Me & My Desk: Lisa Jewell
10 million sales, one kitchen table 👑
Good morning! This is the sixth instalment of a series called Me & My Desk, which exists because I find other writers’ work routines and work environments fascinating.
You can read about Andrew O’Hagan’s desk here, Clover Stroud’s desk here, Emma Gannon’s desk here, Poorna Bell’s desk here and Polly Vernon’s desk here.
If you want to read all the desks in one clump, go here. Posts older than 4 weeks automatically put themselves behind the paywall, but you could always click on this.
Lisa Jewell has sold 10 million books and topped both The New York Times and The Sunday Times’s bestseller lists, but she still mostly writes from her (not especially serene) kitchen table.
Lisa started off writing “chick lit,” which is what “books that women love” used to be called in the 90s and 00s, never mind that many of them contained better writing and more emotional intelligence than any number of male authors’ hardbacks with moody black and white photography of e.g. fog on the jackets. Gah.
Anyway - Lisa’s first book, Ralph’s Party, was the bestselling debut novel of 1999. She’s written 23 more since. In 2013 she wrote The House We Grew Up In, which marked a clear change of direction, away from romance and towards psychological suspense (as a keen student of her work, I think the clues were always there and that this was not so much a pivot as an evolution). She ramped that up in subsequent novels, which include Then She Was Gone, The Family Upstairs, The Night She Disappeared (‘insane suspense’ - Lee Child) and None of This Is True.
Her newest, out last week, is Don’t Let Him In, the sort of book you cancel the rest of the day for. She is at the peak of her considerable powers and I’m thrilled she answered my questions.
What is the desk?
The ‘desk’ is my kitchen table. We had our house renovated in 2018 and the designers asked me about a writing space. I said I had no need of a writing space as I wrote in coffee shops. Then Covid happened and even after they reopened all the coffee shops, I just wanted to stay home. I did put a desk in the spare room in the basement, but I never use it as it’s too basementy. I also have desk in my own bedroom which I use in emergencies.
Where is the desk?
It’s in the kitchen but is currently overrun by my seventeen-year old’s A level studies. She's doing three art subjects, including fashion, so it's not just books, it’s fabric, a sewing machine, sketchbooks, paper cutters, Pritt sticks, it's everything. So, I’m currently writing on my lap on an armchair in the living room.
What do you look out onto?
When I’m in the kitchen, I look out at the street, but from this armchair in the living room I am overlooking a two and half acre communal garden in full late-April splendour.
How does sitting down at the desk make you feel?
Good. Always good. Not sitting at the desk makes me feel bad and like I should be sitting at my desk. Unless it's the weekend. I don’t work at the weekends.
When do you write - are there set hours?
I do work-related and domestic admin between 9 and 1, I walk the dog between 1 and 3, I write from 3 to 6 or 7.
Daily word count, or as the spirit moves you?
Daily word count is my religion. A thousand words a day during first half of book, fifteen hundred to three thousand words a day for the second half of the book. Towards the end it might go up to five or six thousand words a day. It’s all about words. That's what books are. I'm obsessed with word counts.
Do you wander to and from the desk, or stay at it until you're done?
I stay until I’m done, apart from making a cup of tea or two.
Are there pens? Are there notebooks? Are there photos? Are there small weird talismanic items?
No pens, no photos, no talismans, just a notebook that I always have trouble locating as I use it so infrequently – it mainly contains birthdates of my characters, and key dates in the plot so I can keep things vaguely in place on the page. But apart from that, I don’t make any notes, it’s all freewheeling in my head.
Is there a dog or a cat?
There is both. There is Daisy my three-year-old Romanian rescue. She has a big chunk of German Shepherd in her so likes mostly to hang out by the front door, but sometimes she’ll come and sleep under the table near me when I work. Then there is Ivy, a very sassy, abnormally small golden cat who sits behind the lid of my laptop and occasionally takes a swipe at my fingers as I type.
Longhand, Scrivener, Word, Pages, something else?
Word. Since October 1996. Never used anything else
Do you listen to music, and if so, what?
No, I used to before I had children, each book had an associated playlist. Then I had children and felt like I needed silence so I could hear them while I worked, be it playing with the childminder, or napping in their rooms.
Do you use internet-blocking apps like Freedom?
No. I did for about a week and I hated it. Piss off, Freedom, I’m an adult. I've learned to embrace the internet while I write. I've learned that I can rarely write more than for or five words in a row, that I need the internet to keep me at my desk whenever I lose my way (roughly every minute and a half) …
The least intrusive, rabbit holey-way for me to browse the internet when I’m meant to be writing is to do random fantasy Rightmove searches. For some reason these searches vibe well with writing and I find it really easy to swing back and forth between the two without ever getting so distracted that I stop being productive.
Are there desk snacks? Is there desk tea?
I have been on the 5:2 diet for nearly ten years so desk snacks are dependent on what sort of food day it is. On a non-fast day there will be many snacks. I alternate between sweet and savoury. Sweet will be biscuits, or single chocolates like those mini-Cadbury eggs or tiny Tony Chocolonelys in a box. Savoury will be bread sticks, crackers or cottage cheese straight out of the tub.
Do you have an ergonomic chair?
No, it's just a dining chair, but I do use an anti-sciatica cushion.
Do you wear proper clothes and shoes, or e.g. jogging bottoms and socks?
I always get washed, dressed and most of the time, made-up before I write. This is mainly because I still take my youngest daughter to school every day, though I am in the dying days of that, she finishes school forever in two weeks and then I’ll have more options re writing attire. I still think I’ll want to dress properly though, just because I always have done.
Is your phone in the room when you write?
Yes, always close at hand.
Do you resent or welcome occasional interruptions by adult humans? If welcome, how many is too many?
Hugely resent. Hugely. Particularly if it’s my husband. My daughters I'm more forgiving of, because they’re not my husband. If it’s in the earlier, non-deadliney stage of the process, I’ll be perfectly pleasant to him, but when he cannot read the room during deadline days, when he cannot hear the insistent jabbing of my keyboard, pick up on my monosyllabic replies, my Marge Simpson responses to him trying to engage me in a conversation about use-by dates in the fridge, then I become very very unpleasant.
What's the first thing you do when you leave your desk for the day?
Head directly to the sofa and watch TV.
Huge thanks to Lisa for doing this. Here is Don’t Let Him In on Bookshop, at Waterstones and on Amazon. I highly, highly recommend it.