WritersDigest.com I 15any other factors that led you
to write The Flatshare?
Yes, the spark for Th e Flatshare came
from moving in with my boyfriend
who is a junior doctor—he works
lots of night shift s, so we sometimes
lived the way Tiff y and Leon do,
always alternating who’s home. Th at
was the starting point for the novel.
I was also inspired by my own and
my friends’ experiences of renting in
London. We were all new to the city
and struggling to fi nd our way—me
and one of my friends rented a fl at
with sewage seeping through the
wall from the upstairs fl at, mush-
rooms growing behind the toilet,
and an oven balanced on a plank on
top of a full-size fridge ... So when
I had this idea that two strangers
could share a bed without meet-
ing, it didn’t strike me as at all odd
that somebody might sign up for
that arrangement. So many people
I knew were desperate to fi nd an
aff ordable fl at in central London!
How were you able to write the
book on the train commuting to
and from work?
Writing Th e Flatshare on my com-
mute was tough at fi rst. I had two
clear hours a day with a seat and no
(decent) Wi-fi , so in theory it seemed
like the perfect way to make more
space for writing in my day. But trains
are noisy, and I struggle to write with
background noise. I know some writ-
ers love to go to a café and soak it all
in as they write, but that doesn’t work
for me at all. In the end, the thing that
changed everything was noise-can-
celing headphones and music. I’d not
really written to music before, but I
came to it out of necessity—to block
out the background noise—and it
ended up being key to my writing pro-
cess for Th e Flatshare. I have a whole
playlist of songs that evoke the mood
and feel of the book so vividly for me
that coming back to that playlist aft er
a long time away feels like walking
back into Tiff y and Leon’s fl at again.How would you describe your
writing process? Are you a plot-
ter, pantser, or somewhere in
between?
I’m somewhere in between. I tend to
come up with my concept fi rst (e.g.,
two people share a bed but don’t meet)
and then characters come next, piece
by piece. Some of that process hap-
pens in my head, as I wander around
going about my day, and some of it
comes from just sitting down, writing
Chapter One, and letting myself have
a go. Once I know the characters well
enough, the plot starts to grow, and
that’s usually when I sketch out a writ-
ten plan—but I might already have 20
or 30 thousand words written by then.
I think it was around that for Th e
Flatshare. Writing the plan down is
more about the thinking process than
about creating something I’m going
to refer to—I rarely look back at that
plan once I’ve written it.One reason I found the story
interesting was the structure—
a lot of the narrative was told
through phone conversations
between characters and the
notes Tiffy and Leon left for
each other. What was the pro-cess of writing Tiffy and Leon’s
notes like?
I feel most comfortable writing dia-
logue. If I’m creating a new character,
I won’t write down a description of
them. I’ll stick them somewhere with
somebody else and let them chat until
I’ve fi gured them out. So the notes felt
like a really natural way to write. For
me, they’re an extension of dialogue, a
diff erent form of it. Th ey were a really
useful tool during edits, too, because
when I needed to cut chapters down
they provided me an option for con-
veying lots of action in a short space. I
could just have Tiff y write it all to Leon
in a note, and bam, a whole scene was
condensed onto a sticky note.I also thought The Flatshare
was engaging because readers
can really get inside Tiffy and
Leon’s heads and understand
their motivations. How were
you able to get to know your
characters so well?
Th ere’s a moment for me when char-
acters shift from being malleable to
being themselves. It’s hard to explain.
At fi rst, I’m really aware they’re my
own creations, and as I play around
with them and write scenes, I might
think, What would be convenient
for the story? OK, they’ ll do that. But
aft er a certain amount of time, they
take on a fi xed quality. I can normally
tell when this has happened because
they start ruining the plot. I can’t just
say, “It would be convenient if Tiff y
couldn’t swim, therefore I declare
Tiff y can’t swim,” because by this point
Tiff y’s like a real person, and damn,
she totally can swim and there’s no