What Should A Writer Look Like

Author photos and anxiety

Photo by Gaspar Uhas on Unsplash

Hello Team CCC! I hope you’re really well. I’m writing this from Chester - I had so much fun talking about reading ourselves happy at CLF last night. Huge thanks to my friend Caroline Corcoran for being a brilliant chair (her new thriller TINY DAGGERS is out next month and it’s excellent - dark, fun, and truly propulsive!) I’m off to Barcelona soon, and I’m really looking forward to seeing some of you there - here’s a list of my upcoming events…

Tuesday 10 June: I’ll be talking about reading ourselves happy at the Backstory bookshop, Barcelona with the fabulous Donna Freitas. Tickets here.

Monday 7 July: I’m interviewing David Nicholls at St Michael and All Angels Bramhall Parish Church. Tickets here.

Sunday 13 July: I’ll be at the Idler festival in Hampstead, North London. Tickets here.

Saturday 26 July: I’ll be at the Love Stories Etc festival in Manchester Central Library. Tickets here.

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On Author Photos

If you’re a writer I imagine you’ve given some thought to the concept of the author photograph – specifically, your author photograph. Perhaps you’ve had a picture taken for a book jacket. Perhaps you’ve had lots.

Herein lies the paradox – writers work with words. We want to evoke many things – truth, beauty, wit, warmth, whatever – and on a good day we have the power to do so by typing. We can sing all sorts of lovely lies into being, if we like. (For example – I’m writing this with my laptop resting on my golden, slender thighs, occasionally I sighing and tossing my shining hair. It’s hard to see the screen, because my eyelashes are so thick and lustrous, and it’s even harder to express my frustration because my full lips are resting in a permanent, perfect pout…)

But we all know that a picture paints a thousand bloody words. It’s relatively easy to write a thousand words, but it’s much harder to wrangle one’s inner beauty into position for a professional photograph. In the past, when I’ve fantasised about seeing my work going out into the world, I’ve fantasised that in that moment, I will feel altogether differently about myself. Polished, put together, successful, accomplished, and hot. (But not in a way that would make you think I was trying.) I know, from experience, that publishing offers no healthy or effective methods of building one’s self esteem in a lasting way. And yet, I think there’s a chance I may be able to get ‘over there’ and become that other, better self, in a photograph.