5 MINUTES WITH Elizabeth Day, author of The Party

HOW DID YOU GET STARTED AS A WRITER?

When I was 12, I met a journalist who was staying at a health farm down the road from us. She said that if I was serious about writing, I should start doing it professionally right away. I took her at her word and wrote to every single local newspaper editor saying I wanted to offer my services as a children’s columnist. Pat Mcart, the then editor of the Derry Journal, very sweetly took me up on my offer and I had a fortnightly column there for about a year and a half. I went straight into journalism after university. Aged 29, I was a staff feature writer on The Observer and I started writing my first novel, Scissors, Paper, Stone.

WHAT’S YOUR WRITING ROUTINE?

I have to fit my books around other writing that I do to pay the mortgage. Before lockdown, I would go to cafes in the afternoons and make a deal with myself that every time I sat down to write, I had to produce 1,000 words. During lockdown, I found it difficult, but then I discovered Youtube videos with ambient coffee shop sounds and recreated the cafe ambience in my home, and it really helped!

HOW DOES WRITING FEEL TO YOU?

A pleasure. The idea of a tortured creative is much overplayed. The main battle when writing a book is the one with your own internal critic. That can sometimes be really difficult, but it’s never painful.

WHAT AUDIOBOOKS HAVE YOU ENJOYED RECENTLY?

Maggie Gyllenhaal narrating Anna Karenina. I’d never read Tolstoy’s classic and Gyllenhaal’s reading made it memorable. Reni Eddo-lodge reading her book Why I’m No Longer Talking To White People About Race – this book taught me so much.