From an academic study to a book
I didn't pitch this book. An agent found me from the articles written off the back of this study. He said "I think loneliness could make a great book" and we talked about constructing the book.
In the end, I realized this wasn't just about older people. Pretty much everything I've studied in my life has been about loneliness in some form. When I've studied people who lost their pets, or foster children who have no parents, I was really talking about loneliness.
It's not that loneliness had never been written about, it's present in 90% of fiction. But these people I've studied are not fiction. Their stories are real people's experiences. The book became a sort of a chocolate box of 20 to 25 different human stories, some of which are actually from my own life.
Each story is a representation of the ways that loneliness can visit us in our lives. It might come at the beginning, the middle, or at the end. So the book became a presentation of these stories, and a stimulation to reflect on the meaning of loneliness. What does it really mean? What do we know and don't know about it? So it became a philosophical stance on loneliness, too. I think they would call it a narrative nonfiction, because it really is about stories.
We then pitched the book to 10 publishers and, luckily, in the first hour one of them wanted it. It was Picador. They were a great publisher to work with, and the editor really helped shape the book. She helped to dilute my ingrained tendancy to write academically and shape the stories. So that's how the book came about.
Even though the book wasn't so explicitly planned, is it true to say you had thought you'd write a book someday?
It's true. But it's really quite mystical what this particular book became. I would never have sat down 10 years ago and said "I'm going to write a book on loneliness in a decade's time." I really felt like serendipity is actually an important part of the process. I felt like this book was meant to be written by me. It was like, as you know, they say everyone's got a book in them. It was a culmination of everything I'd studied and my own personal experiences. So there's also some autobiography and memoir in this book, too.
I do wonder what the differences are between planned books and books that just sort of come into being because they're supposed to be written.
Loneliness is also about vulnerability, isn't it? It wouldn't translate well without you being vulnerable yourself.
That's very true. Again, I don't think I set out wanting my own stories to be a part of it, but it became very obvious when I started writing this. Well, I've got a lot of these stories living inside of me.
Every single human has at least one story of loneliness inside them, frequently untold. A part of this book is about encouraging — and I have had people say to me, "not everyone's gonna want to share their stories the way you have" — people to see the great benefit in relation to sharing and telling their stories. It is perhaps the most powerful tool we have in supporting and combating loneliness.
The word vulnerability has enormous power, and that's the sort of thing that people seem to be most captivated by about this book. They will know really quickly that I've got those stories in me, and I know what they are.