines

I interviewed Sophie Kinsella in London in 2015, just as she was about to publish her first foray into young adult fiction, Finding Audrey: a witty, readable, and above all very recognisable tale of teenage angst and parental foibles.

Her first novel was published when she was 24, and she’s been a prolific writer ever since. Her 34th novel, The Party Crasher, came out in late 2021, and her novels have sold over 45 million copies in 60 countries, with translations into 40 languages. The first of her entertaining Shopaholic series was made into a successful film in 2009: Confessions of a Shopaholic, starring Isla Fisher as journalist and compulsive over-spender Becky Bloomwood.

Kinsella’s achievements are extraordinary, and all the more so because she has managed to do all of this while also raising five children with her husband, Henry.

So here are her writing routines, her thoughts on plotting and polishing, on sustaining a happy marriage — and how she and Henry balance family and creative work.

You’re a prolific writer. You also have a big family. How do you make it all work?

I do write quite fast. Once I get an idea, I find it really difficult to put it down, or treat it in a reasonable way. It slightly consumes me. So I tend to work in great fits and starts, and I make family life work around that.

Towards the end of Finding Audrey, I was writing all night long, all through the day, just completely wrapped up in that world. And I have a hero of a husband who picks up family life and runs with it, makes it happen while I’m lost in my world.

But then I’ll emerge, have a couple of days of decompression, and then I’m around. It’s not a nine-to-five job, and my children are used to it.

Do you write at home?

At the moment I do, but I’ve experimented. I need to escape, so I tend to block myself off with a wall of sound. I play pumping aerobics music, and that creates my world. And they respect it, the kids. The little ones are just distracted with their own activities, and I don’t think they even know what I do. The older ones do know — they’ve grown up with it.

I’m lucky that Henry is so willing to make our life flexible. Because it’s totally unpredictable. Ideas come, and I get this compulsion to write, straight away. It can’t wait, because I might lose it. He’s used to me just saying, ‘I’ve got to go upstairs now, to write something down.’

Do you ever work elsewhere?

I have this stage of planning which I call my coffee shop stage. I’ll rotate them, because you can’t stay too long, or you keep buying coffee for the sake of it. I just sit and think. It’s a nice environment to just stare into space without any pressure, and hope that something comes to me on whatever I’m working on, whether it’s a bit of dialogue, character point, or plot.

And I walk a lot, so if I’m not actually writing, I’ll just walk. I’ll go to Starbucks, then walk a bit more. Walking just unclogs your brain, I find. Then you go to another coffee shop. I can spend a day going round coffee shops. They’re brilliant.

Is walking important?

The number of times I’ve sat far too long at my screen saying, ‘I need to figure this out.’ Then eventually I give up, go for a walk and instantly it comes. You’d think I would learn. I never do.

It's all-consuming, when something doesn't work. The mind just workd and works on it. I can't leave it alone. I have been known to wake up in the middle of the night and just scrawl some note or other to myself — in the dark, so I don’t wake up Henry. Then in the morning I’m like, ‘What was this?’ So actually now I’m afraid I just turn the light on. You’ve got to get it down, because that could be the answer.

How much do you redraft?

A lot! I’ll write a few chapters, then go back and polish them. I like being succinct, to try and crystallise it in as few words. When you’ve got important things to say, being brief makes them more powerful. And if I’m writing a comedy scene, it’s got to be tight, and the timing has to be right.

I spend quite a lot of time redrafting. I know what I want to happen in the scene — but it’s making that happen on the page!

You need perspective. You need to write it, then take a few days away from it and then come back. Then you hear it differently. That’s what takes the time. But I can’t let it go until I feel I’ve absolutely honed it as much as I can.

How do you handle plotting?

Years ago, I went to a seminar called Story by Robert McKee. I found that very useful. I just love plotting. It’s like a kind of crossword puzzle. It’s my favourite bit of the book, that buzzy time when you have a new idea and you’re starting to plot it out. I don’t share with anybody, I walk around sort of hugging this new idea.

How soon does a new idea start to form for the next novel?

Usually it slightly overlaps, so I’ll be finishing one and I’ll already be thinking, “What’s next?’ Because it takes a while. You have a germ of an idea, and then you have to sit on it for a bit. I’ll get a flurry of, ‘What about this?’ And then a month later, ‘No, that’s not going anywhere.’

You have to let the ideas settle. If you’re still excited about it weeks later, if you’re still wanting to tell it, then it’s probably got legs. But it’s difficult to tell at first, because every new idea feels great.

