The brave & brilliant world of Emily Reynolds
Emily Reynolds is a London and Berlin-based journalist and author who writes about mental health, tech, science, and gender. She recently published her first book in the U.K. (coming to the U.S. in May): A Beginner’s Guide to Losing Your Mind. We caught up with her to chat about the release and what type of impact she hopes to have with her work.
You recently published your first book, “A Beginner’s Guide to Losing Your Mind”, which is a practical guide to mental health for young people. As a person diagnosed with bipolar disorder at a young age, how important was it for you to write this book? And how does it feel to have it out in the world?
When I was writing it I didn’t actually feel like I was doing anything particularly important — I kind of just got on with it as I would any piece of writing. But since I finished it, and more specifically since other people have read it, it has started to feel like I did something vaguely consequential for myself.
In terms of my own mental health, I think having that narrative out there (no matter how fractured or incomplete) has been quite important for me to feel more stable — obviously you can never neatly draw a line under past experiences, but I do now feel less tethered to the bad parts of my life. It also made me realise quite how far I’ve come in terms of proactively managing my mental health, which I’ve found really encouraging.
The praise for your book is pretty amazing from both critics and readers alike. One reader said “Emily Reynolds has written a book that not only guides you through mental illness but also holds your hand and reassures you, that thank god, you are not ever alone in this and your experiences aren’t unique to you.” In a culture where mental health is scarcely discussed, what moved you to be so open about yours?
When I started writing about mental health, I had no game plan or professional aspirations — I was basically just tweeting and blogging into the void. I grew up online essentially, so I was always used to sharing details of my life: the progression from LiveJournal post to MySpace bulletin to blog to article seemed really natural to me.
But when I started writing about mental health with more structure and regularity, and with a wider platform, I realised that I could reach a lot of people who had gone through similar things. That’s what motivates me to carry on being open and honest about things, even when that gets to be draining or emotionally difficult.
You built and maintain @everydaycarebot, a Twitter bot designed to offer practical and thoughtful self-care reminders. Where do your source your material from?
It all started from a list I made for myself last year in a really horribly laid out Google doc! I’d look at it when I was feeling really low to motivate myself into doing very tiny things — brushing my teeth, washing my face, going outside for five minutes — that I was really neglecting. I thought it would be a good idea to have automatic reminders to do these things though, and to make self-care something I was more conscious of in my day to day life. That’s where the idea for the bot came from.
Since then, I’ve taken loads of suggestions from friends and followers, and people periodically tweet me and the bot account with ideas that I add.
All in all, what type of impact do you hope to have with your work?
I’m mixing food metaphors here and being both saccharine and cheesy, but I genuinely do hope to make a small difference in people’s lives. Mainstream mental health writing in particular can be quite alienating to people with more severe or chronic illnesses — I’m really glad there’s more writing on anxiety and depression, but often it can be quite broad and misses groups who are often less attended to or listened to (people with psychosis, to take one example).
I hope that by writing more about overlooked conditions, and trying to do it in the most practical and accessible way I can, I can destigmatise severe mental illnesses and maybe give people comfort at the same time.
You have a pretty impressive resume. You’ve written for Wired, the Guardian, VICE, NYMag, the Observer & the BBC to name a few. How did you get your foot in the door with these amazing publications?
The first thing was perseverance — it took lots and lots of bad pitches that were either ignored or rejected for me to get anything published at all. I’ve also been really lucky to work with editors who have had faith in me, even when I had no experience or polish, and who have continued to push me and make my work better as my career progressed. Their kind but essentially brutal editing is what made me capable of writing anything of worth at all.
Similarly, I’ve also been lucky in that a few of my journalist friends who are much older than me have given me guidance — when I started, I had no idea how to structure a pitch, write a convincing CV, even how write news stories very well. They helped me out with my most basic, stupid questions and helped me gain confidence in my work, which really helped me when I had zero money, zero bylines and zero skills. Go get a mentor!
You primarily write about mental health, tech, science and gender but have written about pretty much everything over the course of your career. How do you decide what to write about next? And what does your process look like when beginning a new project/piece?
I probably shouldn’t confess that I have no actual structure in terms of how I choose what to write about but…I have no actual structure. I obviously know what areas I’m interested in, but within those fields I try not to limit myself. In terms of science and tech, I read a lot of scientific journals and papers, I read the news, I try to go to events and meet interesting people to talk about their projects. Then once I find a story I want to write about, I just go for it!
What are your go-to places — sites, apps, people, etc — for finding new stories to read and watch in Pocket?
I get stuff from all over the place! I use Twitter and Facebook a lot, and people are always sharing really interesting stuff on there. I also look through Google News for topics I’m interested in, and have a few sites that I regularly check and mass-Pocket from. I also look at recommended and trending stories on Pocket itself, and periodically ask people to send me things they’ve enjoyed.
What have you been finding interesting lately / what have you been saving and recommending about recently?
My next book is about women and womanhood, so I’m reading a lot around that at the moment. My very favourite piece from the last year or so is Jess Zimmerman’s piece at Hazlitt, Hunger Makes Me. Like all brilliant essays do, it’s both intimate and universal and says so much not just about Jess herself but about womanhood generally. I’ve seen so many different women share it since it was published on Pocket and on Twitter and in private chats, and I think that’s testament to how brilliant it is. More recently, I absolutely LOVED this piece by Madeleine Davies at Jezebel — I yelled “FUCK!” aloud in an empty room when I finished reading it, which I think is a pretty solid marker of a good piece of writing.
You can follow what Emily is recommending on Pocket here and pre-order “A Beginner’s Guide to Losing Your Mind” here.
