Camilla Balshaw has written for the Guardian and the Observer. She holds an MA in Creative & Life Writing from Goldsmiths (Distinction) and is an Honorary Research Fellow in Name Studies at the University of Nottingham. Her memoir Named won the Biography & Memoir category in the East Anglian Book Awards 2025.

Holly

Camilla, welcome. It is great to have you here today to talk about memoir and identity, and how you approach all of that.

 

Camilla

Oh, it’s lovely to be on. Lovely to talk to you, Holly.

 

Holly

So, Named is a memoir. Of course, it’s a book about names and about how they shape our sense of self, but it’s also about your name, your life, and your family.

I wonder if you could start off by telling us what you feel is at the core of the book, and what was the catalyst for telling the story in this way?

 

Camilla

Wow. Okay. So I think really at the heart of the book, I mean, it is a book about naming. You know, that’s at the very heart of the book, about our names in terms of why we have our names, what our names mean to us, and the importance of a first name, a middle name, and our surname.

And then I was trying to reframe that to my own name journey, because I was brought up with essentially two names. I mean, on my birth certificate I was Camilla, but growing up I was called Mandy, because my mum just didn’t like the name Camilla. My dad chose it, and so they had, I kind of call it a cultural naming tug of war, a clash.

And my Jamaican mother, she preferred names that were kind of two syllables long. She was Jamaican. She didn’t want a name that was too ethnic sounding, and although Camilla doesn’t sound ethnic sounding, I mean it’s a very traditional British name, right?

 

Holly

Yeah, Queen Camilla.

 

Camilla

Absolutely. But my dad, I was actually supposed to be called Camillat, which is an Arabic name. Yeah. But the person at the registry, who was registering my name, wrote it down as Camilla, spelt C-A-M-I-L-L-A. And for my mum, I think growing up in Luton, she just thought it was a name that didn’t fit in.

So I wanted to explore this process of what our names mean to us in terms of our self-identity. And for me, it was really about reclaiming my actual name. My actual name is Camilla. It just took a long time to reclaim it, Holly.

 

Holly

And you didn’t always know that you had this name to reclaim, did you?

 

Camilla

I didn’t.

 

Holly

Yeah, I wonder if you could tell us how you discovered it.

 

Camilla

Yeah, well, I didn’t. So I, you know, growing up, Mandy was a perfectly fine name, and it’s a lovely name.

 

Holly

And it was Mandy rather than Amanda?

 

Camilla

Well, yeah, again, my sister always called me Amanda, but everyone else, yeah, it was Mandy. My dad actually preferred Amanda when he lost out on the cultural naming clash. So I was Amanda or Mandy.

And then when I was around 10, I was looking through my mother’s… I was actually looking for a book in my mother’s bedroom, and I came across my birth certificate. And that’s when I discovered that Mandy slash Amanda wasn’t actually my name.

And I remember that moment. I remember feeling obviously very discombobulated by that discovery, but also thinking, I remember thinking, I really liked the name Camilla. And so to see it written down, I just thought, well, to me I had a very deep sense that that was my name and that was the name I wanted to be known as. I wanted to be called Camilla.

And obviously my parents divorced, so I think at that point I knew that my name had baggage. My name was associated with my dad, with my Nigerian father, and he was a man I didn’t see. So I kind of felt in some ways if I did reclaim Camilla, I was doing a disservice to my mum. So even though I lost the name, Holly, it just felt somehow like I was taking sides.

Does that make sense?

 

Holly

Yeah, it absolutely does. And really interesting what you were saying there about telling this story in this way being about a reclaiming, but almost perhaps if you took away the ‘re’, it’s a claiming of something that you didn’t know was there before.

So you have this big kind of moment in your identity, but in terms of turning that into a book, was it that you had this idea about names and you thought, literally, I want to write a book about names? Or was there another catalyst that kind of helped you to find your way into the story?

 

Camilla

Yeah, well, I was always writing about family, and I was always writing quite a lot about belonging and what makes us human and identity. I’d always written about my mum and my dad, and they were a big part of my writing because I found them very interesting.

And then I wrote an article for The Observer / The Guardian  in 2020 or 2021, I think it was, and that was around names. That was around my complicated naming story, and it was also around family and having this kind of identity of being born in Luton and having a Nigerian father and Jamaican mother, and just those cultural clashes around names.

