Writing our book: A behind the scenes exclusive
A small break from helping you solve the world's problems to help you make sense of our book!
Usually, this is ‘Wait, But What?’ our weekly advice column for paid supporters, but today it’s a little different - you’re ALL getting it, and it’s all about our upcoming book ‘Make It Make Sense.’
Hi angels! Bel here! And as much as I j’adore solving the problems of the world with you, I thought it’d be cute this week to do something different and answer some of your questions about… the book!
Kinda impossible to do this without feeling like I’m hosting a TED Talk on mine and Lucy’s behalf about… myself and Lucy (lol) but I feel like it’s genuinely a cute story and that you might be interested? Riddle me that.
What the hell is your book about and why did you write it in the first place?
Literally one day I was leaving the shared office space Luce and I used to work in and said, passingly, as I walked out the door, ‘well obviously I’d love to write a book’ and she simply responded, ‘um - you should.’
Fast forward three years and a lot of hard work and, well, here we are.
What do you want people who read the book to say to your friends?
I read this book and it made me laugh/cry/feel less alone in the world and you absolutely have to read it right now.
What do the flowers on the front mean?
It was actually inspired from a shop window I saw on one of my first days in Lisbon. It was a keeling over balloon flower in the window of a clothing boutique and it made me stop in my tracks. That’s the feeling, I thought. The pressure of trying to be beautiful all the time, being told your 20s are when you’re meant to bloom, but buckling under the pressure, the way the internet drags us out of reality and into online spaces… I took a photo and sent it to Luce and that became our starting point.
We worked with illustrator Marcello Velho to create the cover illustration to feel cute and feminine but internetty and weird and capture all the bad bad good good things that happen in our lives that we try to make sense of.
What were the hardest bits?
Honestly? To be totally, utterly honest? Managing our mental health while writing this thing. For so many reasons, but mostly it’s deeply cathartic writing non-fiction: you’re tracing back through your own life to find stories and lessons that are interesting and useful and entertaining for other people to read. And part of that process can unearth some of the hardest parts of your life. You’re doing this while working (slash Luce and I were running our respective businesses), and trying to stay in the world in your social life as well. There were so many moments where I would have killed a man for someone to deliver me lunch or dinner and look after me a little bit. My learning here is that I didn’t ask.
Second to that was managing that awful inner critic! I think it’s even harder when you write on the internet and know all to well how scathing people (strangers) can be. The whole time we were writing it felt like we
And the best?
Despite the aforementioned angsty times, we also had some AMAZING HILARIOUS MOMENTS writing this; sitting in quiosques in Lisbon drinking gin like it was water and nearly falling off our chairs laughing, meeting like spies in the early hours of the morning to pitch to publishers and talk to our agent, unearthing hilarious stories and exchanges between us over the years. It’s a true kind of falling in love to meet a friend you match with like this creatively, who’s as committed to a vision as you, and that feels like one of the luckiest things alive.
Why should I pre-order it?
The best analogy I can find for this is the way you pre-order clothes. Labels release new designs, and to get a sense of how many they should make and avoid waste, they rely on knowing what people want. PLUS it enables us to make cute stuff for early orderers and even, maybe… I don’t know… meet you in real life?! Read into that as you will…
Can I get it in the States?
Yes! You can! It’s not available to preorder on Amazon in the States, but there are other websites (like the UK Amazon, or Mighty Ape in New Zealand) that will let you ship it into your hot little hands!
Lastly, a giant gush because, well, you know I love it
Thank you SO MUCH to everyone who follows, likes, and subscribes to our shit. You’re quite literally the reason we had the gumption to do this in the first place. What might have felt like a random email you sent to us in response to our words had such an effect on us. We read each and every one of them and sometimes they moved me to tears (fml why does this sound like a cringe Oscars speech).
Most of all, we hope this book gives you something to hold and read and return to in the moments where you’re not so sure. There’s so much to feel lost and confused about in this world. We hope, in some small way, this might be a tonic.
Ok, ok — see you back next week with regular programming!
Submit your life crisis Q below and, in the meantime, have you had a bottom shelf red wine and listened to the latest Angie McMahon album? If not, how convenient, just left it here for you:
omg that album is my absolute fave 🥹❤️