Best Author Blog

Talking to Emily is like having a jab of optimism injected when you least expect it.

We meet at a café near Southwark Cathedral and she smiles while we order latte in the sunny patio.

Last Christmas, my friend Tony gave me as a present her book 'Shop Girl Diaries' fresh from the print.

“I didn’t think I’d still be working in my Mum’s chandelier shop at 24.” is the incipit.

I have been wondering how Emily, who was in one of my journalism classes, had gone from being a shop assistant to giving talks at the university, publishing a book and film a TV pilot for which she has co-written the script.

All this while getting engaged to The Date and more …

Last month Emily won the overall award for the inaugural Best Author Blog.

She was with Paulo Coelho and Neil Gaiman among the 28 authors shortlisted for the competition, run by CompletelyNovel.com and ex-SYP chair Jon Slack, in partnership with publishers including the Random House Group, Simon & Schuster and Penguin.

I thought I’d better interview Emily before she becomes a celebrity.

“I have kept a diary since I was a kid. I was reading one just recently: ‘This is the idea for my novel and I am going to publish it’, it reads at one point. I was only 9 at the time!” she says.

I follow Emily’s blog and her stories are entertaining and light but never banal.

Mine are usually entertaining and obsessed but never stupid, which might as well work at some point...

“Shop Girl Diaries might sound a bit like Sex & The City but it’s totally the antithesis of it. It’s me in a chandeliers shop, eating a sandwich in a messy stock room in South London. Not really glamorous. “

But the editors at Salt Publishing loved the insights in the real life of a normal girl working in a ‘light shop’, as they saw how this was a reflection of London and how it's dramatically changed with the recession.

They also saw how the blog really spoke to people’s hearts, touching on their everyday experiences - from the customers’ need for some retail therapy to the evolving of a sweet love story.

“In our journalism classes they always tell us to write about what we know best so my parents’ shop was the ideal choice for me. I had written my blog for about seven months when I left a post on the publishers’ website and they got back to me in just a week. We started talking about making a book out of it pretty soon.”

From this point of view Emily’s story is different from that of other bloggers, as she managed to get attention from an editor even before having tons of followers and friends on her blog.

“Pretty soon Facebook became very important to get friends and other people to read my blog but it’s not a question of quantity: I don’t have a huge amount of followers but they all are loyal readers.”

Emily was also supported, and still is, by her brother, who is very good at advising her while her mom is usually the first person to read her blog entries and give her tips.

“I work really hard and I don’t find it easy to write”, says Emily, and by her expression I can picture her grumpy and tense in front of the laptop.

“I complain a lot but then there’s a moment when you slip into writing and you forget you are there. And that is beautiful.”

Things are moving fast for Emily. The day after she won the Best Author Blog award, she found an unexpected email in her inbox.

Subject line: Literary Agent.

“I am meeting her tomorrow,” she says with a slightly worried look in her eyes; but it only lasts a second before she starts telling me the plot and the working title of her next project.

Seeing her enthusiasm, I ask Emily to give me some advice on how to become a writer.

“Value your writing. Create a space in your life for writing. Stick to it. When your writing gets too serious, it’s not good. Find support in people around you. Share your writing. Don’t be precious about it. Let your writing rest, then go back to it and do the editing; that’s the most important part.“

The best advice she gives me is to write my blog as if it was going to be published on a national newspaper.

At that point, I feel like pressing ‘delete’ on my entire blog.

As it’s time to go, a girl dressed entirely in black walks by our table and I ask her for the bill.

“I don’t work here,” she says with contempt while Emily pretends she doesn’t know me. Damn.

Where’s the real waitress gone then?

I ask Emily for a last comment and she says: “I once read that ‘life shrinks or expands in relation to how much courage you have’."

While for sure she is brave, what counts most is that Emily is able to pass her confidence, serenity and optimism on to other people - even in a day when she is stressed about something that can’t be revealed, as it would spoil the book...

If her meeting with the literary agent goes well tomorrow, Emily might soon realize her ultimate dream of being in the windows of Waterstones - with her book of course, not literally.

For now, if you need a genuine laugh, you can buy Shop Girl Diaries at SaltPublishing - this will also help to keep independent publishing alive...