“The biggest challenge (and opportunity), I think, has to do with diversity.” Interview with author Molly Flatt — Ada Lovelace Conversation #8
Arthur C Clarke Award Director Tom Hunter talks with tech and culture journalist Molly Flatt, whose debut novel, The Charmed Life of Alex Moore, has just been published by Pan Macmillan.
TOM: Hi Molly, thanks for being the latest interviewee in our ongoing Ada Lovelace Conversations series, and let’s start with your new book and where it might fit within all the myriad of different shelving categories we find in the average book store these days.
The Charmed Life of Alex Moore, has been described by the press as “highly original” and “totally uncategorisable” — a hybrid of adventure, satire, romance and fantasy. I believe your agent pitched it to your editor as Bridget Jones meets The Matrix, which gives something of a flavour of how difficult to pigeonhole it is.
My understanding is that you had a deliberate intent to try and cross between different genres here, not in an effort to be ‘experimental’ (the book is very readable) but more as a reflection of the way modern readers are increasingly happy to jump across different categories in search of something new. Either that, or maybe this was just the story you had to tell?
MOLLY: Definitely the latter. I think the book is simply a reflection of the fact that I’ve always read unthinkingly across genres and styles. I love a bit of summer chick lit as much as a hardcore sci-fi epic, and a single bookshop haul might include a literary prose poem, a graphic novel and a crime thriller. I don’t think that’s at all unusual, and many of my favourite authors, from Neil Gaiman to Rose Tremain, William Gibson to Philip Pullman, are pretty uncategorisable.
I do also think that the rise of fuzzy terms such as ’near future’ and ’speculative’ proves that the publishing world is running out of labels. In a futuristic-feeling world, where sci-fi seems commonplace, high and low culture mingles seamlessly and political thrillers play out on the news every day, it feels like the only truly ‘realist’ novel is a hybrid of every tradition and trope out there. And I do object to the idea that you can’t have compelling plot as well as serious ideas, or a contemporary urban setting as well as a shot of weird neuro-magic. As a reader, I want fun and food for thought! Adventure and character! Sex and satire! I suppose I simply ended up writing what felt true to me — a hybrid that fitted the way I experience the world. Hopefully, when you read it, you don’t think about genres — you just enjoy the ride.
TOM: I’m always fascinated by the question of ‘why was this the book you had to write?’
How did this book become the book as it were? And, equally importantly, what kept you writing it?
MOLLY: It’s very hard to answer this question without letting giant spoilers slip, but the ‘big secret’ at the heart of the book has been in my brain for decades. Essentially, it’s a tangible manifestation of consciousness — something I’ve always been fascinated by (isn’t everyone). How do we experience life? How do we become who we are? How do we shape our own identities? How do we build our internal narratives about what we can and can’t do? And, most importantly, how (can) we change them?
Those are the big questions that I wanted to explore in The Charmed Life of Alex Moore, along with a bunch of others (What if everything in your life started to go right? What if you’d killed someone without knowing it? Why do so many amazingly talented people never fulfill their true potential? Is self-help really helpful? Can women have it all?). The novel just became a wonderful sort of wish fulfillment, playing out all sorts of scenarios that would actually be far too daring or terrifying to experience. It also allowed me to have fun writing about worlds that I knew, with a slightly satirical eye — the startup scene in London, online ‘wellness’ communities, the beautiful wilds of Orkney.
In terms of keeping going? God, it was hard at times. It took me about seven years to write this book, and there were many times when my family and friends must have thought I was mad. I certainly did. But for me, writing is a compulsion. Having a long-form, challenging project to sink my teeth into actually keeps me sane and healthy. It somehow seems to absorb all this excess mental energy that would otherwise manifest in useless or destructive ways. I also just refused to become one of those Casaubons who is always writing a masterpiece that never quite gets finished. The thought of that terrifies me more than spending years reworking 100,000 words only to decide they still don’t quite work, and start again from scratch (true story).
Also, my writing group has been an essential source of motivation, inspiration and support. We met during Faber’s six-month Writing A Novel course back in 2011 (before it was famous) and eight of us still meet every month to critique each other’s work, drink and laugh. They’re a incredibly diverse and absolutely priceless group of individuals, and I couldn’t have done it without them.
The shorter answer to what kept me writing it is: 90% dark chocolate, thick socks and stubbornness.
TOM: Large portions of the book are set in London’s start-up tech scene in and around the so-called Silicon Roundabout of Shoreditch. Now, since we both live locally to that postcode and we both know that space well I can see you’re drawing a lot on potential real life situations, however well disguised in fiction. I think you’ve walked a clever line between fly-on-the-wall reportage and piss-taking behind the curtain reveal here, and clearly you have an affection for the space, yet I can’t help but feel that rather than amplifying things for dramatic effect you may well have toned down some of the real life aspects of digital / start-up culture precisely in order to make your fictional account more realistic e.g. truth is always stranger than fiction. Care to comment?