The article came out in 2021, and it was quite light-hearted, but I spoke to quite a lot of name scholars in that article, and I spoke to other people about their names. And when that came out, it had a huge response. My agent got an email from an editor who asked if I would be interested in exploring the topic a bit further, in book form, in a memoir, in a sort of hybrid memoir form. And I said, yes, I’d love to.

So it really came from that, really. I did have quite a lot of memoir sort of journals and articles and things I’d written about my family, but really it was the essay for The Observer / The Guardian that really kind of springboarded the book and leapt forward.

 

Holly

That’s so interesting, because I suppose what a lot of people might find when they’re coming to a memoir is that they’ve got this big, you know, everybody has quite a sprawling story of their life, don’t they, that can go in many directions.

But you sort of, from the outset for this book, had a lens or a sort of focus of names, which you could then funnel your story through. Is that fair?

 

Camilla

Yes, absolutely. And that really helped because it really helped with the structure of the book. I always knew that names were the key, the central theme to the writing.

But around that, I also wanted to explore themes of family, family estrangement, identity, belonging, and the place we called home. But all of those themes were kind of tied in to that central narrative around what we call ourselves, the name that we are given.

And I think on the back of writing that article, I discovered that so many people have a name story.

 

Holly

Yes, this comes up, doesn’t it? You mentioned this in the book, that whenever you would say to somebody, ‘Oh, I’m writing a book about names,’ that invariably they’d end up sharing a story.

 

Camilla

Absolutely, absolutely. It really surprised me. I mean, because I really am actually obsessed with names. And then I discovered that you’d be, I don’t know, at a party and you’d just casually mention that I was writing a book about names.

And invariably someone would have a name story, you know, about the evolution of their own name. Maybe they were called by an ex-girlfriend’s name someone discovered that they were named after her, their dad had an ex-girlfriend, and they discovered that they were named after her. Didn’t go down too well with mum.

But all these stories around naming people who discovered that actually they preferred their middle name and wanted to be called their middle name not their first name. So it’s just such a fascinating subject.

And I think yeah at the heart of it I remember reading a really interesting quote by a psychologist called Gordon Allport and he says that our names are the anchorage to our self-identity. And they really are aren’t they. That’s the first thing we learn about someone.

 

Holly

It is, it is. And gosh, there are a couple of places I want to go with what you’ve just said, but I think I’ll just first ask, while we’re talking about how you constructed the book, I’m interested to know whether in other people sharing their stories, and you must have had some interesting little rabbit holes you could have gone down.

Was there a temptation then when you were crafting this narrative to veer off into those stories? I mean, how did you hold on to your central focus of you and your family?

 

Camilla

Yeah, I had to be very careful with that because I did want to include people’s name stories in the book, but they couldn’t, it had to be a balance.

You know, and it was just around navigating that, yes, I wanted to include people’s name stories, but that couldn’t override my own story. So I kind of put other people’s stories in there as just little anecdotes or to highlight a point or to give an example of something that I was talking about.

And that worked really well because it would have been very easy to have had a book around other people’s name stories. But actually, that wasn’t what I wanted to do. I just wanted to give certain examples around people’s name choices and why they did it, but it had to tie in with the chapter.

For example, I spoke to someone who decided to change his name to an African name because that really reflected his heritage, and fascinating story as it was, I couldn’t go into too much detail about it. I just sort of mentioned it in the frame around people who reclaimed a name, like myself.

And yeah, so that’s how I dealt with it.

 

Holly

Yeah, it must, it must be… well, I guess the temptation is that you could have had an equally interesting book that was a book of anecdotes, but it wouldn’t have been what you’d set out to write, which was your story.

So going back to that core of this, is what you said, that your name is that kind of anchor, oh it was a beautiful quote, I’m going to butcher it now, but an anchor to your identity.

There are so many connotations, aren’t there, that come with a name that you explore through the book, and they’re quite big. Some of them are quite big subjects. A name can be something that people are judged by, it can denote heritage, as you said, culture, class.

So I guess, well, I guess maybe I’ll turn that question back to you, do you think you learned something about how we judge each other and perhaps ourselves in writing the book based on names?

 

Camilla

Yeah, absolutely. I mean, I really thought about that myself. And I think we all do it to a certain degree. I think sometimes you hear a name and I perhaps put an age on that person and a cultural background on that person.

I think it’s something we just all naturally do, although we don’t like to admit it. I think there was a particular name like the name Chardonnay. That’s a very kind of current name. It was certainly a name that was popular, what, about ten or 15 years ago, wasn’t it.

