“I wrote What It’s Like in Words in my dressing room in the St Martin’s theatre in the West End whilst playing Miss Casewell in The Mousetrap, and over nine months and approximately 300 shows it occurred to me how similar the processes of writing and acting are. They may appear binary forms of storytelling, one extraverted, the other introverted, but they are both concerned with the limits to which you push your mind in order to inhabit someone else’s.”

“What It’s Like in Words follows a toxic relationship, but one of the main themes is the storytelling. Enola is someone who tells herself stories. Daydreaming about the past, the future, and the other worlds that might exist in which she is happier. She is also influenced by the stories that society tells women about what their lives should look like. Therefore, before she can change her reality, she must re-write the narrative in her head.”

“If you’re asking your reader to connect, then you, as a writer, need to do the same. You can’t be afraid to go to those uncomfortable, embarrassing, painful places. I approached the dynamics as honestly as I could with the tools that I had.”

“I’m quite an intense person in how I feel emotions. When I’m up, I’m up, and when I’m down, I’m down. And I think I had this idea of writing as a calming activity, a neat profession. But the last few years have made me feel more extreme than ever. And unlike acting where you can leave a performance on the stage, or singing, where there is a catharsis when you finish a song, writing is an endless to-do list, it stays with you, it keeps you awake, it lingers. And that’s amazing, but it’s also a little like being haunted. You have to make friends with your ghosts.”

“Sundowners. Crabs scuttling sideways on a dark beach. Leaving Moscow. Homesickness. Being single in London in your twenties. Bad love stories. Good friendships. MeToo. Growing up. Shedding skin.”