Hello, this is Emma Ganon, and thank you for listening to this podcast. I just wanted to let you know that my new book, The Success Myth, Letting Go of Having It All, is out on May the 18th.

I think it's my best book yet, so I'm excited for it to come out. And the book unpicks the eight success myths from happiness, to money, to productivity, to celebrity, to the idea of finally arriving, and how chasing a version of success that doesn't align with your values can really take you off track.

And this book is about getting back to yourself, breaking free, finding a new way forward, and it's available on May the 18th.

If you love this podcast, you'll love the book, and it's available soon from all good bookshops, so you can order yours now. I hope you like it.

Hello, and welcome back to Contrologue Delete. My guest today is one of my favourite ever writers, Emma Forrest. This is a replay episode that was recorded back in 2019.

And we had a really good chat about careers, creativity, meditation, her writing process. Her new novel had just come out at the time of this recording called Royals, so we talk about that.

But we talk about her career in general. She is the author of three novels, an essay collection, and the amazing memoir, Your Voice in My Head, which is one of my favourite ever memoirs on mental health.

It is such a beloved book, and I really recommend getting a copy if you haven't already read that. Really excitingly, Emma also has a new memoir out called Busy Being Free,

a lifelong romantic is seduced by Solitude, which no surprise to anyone I absolutely loved. It filled the hole that was left after reading Your Voice in My Head, and I'll leave a link to it in the show notes.

But it's such a stunning memoir about divorce, but really it's about self love, self acceptance, remancing yourself, falling back in love with yourself.

It's beautiful, bold, generous, vulnerable, strong, and open-hearted, and every sentence, as Emma always does, packs a punch. So go check out her books, and hope you enjoy this episode.

Can we go back to the beginning for anyone that doesn't know?

Of course.

Because you have a really interesting origin childhood slash having a Sunday Times column when you were a teenager and all of that.

I just wondered, you left school, didn't you, and you kind of went straight into it.

Here's what happened.

Really, everything useful a writer can do is rooted in who do you feel lost towards, and as a young person as a 13-year-old, I was absolutely besotted with Stephen Fry.

He was, I'm my dream man, and I wrote to him to ask to interview him for my school magazine, and he wrote a beautiful charming letter back, but I didn't get an interview with him.

But I wrote to people I just wanted to engage with, and Nigella Lawson, who went to my school, before me, gave me an interview, and I went over there, and I interviewed her.

And she started it all because she then said to the evening standard, I met this young girl who might want to consider as a music reviewer, and the very first piece I ever had published was a review of Arotica by Madonna, and in the evening standard, and that was on Nigella's recommendation, and then I had something to show, and it went from there.

That's amazing, because that curiosity, and just reaching out to people, can be really scary, but you clearly just did it.

Like, there was something inside you that was like, I need to go and get these stories.

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