And so when I hear the name Chardonnay, I tend to be able to put an age on that person. I wouldn’t expect Chardonnay to be in her 60s, as opposed to the name Chelsea.

 

Holly

No, agreed.

 

Camilla

So I think there are certain names that we kind of put our own sense of place and identity on, and we all do it. I mean, I know we don’t like to admit that we do, but we do.

And then there are those names that people unfortunately just butcher, a person’s name that’s hard to pronounce, or, you know, they want to call someone a different name because they can’t pronounce their name.

So I wanted to include all of that in the book, and how that makes people feel really.

 

Holly

Yeah, that’s really interesting what you say about pronunciation, because, and perhaps maybe not changing names, but slight adaptations to names.

And there are some examples you give, you reference certain well-known public figures who’ve perhaps anglicised their names, or you talk about Barack Obama actually not making reference to his middle name.

So I wonder if maybe you want to talk a bit about that, but also whether that means that naming, or the process of naming someone, has a power structure to it as well.

 

Camilla

Yeah, no, it really does. And I think that’s why, I mean, just thinking about my own middle name, which is Adebisi, which is a beautiful name.

But, you know, growing up in the 70s, I remember being very reticent to tell anyone that my middle name was Adebisi.

 

Holly

And why was that?

 

Camilla

Because I just thought it sounded too foreign. It was too foreign. It was hard to pronounce. When people did find out I was Adebisi, they called it Adebisi. They made fun of the name. And I think it was a particular time where you just wanted to assimilate.

And I think for my mum, Jamaican heritage, she wanted us to just assimilate with names that sounded English. And I can understand. I think things have, thankfully, changed now. I think there are still issues around certain names and groups who are marginalised because of their names, but I think there are a lot of people in the public eye who have really started to reclaim what they’re called and people just have to try and pronounce it correctly.

There’s nothing worse than when you hear your name being mispronounced. I spoke to lots of people in the book who just felt othered or somehow made fun of because of their name, or that other thing where people can’t pronounce the name so they therefore just give you a nickname because it’s easier for them.

Yeah, so I really wanted to explore that in the book.

 

Holly

Yeah, and I think you do. It is very powerful. It’s like that word ‘othered.’ It’s sort of like saying, ‘Oh, well, I’m not going to make the effort to learn how to pronounce your name. Therefore, it’s less important somehow.’

So it’s taking away a bit of your identity.

 

Camilla

Yeah, absolutely. And I think when I was writing also, Holly, I wanted to write a book where there were references to naming culture and naming traditions that were accessible for readers. I wanted to make the research around names really accessible and readable so that people were learning stuff around names.

And I wanted to make that fun and pleasurable, as well as keeping the narrative structure of my own story running through the book. That was really important.

And when we think about that, there’s this whole idea that in Yoruba culture your name that you’re given has meaning. You know, it has power. And I think growing up, I didn’t know that. You know, I just thought I had this name, Camilla Adebisi.

And then as I got older, it really became a source of pride that my father had really thought and considered the name that he gave me. They weren’t just random names. In Yoruba culture, you really have to consider your name, the name that you’re going to bestow on this child, and you really want the names that you choose to have some resonance, to have some meaning.

And when I dug deeper into the tradition of names in Yoruba culture, names really do mean something. So I became just incredibly proud of carrying this name. And I really wanted to show that through the book, that that wasn’t always the case. But for me, it was this learning. It was learning to accept my identity. And a big part of my identity is my name.

 

Holly

Yeah, so names can almost be a self-fulfilling prophecy in a way, or they can do.

 

Camilla

Yeah, absolutely. And I think when I first wrote the article that came out about names in The Guardian, it really was, you know, I thought I was just writing a piece around naming.

And I didn’t, I mean I just didn’t expect the response. I feel that our names are incredibly important. And since writing the book, I mean I’ve received plenty of emails from people who’ve really benefited from reading the book and having a chance to just think about their own name or what it means to them and the evolution of their name.

So it’s been great in that respect.

 

Holly

That’s fantastic. Yeah. I suppose it’s quite an interesting thing for perhaps anybody listening who is working on a memoir or thinking about that kind of sharing of a personal story, the impact of it.

And actually, once it’s out in the world, it sounds like you’ve had a very positive response. But I wonder if you can talk a bit about that experience of writing a very personal story and then knowing that it’s going to be shared publicly, read by strangers, whether that kind of had an effect on your writing and how much you shared.

