who: Zoë Foster Blake
The former beauty editorturned-author and entrepreneur is a self-confessed “prolific reader”. Her latest release, an update on 2011’s beauty companion Amazing Face, is a project she found time to work on between having a baby and starting her own skincare
THE IDEA FOR AMAZINGER FACE WAS SOMETHING I HAD BUBBLING AWAY,
but a pivotal moment was when I had a facial with this very honest woman – who has since become a friend – and she pulled out her copy of Amazing Face, and it had Post-its all through it. I was sort of flattered, but then she said, “I just disagree with some of the stuff that you say in here.” By that point, I’d changed my opinion on a lot of things, too, so updating the book just made sense.
I THINK OF MYSELF FIRST AS A WRITER,
and the subject of beauty is sort of one vessel for writing. I just love playing with writing, and I find that if I’m having fun then I don’t feel so “lecturey”. By treating the reader as if “we’re all having fun”, then I think it becomes a lot less boring, especially considering so much of beauty writing is pretty prescriptive.
I USED TO WRITE FICTION, NON-FICTION, FICTION, NONFICTION
and have a clear pattern because I’d need a break from one style when going into the next book. But then I accidentally wrote two fictions back-to-back and was like, “Holy shit!” Now getting back to non-fiction writing feels more like traditional magazine work, whereas you need to be in a different headspace to tackle the beast that is writing a novel.
NO-ONE READS MY BOOKS UNTIL THEY’RE FINISHED BECAUSE I DON’T WANT FEEDBACK.
It confuses me and it changes things; if I get too much feedback I get thrown off my path. When I first have an idea I’ll spitball it with my husband, he’s my beautiful ideas sounding board. I usually have a year deadline from start to finish so I’ll piss about for three months and pretend to get started, then there’s four to six months of actual writing, and after that submissions, edits and eventually a finished product.
AS MANY AUTHORS WILL TELL YOU,
you sort of use up all your stories and your friends’ stories in the first couple of books. By the time I got to
The Younger Man and The Wrong Girl, it was true fiction in that I’d run out of stories. All my friends weren’t wild, single girls anymore, so I started to slip into storylines about marriage breakdowns or babies.
I’VE WRITTEN EVERYWHERE
– in hotel rooms, cafes, airports and planes all around the world. Now I have a home office and the wi-fi is really bad down there, which is great. If I make a date with myself to write from, say, 6am to 10am on a Saturday, the fact that no emails come in helps me focus. I get a bit anxious when emails are coming in.
I’VE GOT NO RADAR ON WHAT’S QUALITY.
I remember finishing The Wrong Girl and feeling like it wasn’t my best work; I just wasn’t sure about it at all. Turns out it’s been my most successful book and it’s being turned into a TV show.