In this candid reflection, the author of Women’s Prize longlisted The Mercy Step traces the long, instinctive journey behind her debut from early short stories and a rediscovered letter in The Guardian to a late diagnosis of ADHD and the liberating discovery of autofiction.
My process was and still is largely unconscious. The first chapter of The Mercy Step, ‘inspired’ by memories of my father’s death, was written as a short story about twenty years ago. At the time, I didn’t think I had the stamina to write a whole novel so I contented myself with writing short stories every now and then. An idea would come to me and I would write a chapter / short story (usually in one sitting). Although I didn’t realise it at the time, I think the true genesis of The Mercy Step was the publication of my anonymous letter in the Guardian eleven years ago, dealing with my feelings about my father’s death. I actually forgot all about that letter until January 2025 when the Guardian featured The Mercy Step as one of its best debut novels of 2025. When I dug back into their archives, I was shocked to read what was effectively a short synopsis of the book.
In December 2021 I attended an Arvon writing course led by Russ Litten, who has since become something of a mentor. He introduced me to the term ‘autofiction’, and that was my lightbulb moment. The fact that there was a specific term for fiction based on the author’s life gave me permission to really go for it and plunder my backstory. I was originally signed by my agent for a different manuscript and I mentioned in passing that I had a few chapters of another work. When I sent her three chapters of The Mercy Step in June 2023, she replied within twenty minutes asking more. After reading the rest, she insisted that we talk and on that call she persuaded me to make The Mercy Step my debut, convinced by the sheer force of Mercy’s voice.
I was reluctant, as I had barely 20,000 words of Mercy. However, and I think this is one of the reasons it is so important to champion women’s writing and especially older women’s writing, her enthusiasm for Mercy’s voice was so infectious that as soon as the zoom call ended, I began writing again. My first drafts are written by dictating. I seem to work better when I walk and talk so I take my mobile, (and the dog) and go for a walk around my local park and talk straight into Google Docs. I love the fact that I’m killing four birds with one stone; getting out for a walk, getting fresh air ,walking the dog and writing a novel. My target is 2000 words for each ‘dictating’ session. Often it doesn’t make a lot of sense when I get home so I have to go through it while it’s still fresh in my mind and fish for any nuggets of gold. I’m always surprised when words that I have been speaking from my semi subconscious make any sense at all. Some writers like to keep their work private until it’s finished but I like to read my works in progress out to my coterie writer friends and get their feedback. This process started in lockdown when I was all alone but I’ve enjoyed it so much that I’ve continued, typically I’ll read my work to three or four different writers friends each week, and incorporate their thoughts as I go on.
During the writing of The Mercy Step I was diagnosed with ADHD, which helped me to understand the stop-start nature of my writing, the periods of intense productivity followed by exhaustion and feeling overwhelmed. Instead of a schedule, I learned to accept that this is just how I am wired: when the words come, they come fast; and all I can do is hang on for the ride, trying to get them down before they are lost to the ether.
Someone described ADHD as having a Ferrari engine with bicycle brakes and I completely understand that now. At times I can write a mile a minute (the most I’ve ever written in one day is ten thousand words) but then I may need weeks to recover from the mental exertion (I wrote virtually nothing for the whole of 2025, but in my defence I was promoting not one but two novels).
Some of the hardest sections to write were the ‘fugue’ states, where Mercy dissociates in the face of overwhelming abuse. I wanted to capture what it felt like for a child to leave her body in order to survive, while also bearing witness to her experience so she would not feel alone. Finding the balance between holding those emotions and shaping them into narrative was fiendishly hard, and perhaps explains one of the reasons it took me until my late fifties to write the book.
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