 

Camilla

Yeah, that’s such a big question. It’s something that I mean I teach creative writing and I teach life writing, and it’s the question that always comes up with my students because writing memoir is exposing. I mean there’s no two ways about it. You’re really putting yourself on the page.

And I think for me, I always felt this was a story I had to tell. It was a need. I had to tell this story. And I always tell my students that you’ve got to write the story that you need to write, regardless of what your aunt says or your grandmother or your friend, your neighbour next door. This is your story.

But obviously I understand that it’s exposing and sometimes we tell these stories and they can be very traumatic. But I think you’ve got to just put yourself on the page as honestly as you can and as truthfully.

And I think for me I was very open with my family that I was writing this book. I didn’t share any of the drafts with them. I know some writers do, some memoirists do, but I didn’t. But they knew what I was writing and I think they were curious, they were really curious to read the book. And a way around that for me was just to say, look, just wait till publication day and then you can read it. And they were fine with that, but they were curious.

And I think I had a conversation with my editor at one point because when I first started writing the first couple of drafts I was slightly nervous, I’ll be honest, about exposing aspects of family life. And that was a conversation I had with my editor. And she just reassured me that this was a great story to tell and just tell it as honestly as I could tell it. But she was aware that that’s a process we go through when we’re writing a memoir, that you have those doubts about overexposing yourself and what people will think. That’s always the question. What will someone think of me?

 

Holly

Which is so natural, isn’t it? And like I guess there’s an element of, and you are in control of the narrative, so you can protect yourself to a point by what you share.

But I suppose it also depends on the nature of what you’re talking about because as you say, sometimes people can be writing about quite traumatic experiences that perhaps they do need the blessing of family members or friends before they write about.

But I’m very pleased to hear that you’ve had a positive response from those who feature in the book.

 

Camilla

Yeah, it was positive because you want that. But also, at the same juncture, I’d say that my family are very private. My mum is a very private person.

So I think if I was writing this book, I was aware of that. But I had to kind of override that in my own sense of self and just remind myself that this was my story that I was telling. And I was telling it as truthfully as I could tell it.

But yeah, I was aware. You are aware of family, but you have to tell the story that you need to tell as honestly as you can. I make that clear to all of my students, you have to tell your story. It’s a need in lots of people, isn’t it, and in many of us, to write down our story as honestly as we can.

 

Holly

Absolutely. I’m one of the interesting things though I suppose is in the journey, because I suppose we should say that a lot of what happens in the book is about your journey to reconnecting through the lens of your name to your father and to his story.

But a lot of that was happening without your mother’s knowledge until a certain point when you decided to tell her. I wonder whether when she read the book that was then, if anything shifted in your relationship, or whether it was all out in the open by then anyway.

 

Camilla

Yeah, that’s such a good question, Holly. I mean, some of it was out in the open, most of it was. But I think when she read the book, she was surprised by how difficult it was for me to process not having a relationship with my father.

I think my mum did a fantastic job, I mean she is an amazing mum, she brought three kids up on her own until she met my stepfather John. So I think for her there were elements of trying to understand what I was going through in terms of needing to have a relationship with my dad, and needing to try and connect with him. And that didn’t override how I felt about her. This was about me and our relationship.

So yes, I think she did learn a lot more about the process, the kind of wrestling I was doing with a lot of emotions about my father, and also about my mother and how I would make peace with him as well as her, in terms of their relationship because it was very fractured.

So yeah, that was a process of healing actually in writing the book. I think since writing it she understands the journey that I’ve been on with my dad really. And I’m really glad that that’s happened because it’s just made us closer in lots of respects. It’s made a closer connection between us.

 

Holly

That’s wonderful. And I love that about the writing process being healing as well, because I think that’s often something that can be a secondary thing that comes with writing. Perhaps we think of writing as healing as being like journaling or doing a particular kind of writing, but actually just the very process of telling your story and naming it and claiming it can have that benefit.

I also wanted to ask you, and talk a little bit about your siblings, and just wonder whether, well I guess the similar question, whether things changed at all, or whether it sparked conversations with your siblings by writing and then them reading the book.

 

Camilla

Yeah, that really did. I mean, I think again, when I first started the book, my siblings were quite a quiet presence in the first draft. I was just, again, there was that feeling of writing about my family members, you know, about my brother and sister, and I didn’t initially feel comfortable in the first draft about doing that.

And then that started to change and their voices became much more, I’d say, a presence in the book. But initially I was a little bit reticent.

