“We just really love love,” my friend Alice said to me recently when we were messaging for the billionth time about Mhairi McFarlane and Emily Henry books and the latest series of Bridgerton. Alice was being 10% sarcastic but 90% deadly serious.
She and I spend a significant amount of time on Whatsapp discussing our affection for romantic fiction and Jonathan Bailey’s furrowed brow. It’s one of my favourite pastimes. By nature, we’re both quite cynical and terribly sentimental (alluring combo) which makes for a deeply satisfying, never ending dialogue that forensically dissects the genre while unashamedly swooning over it.
Mhairi McFarlane is a master of the romantic comedy fiction so it was a treat to nab her for this interview. I started backwards with Mhairi’s books when I read her latest, Mad About You, earlier this year. I say read, I mean devoured. Then I bought every other book she’s written and tore through a book a week over a 2 month period. The washing piled up, season’s changed, the sun rose, the sun set and through it all I was reading a Mhairi McFarlane book.
It’s SO difficult to do this genre of fiction well. Constructing an engrossing plot, creating snappy dialogue, building romantic tension, articulating longing and still being funny while you’re at it is no mean feat. She writes lovable protagonists and relatable friendships and navigates between heartfelt and playful so well.
It was really interesting to hear from Mhairi about her working process and why she writes what she writes. And she shares some great recommendations too. Hope you enjoy!
Are you working on a new book at the moment? How's it going?
AWFUL, WHY WOULD YOU ASK ME THAT???!! But seriously, yes I am, hopefully one that will appear in 2023. Every book I work on is simultaneously my new favourite child and I'd burn the others in a skip by comparison, and a perilous, over ambitious disaster that will see everyone finally realise I don't deserve my job. Among other things, I'm writing *about* a writer in this one, which I've never done before, and I'm enjoying painting a horrific portrait of a selfish, parasitical narcissist. Lol.
How have you refined your writing process over time?
Uhm.....hahahhaa. Not really? You get to know your own preferences and foibles better, I guess. I am about 15% better at recognising that the "this is SO shit, stop, you're so bad, God this is so trivial and awful and all your characters are DEEPLY ANNOYING" sarcastic teenager voice on my shoulder is to be ignored if I want to finish. (It changes what it's saying daily, that's a generic example.)
I also know now to work out my daily word count to give me a target to hit, otherwise the whole project can feel unmanageable. (You'd think this would be obvious, yet to me, a recent revelation. I used to think 'as much as you can!' was the right attitude, but in fact, it can crush you). I've also realised, and I think this may be the former journalist brain, I'm very plot orientated. Give me a clear plot point to deliver and I will give you a chapter in no time. Thrashing around trying to work out how to tell the next bit of the story is such a huge, often painful, part of it.
Why do you think you write what you write? Are you writing the books you want to read?
Oh God if there's one criteria I smash, it's the 'write what you want to read' advice. When I wrote my debut, You Had Me At Hello, it was because I wanted to read a romantic comedy about two people in a rainy British city with ordinary names doing ordinary jobs, who'd shagged their lives up by not choosing each other when they had the chance. No glamour, no trappings.
Why do I write what I write? Ooh that's a good question, one I don't think I've ever been asked. I think because I love observing personal relationships (of all kinds, not just romantic) and the very many types of mindfuckery and disingenuousness and HARM out there. Done as much to ourselves as by any 'bad actor' - that's another thing I want to read about, people who are culpable. I can't stand angels in romances. Human nature is endlessly fascinating and rom coms give you so much scope to explore it.
On a practical level, I also love writing dialogue and making a joke out of everything. So in terms of authorial habits and genre fit, it's glove like. I also prefer endings of happiness and redemption. It's interesting that's often seen the mark of a shallower person, when I think it can actually reflect the fact you find life's default settings to be "hard and sad" and want some of your entertainment to act as antidote. I think it's easier in some ways to look for grim, and more difficult to find hope. I could now make a joke of that statement, but I will resist.
What are your reading habits?
Truly awful and worse when I am in first draft phase, which is most of the year. My bedside table features 10 to 15 books that I am three chapters into. I could solely blame a gigantic TBR pile because I'm lucky enough to get sent proofs, but in truth it's tons of things - attention span, fear of reading something too good (so pretty much all my current rom com peers), fear of occasionally reading something too bad (which can also infect the writing brain, mine is often a mimic) and yeah, disrupted by Netflix and life and booze. "Recommend me what to read next!" is to me, worse than 'where do you get your ideas from.' Ask one of my voracious reader friends, who treat their Kindles as genuine time off and are unaffected by thinking of authors as colleagues and competition!
What's the book you wish you'd written?
Total cliche for writers of my genre to say this, but - apart from absolutely anything by Kate Atkinson - David Nicholls, One Day. It's how he evokes the era alongside the stages of Emma and Dexter's relationship, and teases out great truths about youth and ageing. When Emma goes to the Motown band wedding in a cheongsam dress, driving a battered car, my Mum read it and said, "That was YOU" and I had already thought, Nicholls you devil, that is me.
Can you recommend a podcast, old or new, that you’ve loved?
Sentimental Garbage, a dig into maligned 'women’s' genres of entertainment, hosted by Caroline O'Donoghue, is always sparky, incisive and witty. I *may* be influenced by the fact they reviewed my book, Who's That Girl and listening to the episode was the most rewarding hour of my life. I am also, like everyone else, an absolute addict of the true crime variety. Most recently, Beyond Reasonable Doubt, about The Staircase.
How about a TV series?
OK, I am going to try to give a bump to something that it's feasible that not everybody will have already either heard of, or seen (but is still pretty famous). Bodies - the medical drama starring Max Beesley, earlier work of Jed Mercurio who every knows as writer-creator of Line Of Duty. It's about medical malpractice and whistle blowing on a gynae ward which sounds unpromising, but I think is right up there with landmark achievements like The Sopranos or The Wire. However, like unpasteurised cheese, probably not suitable for pregnant women.
Mad About You by Mhairi McFarlane is out now
P.S About 10 years ago, Mhairi wrote a blog post called The Ultimate Celebrity Interview. It was an ingenious parody which I would revisit every so often when I was in need of a laugh. (I was editing celebrity interviews at ELLE magazine at the time and we were actively trying to break the bad habit of what Mhairi described as the “hilariously hagiographic interview” so it really spoke to me.) The piece used to be online but I just checked and it’s not there anymore. BUT, you can read it at the back of her first book, You Had Me At Hello. A little bonus treat.