Right now, I’ve got three possible books lined up, and I’m mulling them all. Although I think I know which one I’m going to do next.

Your books are often categorised as ‘chick-lit’, a term I’ve always found insulting to readers and authors.

It’s a lazy term, because I don’t think anyone quite knows what they mean by it. People use it to include thrillers, historical novels, even very literary books. It feels a bit hackneyed to me, and I never use it. But we’re old friends, the term ‘chick lit’ and me. We’ve been through our ups and downs, and we’ve come to an acceptance of each other.

If I’m asked, I prefer romantic comedy. My best ever: wit-lit. I once saw myself in a bookshop under that title, and it made my day. And rather than ‘for a woman’, I would start off with ‘for someone with a sense of humour’. I have lots of male readers.

You’re one of three girls, and two of you are writers. Nature or nurture?

I’m sure we’ve all got the story-telling gene. My mother is a phenomenal storyteller. She never read to us as children, she made up stories. She would invent great long serials that would go on, night after night. They made us laugh, and taught us that making up stories was just natural. It’s not an effort. You just do it.

We also did a lot of knocking around the garden, inventing games. My sister has a whole imaginary land which she called Foreign, which we would all visit. It was very much a childhood of make-believe.

I was an utter bookworm. I read all the time, and I would read books over and over. Which is not a bad way to learn writing. You get the rhythm of plot in your soul, because you just know how they go.

You went to university to study music, then switched to philosophy. Why?

I played piano and violin as a child, I composed, I did the whole bit. But just because you can do something, that doesn’t mean that you should do it. When you have a skill like that, you can be put on a kind of conveyor belt: exams, concerts, and everyone assumes that’s what you’ll do.

Then I got to university and heard people in the bar talking about other subjects, and it was like a wake-up call. You don’t get taught philosophy at school, so I’d never really considered it. But the more I heard about it, the more I thought, ‘This is what I want to do! Why did no one tell me about this?’

Changing course was the best thing I’ve ever done, really. We had to write essays and read them out every week, and if anything is going to teach you to be snappy and entertaining, it’s reading aloud. That’s a where I first got this habit — if in doubt, try and shoehorn in a joke. Even in an essay on Wittgenstein, you can crack a joke or two! I’d also be reading, and editing as I went along. ‘This is waffle — I’ll cut to this bit.’ It was amazing training.

You also met Henry at university?

Yes. He was a fourth year and we met at the end of my first year, when he was about to leave, so it wasn’t that convenient. But we just clicked. Everybody thought I was a complete freak to get married at 21. But — why wait? I just felt, ‘No. We know. Let’s just do this.’ And then off we go and tackle life together. Which is really how it’s been. It’s not the fashion. People just assumed we would break up!

So what went right?

We’ve both got a sense of humour, the same take on life. We have an absolute ability to be flexible, which we’ve needed, over the years. Every time there’s been a challenge or a turn or twist, we take it for granted that we will just tackle it together.

We’ve ebbed and flowed, we’ve supported each other. When we first married, Henry was a singer and I used to go along and play for him at auditions. When I wrote the novels, he was very supportive. Then he became the headmaster of a boarding school, and I was very much the headmaster’s wife. It feels like a really even partnership.

Now he’s working as my manager, doing things that were quite a strain on me. Being a novelist now is not just about writing. It’s about meetings, marketing, and there’s always a book coming out somewhere around the world. He works very closely with my agent, he talks to my publishers, and I am very much freed up to just wander around and think of ideas.

We’ve always tried to juggle the childcare together, and I talk all my ideas through with him. When our first two were toddlers in high chairs, we’d be brainstorming the latest book while putting baby puree in their mouths! It’s always the way we’ve done it, and work and family life overlap in a bit of a mish-mash. But it works for us.

You published seven novels under your real name, Madeleine Wickham, but your most successful work is under a pen-name.

It’s worked out really well. I feel very under the radar, no pressure at all. When I’m out and about doing promotion, I’m Sophie; at home I’m Maddy and can just get on with my life.

I’m still amazed how productive you are, in a house with two teenagers and three small children.

Having children is an experience like anything else. It feeds your story-telling capacity because it informs you about the world. What can we write but what we experience, what we learn, or what we observe? With every child, I meet all their friends, new families — it’s all exposing you to new worlds. As a writer, you don’t have an office job, you’re not necessarily in the commercial world, so you need to get out there a bit.

So you have it all going on.

Oh yes! That’s what’s lovely. We’re never bored!