And then I think when the book was published, yes, again, they were very excited to be in the book. They’ve read it, they’ve enjoyed it. I think for my sister, I actually did a little podcast with her around our names for a magazine, so I think it’s been really interesting for her to consider her own name.

Her name is much more Nigerian than mine, a Nigerian sounding name, and she had a little bit more difficulty at school around her name. So that was something that we talked about and discussed a lot as I was writing the book, and then subsequently after the book was published we’ve talked about that quite a lot.

And also with my brother. So I think again it’s one of those things, isn’t it, you write this and don’t know the ramifications it will have on other family members. And I think for mine it’s been absolutely positive. And it’s made us really consider our names. And I think both of them feel, like me, really proud to carry the names that they do.

 

Holly

I’m really interested. I actually want to just stay for a minute on their names because it’s something that you talk about in the book. And I should say that I think they’re wonderful characters in the book.

And there are, I love this kind of, there are these moments where you kind of look back on childhood moments where you were just hanging around and having conversations with them. And it just really evokes this sense of a quite harmonious sibling relationship. It’s lovely, it’s beautifully done.

But I wonder if I can ask you a bit more about the difference between, as you said, their more Nigerian-sounding names and then you as Mandy and then Camilla, and how that perhaps, in terms of your, you said you’ve explored belonging, and belonging perhaps to the family throughout the book.

Do you want to sort of share what their names are and then the kind of differences that that might have made you feel?

 

Camilla

Yeah, well, my brother’s first name is Abdul, Abdul Babatunde, and my sister is Duni, Aduni, but she prefers Duni. And so, yeah, in comparison, growing up Mandy, in comparison to their names, sounds very different.

So I think we were all curious about it. We were all curious about the fact that I had a very different-sounding first name. And I think actually mum, to be fair, did, because my dad again, my mum wanted to call my brother Tony. That was her preferred name.

 

Holly

It’s quite different.

 

Camilla

Yes, quite different. And my sister was going to be Sarah. Sarah.

But my dad again registered their names, went against my mum’s wishes. And again, the names that he chose were Yoruba names that really mean something and meant something to him. And he went against her wishes.

So if my mum had had her wish, yes, I’d have a brother called Tony and a sister called Sarah. But no, they’re Duni and Abdul. So yeah, it was a conversation we had as siblings around what that meant.

And I think for my sister, she always said, well, your name just assimilated, you know, it just sounded, it just fitted in the playground. Whereas her name was mispronounced quite a lot growing up. Also my brother’s was mispronounced or made fun of.

And so, in a way, I had an easier ride in a certain way with my name at school compared to them. And so yeah, that’s something that we did discuss. And I think for them, they started really considering what it meant to carry the names that they had.

And it’s a conversation I had with my brother around, well, how would your life be different if you were called Tony? And how would my sister’s life be different if she was Sarah? In terms of job applications, in terms of just everyday connections with people, how their names, you know, it’s interesting, isn’t it?

 

Holly

It is, and it really comes back to what you were saying about those kind of judgments that we all make, and whether that’s conscious or unconscious, they do happen, don’t they, around all sorts of things connected to names. It’s really, yeah, it’s absolutely fascinating.

So just thinking about the fact that this is a memoir, and this is, you know, you use that lovely term of life writing, I wonder when you were setting out to write the story, I mean you said you’d sort of written about family in the past, but whether you thought, right, I’m setting out to write a memoir, or whether you just wrote and it was naturally that. For example, was there ever a moment where you thought I could tell this story through a fictional lens?

 

Camilla

No, I think I always knew that my first book would be a memoir. And I always knew that it would be a hybrid in terms of it would be part about my life, but then also it would weave in research and other people’s stories. I really wanted this duality.

And that was always very clear from the beginning when I was drafting the book. I wanted it to be accessible for people. I wanted people to learn about names, but also have this very strong story running through the book. So yeah, memoir was always the vehicle I wanted to tell this particular story.

But, you know, I mean I was always writing bits of fiction, but I was always getting shortlisted and longlisted for my memoir writing. So yeah, I think this was always going to be my first book. And I think this subject matter was always going to be my first book because it’s such a close subject to me, and it’s such a fascinating subject.

So yeah, I think it was always going to be a memoir and written in the way that it was written.

 

Holly

I love that term there of hybrid memoir. And I think it’s something we see. It’s very common as a form now, isn’t it? And I imagine it’s something that a lot of people listening are writing as well. It’s that kind of, it’s almost perhaps a quite helpful way to be able to tell your story, but to have a subject that you can then get lost in as well, and if things are feeling a bit too personal. Yeah.

