“The absolute joy of the solidarity of other women” has hit novelist Jojo Moyes since her early 50s, she adds.
“I’ve always been a woman’s woman,” the Me Before You novelist said Friday at the Hay Festival.
“There is anxiety in one’s twenties…you are constantly comparing yourself to other women,” she explained.
Now, there is nothing other than empathetic and supportive behavior.
Sophie Kinsella and Jodi Picoult also inspired Moyes to keep writing.
She grew up in Hackney, London, which was “not overburdened with literary types” at the time; however, her parents were “penniless sculptors” so she was exposed to the arts at home.
Moyes, 53, attributes her early success to her Protestant work ethic, which was evident from a young age. At the age of fourteen, she accumulated money from cleaning jobs to purchase a stray horse named Bomber, whose stables were located behind Hackney town hall.
After graduating from high school, she worked at a market stall and a taxi office before landing a bank position and enrolling in a management course at Oxford University.
“My classmates’ horizons were extremely limited, so I had no idea what I wanted to do,” she says.
Oxford astonished her.
“It wasn’t the environment alone… I was encircled by exceptionally ambitious youth. Everybody had an objective. They were the first goal-oriented individuals I met, and by the end of the week. I didn’t want to return home.
She ended her engagement with her then-boyfriend and enrolled at London’s City University before pursuing a career in journalism at the Independent alongside authors such as Bridget Jones’s Helen Fielding.
Wow, if she can do it, so can I, I thought to myself as I watched that article develop into a column that resonated with so many women my age at the time – early 20s.
Moyes describes the rejection of her first three novels as “devastating… like someone telling you your child is ugly,” but she did not give up.
Burnt out
“There is unquestionably a ridge of bloodthirstiness running down my spine. I see no reason why I cannot do something.
“My mother used to attribute it to the fact that I was born prematurely.” She was informed that I was dying. I was ten weeks premature. There is a part of me that insists, “No, I’m going to do it!”
Her third work, about art theft, was rejected as too political for women and too romantic for men.
The publication of Moyes’s next eight books did not ignite the publishing world.
By the time she penned the 2012 bestseller Me Before You, one publisher had deemed her career “irretrievable,” and she had added a room to her home to rent it out to a lodger.
Sophie Kinsella, the bestselling author of the Shopaholic series, is credited with ensuring that Me Before You, a novel about a woman who cares for a paralyzed man and subsequently falls in love with him, went beyond a few thousand words.
“She took me out to lunch, and I told her about a book concept I had. I said I’m not positive about it. And I told her every detail. At the conclusion, she said, “You must write this book.”
Jodi Picoult pushed her to keep going with her latest book, Someone Else’s Shoes.
The book’s two female protagonists originate from vastly different socioeconomic backgrounds, and Moyes acknowledges that “social inequality, whether it’s class or wealth… has been a major theme in many of my novels.”
She continues, “But it’s not about how much money you have; it’s about how loved and connected you feel to others.”
Moyes herself is currently experiencing a renewed relationship with her best friend, whom she has known since she was 16 years old, after moving back to London from the Essex countryside after 22 years.
The author, who has sold over 38 million copies of her books worldwide, has endured a difficult couple of years.
Her prolific output and screenplay writing had begun to take a toll.
“I labored excessively for a decade. I depleted my energy reserves. So I decided that 2020 would be my year of leisure and relaxation; I would travel and take a sabbatical. I decided to take a break and visit friends. But then my mother died of cancer, I got divorced, and a pandemic broke out!”
But writing has always been her salvation.
“When I write a book, I don’t realize until four or five years later that it was genuinely therapy; at the time, I wasn’t processing anything.
“And it’s cheaper than therapy.”
