Up Close With: Daisy Buchanan
Meet the wonderful writers and patrons behind LWS.
Passionate and persistent, writer Daisy Buchanan leads her life with laughter, delight and a little bit of magic. Read on to learn how!
Daisy Buchanan
- Based in Margate (England)
- Age 39
- Writes contemporary commercial fiction — comedies with a romantic angle that explore our relationships with sexuality, ambition, attention and grief.
What are you working on right now?
Pity Party — a novel about Katherine, a perfectionist, eco worrier and widow. When Katherine’s husband dies suddenly, and she finds herself a widow at 30, she refuses to feel her grief — until she falls apart. Her best friend and mother-in-law conspire and send her on a healing retreat. It’s not what she was expecting — there’s erotic meditation, scream therapy, and Katherine’s dawning sense that she’s got to embrace everything she’s been pushing away, and start to understand herself. And there are LOADS OF JOKES! It will make you cry, and I hope it makes you laugh.
Where and when do you write?
I try to write in the mornings, as early as I can, before real life pops up and distracts me. My location varies, but at the moment I’m sitting cross-legged on my sofa, with BBC Radio 3 in the background. Sometimes, if it’s warm, for a treat, I write outside sitting on my hammock.
How do you write?
I use a laptop. I’d love to write by hand but I can’t read my own handwriting. (Thank goodness my Morning Pages are completely indecipherable!)
Why do you write?
Writing helps me to understand what I’m thinking. It unknots me. I write fiction because I’m constantly visited by imaginary people and scenarios and the notion of ‘what if?’ Every single person I pass on the street has a story, and a secret. And I’m trying to guess what that story is; I can’t help myself!
What inspires your creativity?
I read every single day, and being a reader brings me so much joy. I’m inspired by so many writers — but especially Marian Keyes, Katherine Heiny, Laurie Colwin and Anne Lamott, because they’re so funny, and so generous. They remind me that being human is difficult, tender, hilarious and absurd — and it doesn’t matter how dark things feel, laughter is how the light gets in. So if I could bring a millionth of their magic to my own work, I’d be delighted.
What’s your favourite book?
Rachel’s Holiday by Marian Keyes or The Pursuit of Love by Nancy Mitford, but honestly, the answer changes depending on the day.
What’s the best advice you’ve received about creativity?
I often think of Elizabeth Gilbert urging us all to do it selfishly — ‘you can tell the people who live for others, by the haunted faces of the “others”’. Making things is hard, so it has to be fun, too. I really, really hope readers enjoy my work. But if I’m not pleasing myself first, I can’t stand by it. And the rewards are so varied and erratic and confusing that the work itself needs to be the main reward.
What’s the one thing you would tell other/aspiring writers?
Your favourite writer, when writing your favourite book, almost certainly put it down in the middle and said, ‘This is awful! Maybe I should give up!’ You are no different from any of the writers you love! And writing doesn’t always feel the way you want it to feel. If you keep going when it feels awful, it will feel fun again. And in the future, there’s a reader who will be so, so happy that you didn’t give up!
How can we discover more about you and your work?
- I’m on Instagram @thedaisybee.
- My Substack is https://creativeconfidenceclinic.substack.com/.
- Here’s a link to my books on the Waterstones website https://www.waterstones.com/books/search/term/daisy+buchanan — Pity Party is my fourth novel, and I have a new non fiction book out with DK next year called Read Yourself Happy https://www.waterstones.com/book/read-yourself-happy/daisy-buchanan/9780241691656.
Daisy’s lovely writing view.