 

Camilla

Yes, absolutely. But I always think the thing with a hybrid is you can go so many different ways with it. I mean, I really wanted to have a very strong narrative, and I wanted it to be a bit of a page turner.

And I wanted the research to be, I’ll say that word again, very accessible, Holly, so that people would just sort of be engaged in the writing. Other hybrid memoirs are much more academic, aren’t they, in their approach, and less of a narrative.

So it really depends on what you want to say. And again, it’s working out your structure and how you want to say it. And I was sort of very clear with my editor that I wanted to write a story that would have a strong sense of me as the writer, but also for people to feel connected and engaged with the research in the book.

 

Holly

And you’ve talked about the editorial process a little bit, and sort of discussing the way that you brought your family into it. But also you mentioned at the outset that this was a book that was almost commissioned from a piece.

I wonder if that meant the editorial process was quite particular. I mean, was there any sense of your editor or your publisher being prescriptive at all?

 

Camilla

Not really. I think because everything was through the lens of names and family, it made the writing, I won’t say easier, definitely not, but it certainly made the structure, how I structured the book, it kind of flowed for me because I knew exactly the subjects that I wanted to talk about and how I’d weave in my own story into those chapters.

So it kind of had a very complete form, if that makes sense, at the beginning of the writing. I kind of knew where the book was going, and that was really helpful for me, actually. That was great.

 

Holly

Yeah. And do you think now, kind of looking forwards, do you feel like this is where you naturally sit with your writing, in this more non-fiction space? What’s next for you?

 

Camilla

What’s next? Well, I think definitely fiction is next.

I’ve got a little nugget of an idea that I’m just letting sit because obviously the book only came out, Named came out last year. So I’m still deep in the publicity, which is great, and talking about the book, which I love.

So I’m just letting this little seed, it’s a seed of an idea, and I’m just letting that grow and seeing where that goes at the moment. But it’s set in Norfolk, that’s all I know. And I’m just kind of seeing where that idea takes me.

But for the moment, yeah, I’m just really enjoying being part of Named and having this debut memoir out, really. I’m enjoying it.

 

Holly

Yeah, oh well that’s fascinating. And it’ll be really interesting to see whether your fiction continues with some of these themes, because they are huge themes, you know, self-identity and belonging and family, and you write about them so beautifully.

I wondered if I could kind of end on asking you, potentially a big question. But did you, I guess it’s about what you learned either about yourself as a writer, or about the themes of the book in the writing of it. I mean it’s clear that you always knew that names were very deep-seated and really connected to all parts of ourselves, but was there anything else that you learned about yourself?

 

Camilla

That’s such a good question.

I think I learned that I am very patient. I think writing a book, you’ve got to be patient with yourself. I think I also learned that you have to enjoy the process, but you know that you’ll go through moments of absolute despair writing a book.

And yeah, I think I’ve learned to trust myself and to trust my voice and to trust the process, especially of memoir writing, that what you’re writing is your truth and you’re telling it in the only way that you can.

Yeah, I think really patience, and just to take your time and not to rush. And when you do, you’ll just write the best book that you can, really.

And I’ve also learned that when you do write a book, you have to make sure that you go for very long walks, because they can be incredibly restorative and you learn a lot, and it’s great thinking time.

So yeah, but I think the most important thing is just patience, and that things will always work out, you know, and they invariably do.

 

Holly

I think that’s probably very reassuring advice for lots of people who are at a point where they’re perhaps at a difficult moment with their manuscripts.

 

Camilla

And the difficult moments are entirely normal, aren’t they? You know, we’re all going to have them and they will pass. And just to keep going, to keep going, and it will, you know, your writing will emerge into something wonderful. It always does. It’s just time and patience. Yeah.

 

Holly

And that’s really interesting to hear as well because it’s kind of almost reflective of the story as well, and the patience and the perseverance and the rediscovery of your own name and your relationship with your dad, and the themes of the book as well.

They go hand in hand.

 

Camilla

Oh, I hope so. I mean, it’s been a pleasure writing it, I’ve absolutely loved it. And even through all the hard moments, I’ve really enjoyed writing this book.

 

Holly

Well, thank you so much for talking to us about it today and for being so open and honest about the themes and about your own journey and your own writing journey as well. It’s been really interesting to hear. Thank you.

 

Camilla

Oh, thanks ever so much, Holly. It’s been great talking to you. Thank you.