“I’m the luckiest girl in the world… I don’t mind working as hard as I do, because it’s the life that I’ve created and chosen, no-one’s asked that of me and it’s a great privilege to do the work that I do. It’s great fun! Who wouldn’t want to sit and interview Rosie Huntington Whitely in their pyjamas on FaceTime?”
Dolly Alderton is a writer, author, director and journalist, with a weekly podcast to boot. I met her earlier this year when we were panellists at an event in London alongside Emma Gannon, and I found so much of what she said in her answers really resonated and stayed with me. As you’ll hear in the following conversation, she’s a witty, self possessed and savvy woman, living the dream as a freelance writer & creative in London. Her first book, Everything I Know About Love,is out in the Spring, and so I called her up to find out how she got to that milestone, what wisdom she’s learned along the way, and whether she’d like to be my new best friend how she juggles so many dynamic projects at once.
Also, a heads up that there’s some marvellous adult language scattered throughout this episode 😉.
Dolly’s website|Instagram| Twitter| Podcast, The High Low |Newsletter
Things we talk about in this episode:
- The power and purpose of a great email newsletter
- The difference between organic, authentic trends and editorial trends
- The importance of owning your own audience and having an independent platform
- The difference between writing for your own platform, and writing for magazines
- Instagram v Twitter, and why Instagram is becoming the better platform for storytelling
- Podcasting as a way of growing an audience
- Why podcasts are a great medium for boosting women’s voices
- Balancing multiple projects at once, and the sacrifices of success
- How Dolly wrote her first draft of her book
- “Sometimes the not-writing is as important as the writing”
- Managing self doubt and getting stuff done
Links from this episode:
- Dolly’s newsletter sign up page
- The Lenny Letter , a newsletter from Lena Dunham and Jenni Conner
- An example of one of Dolly’s newsletters
- Pre-order Dolly’s book,Everything I Know About Love
- The High Low podcast, with Pandora Sykes
- Call your girlfriend, The Guilty Feminist and Emma Gannon’s podcasts