MOLLY: Ha. Ha ha ha. Ah yes, sometimes the startup scene seems utterly beyond satire. As a woman whose been working in the tech world for a while now, first as a digital marketer, then as a consultant and now as a journalist, I’ve seen some stuff that would probably read as simply ridiculous. But you know what, I’m always so aware of my own ridiculousness, my own narrow habits, vomitous cliches and petty idiocies, that I’m loathe to call anyone else out too much. I also love that world. I owe it my career. As long as you stay clear of the Silicon-Valley-unicorn-dick-waving bullshit, it is still ripe with energy and authenticity and inspiration and courage. However, I’m currently writing the sequel to TCLAM, and there’s much more in this book about global tech corporations, and the tech itself, and they’re treated with a much sharper satirical bite. So… watch this space :)
TOM: Can we talk a little bit more about digital and marketing and word of mouth and all of that as seen from your initial career in that area and then that shift to ‘being the product’ as it were and all the minefields (or not) of self-promotion. I’m thinking particularly about the noted bias that women often have towards explicitly being seen to promote themselves, especially in social media, but also that life balance of beating the drum versus getting back to the laptop and working on book two. How involved have you been in all this, and indeed how involved do you want to be?
MOLLY: Social media is an incredible tool and has proved me with an amazing route to insight, inspiration and support over the years. I’ve always been an early adopter of social platforms, and I used them long before any thought of ‘personal branding’ (yuck) cropped up. So of course I’m using that network as much as I can to spread the word about my novel and, yes, the marketing-myself bit feels weird and uncomfortable and totally different to doing it for clients back in the day (and I don’t think that’s a gendered thing, to be honest). But I suppose it doesn’t feel too much like marketing, because I’ve built genuine relationships with like-minded people across lots of platforms. We’ve all shared plenty of ups and downs over the years, and supported each other’s endeavours, and been excited to discover books and projects and creative work that will bring us pleasure and provoke new ideas. So I do feel the launch of my first novel fits comfortably into that context, and that the lovely response I’ve had so far has been authentic.
One of the reasons I went with a traditional publisher rather than self-publishing, however, was because I didn’t want to become my own marketer beyond a light touch throughout my network. Because Pan Macmillan are doing (an awesome job of) the design, production, marketing and distribution, it does help to protect my writing time. A little bit. The main threat to working on book two, however, isn’t marketing — it’s having multiple freelance day jobs and a two-year-old. Novel stuff still has to fit in around my everyday life. I’d love for book sales to buy me more time to write-write, because that’s when I’m happiest in the world. But for those of us with mortgages and family — and without a trust fund — it’s something that just has to be squeezed in everywhere and anywhere.
TOM: And now comes the time when I want to pick a needless fight with you!
I’m a huge advocate of re-reading, and checking my book journal I can see that last year my total number of reads included a significant proportion of re-reads. You on the other hand have always told me you never re-read. You’re wrong obviously, but I’ll give you the benefit of the doubt if you can explain yourself adequately…
MOLLY: OK, I may have lied a bit for the sake of that needless fight in turn! I do re-read the odd favourite. I return to one of Dorothy Dunnett’s two epic historical series about every four years. Ditto Philip Pullman’s Northern Lights trilogy. I’ve definitely gone back to Ursula LeGuinn’s Earthsea quartet, plus various Tremains and Gaimans, and I revisit classic writers like Dickens and Woolf now and then.
But re-reading is indeed very rare for me nowadays, because TIME. So many books, so few days left before the grave! I want to cram in as many, and as various, as I can! Also, I’m a total sucker for plot. I quite simply love not knowing what happens next. Reading a new book is like getting to experience first love every few days, with all the uncertainty and promise and exhilaration that entails. So I have a few long-term partners — but I’m basically a massive book whore.
TOM: Finally then, a question about the future. You’re the Associate Editor for Futurebook at the Bookseller, so it seems only appropriate we talk about the future of books for a minute.
As William Gibson once said, the future’s already here, its just not evenly distributed, so where should we be looking for the future of books?
MOLLY: What a question! Well, the book industry has held pretty solid over the past decade of disruption. The print book is a beautiful, resilient piece of technology, and it’s still selling very well. Ebooks have been an accessible, convenient addition to the trade, and we’ve seen some exciting recent developments too — the huge explosion of audio; the growth of indie presses; the rise of self-publishing; the role of crowdfunding; some cool experiments in mobile, voice-interactive and context-responsive fiction. And quite simply, in a political landscape where freedom of speech feels increasingly under threat, writers and publishers and booksellers and all the other people who work to get smart, varied, thoughtful books out there feel more valuable than ever.
But the biggest challenge (and opportunity), I think, has to do with diversity. Diversity in the types of voices that get published. Diversity in the types of people who work in the industry. But also diversity in terms of the audiences we manage to reach. Too many people who love books assume that a similar love for books is somehow guaranteed for the next generation in turn. But many young people will grow up without access to a local library. Many will grow up feeling that the books in the shops in no way reflect their experiences or dialects or attitude. Many will see videos as their main information source and gaming as their main entertainment, and books as the preserve of their current solid user base: white, middle-class, middle-aged people.
So for the future of books, we should be looking to people who aren’t visible, heard or sold to…. yet. They’re the ones who can broaden that freedom of speech, reinvigorate the form, and tell the compelling and fresh stories that bring books to life.
BIO: Molly Flatt is Associate Editor of FutureBook, Digital Editor of PHOENIX, and also writes for the likes of the Guardian and the BBC. She speaks regularly on digital culture and publishing and her debut novel, THE CHARMED LIFE OF ALEX MOORE — an adventure set between the startups of Old Street and the wilds of Orkney — is out now.
Spoiler: I thought it was pretty good…
The Ada Lovelace Conversations are a collaborative project between the Arthur C. Clarke Award for science fiction literature and Ada Lovelace Day, an international celebration day of the achievements of women in science, technology, engineering and maths (STEM), profiling women writers of Science Fiction and beyond.
Links to our previous Ada Lovelace Conversations interviews:
