“I’m convinced that every person is basically an anthology of stories…The difference between me and someone that wouldn’t consider themselves a writer is that I can’t help putting it all down.”

Hattie Morrison explores the shape of her writing life – past, present and future – in this latest interview with Hay Festival’s Writers at Work cohort.

Tell us about your writing life. When did it start? What does it look like now?

I was walking down a street in London with my dad, mum and sister. I was small – so small that my elbow was bobbing along at the same height as my eyes, arm lengthened to hold my dad’s hand. I grew up in rural Wales and was taken every time by how shiny the city was, all the metal, glass and revolving doors.

London is a world of windows, I said, and my dad replied, laughing –
I think you’re going to be a writer one day, Hattie.

My life now looks like my dishevelled teenage dream: overdue library books, pieces of paper on a bedside with indecipherable ideas, ink stains on good bedding and a protective instinct. Like walks in the middle of the day with friends and cereal for dinner. I spend a lot of time not writing; thinking, treading the same path and considering synonyms. It looks like sitting with my knees up at the desk, acrylic nails tapping flatly over sticky keys. Dirty hair.

What kind of writing excites you most?

Writing where a woman tells the truth and I agree with her, nodding on the bus. Sentences that feel like they’re crawling off the page and onto my skin because they give me goosebumps. Books with surprising and undetectable mastery, like brilliant magic tricks at a beachfront arcade. Sometimes reading good writing can even feel like expecting another step at the end of a flight of stairs and stumbling, noticing my own weight, losing my balance. When that happens, I rip a little notch out of the page so that I can find it easily again. Some of my books look like they’ve been gnawed at, ravaged, with indentations taken out of every chapter. Others only tasted, nibbled once, or not at all.

What are you working on right now? 

I wrote a book last year and I’m in the editing process at the moment. It feels a little bit like pruning a full-fruited cherry tree, blindfolded. Am I getting rid of the good bits? I hope not. We’ll see.

“Some of my books look like they’ve been gnawed at, ravaged, with indentations taken out of every chapter.”

Where do you write? 

In a dotted notebook, on the back of my hand and on receipts. Then, on a blank document on my computer, zoomed in close enough to see only the word I’m typing, so that there’s no room for doubt.

When do you write?

After midnight.

And… why do you write? 

I’m convinced that every person is basically an anthology of stories. Stories about losing teeth, sleeping, getting lost, learning about love, feeling it and losing it, taking a fall, winning a game. Tell me on a park bench about your seventh birthday and you’re writing me a story. There’s just no paper – but the paper is the least important element. The difference between me and someone that wouldn’t consider themselves a writer is that I can’t help putting it all down. That I carry a notebook with me everywhere I go. I write because I have to keep the stories. I’m sentimental. I can’t help it.

Is there a book or author that has influenced you? 

My parents read Klaus Baumgart’s Laura’s Star to me when I was small. It’s about a girl, Laura, who wishes every night for a friend to confide her secrets, thoughts and feelings to, until one day a star falls from the sky and lands outside of her bedroom window, ready to be her confidant. I carried that book around with me like a friend of my own for months, and then, somewhere along the way, that book turned into a notebook, and then another, and another. I’ve been carrying notebooks around with me, confiding my secrets into them, ever since. I’d be on a completely different path without Laura.

Tell us about something you are really proud of

Some of us are given these rare chances to see the stone of who we really are, beyond all the flesh and distraction, through a life-changingly difficult experience. These experiences force us to act instinctively in the moment with integrity or selfishness or kindness or greed. Looking at who we really are might be quick like a bolt of lightning, or long, like a conversation, but either way, the experience can be uncomfortable, and dig up knotted feelings.

A year or so ago, I was looking at myself in a mirror in some foreign bathroom in a blue paper gown and socks three sizes too big for me, my hair wet, my hands shaking – and liking what I saw. I wasn’t looking at a face or a figure or a complexion – the things I would usually inspect in the mirror – but at the core of who I am. This person who had acted with integrity and honesty. I fell in love with her, I’ll never forget her, and I’m really proud of her.

I’m also really proud of being my sister’s sister, my mother’s daughter and my father’s daughter, my partner’s partner and my best friends’ best friend. I think I’m good at loving people, because I have learned from the best.

What’s the best advice you’ve been given as a writer developing your practice? 

There’s something in there. Just keep going. 

&

This is the life you’ve chosen, mate. We’re in the emotion business, after all. Love Craig AKA Dad XxX

“Life as a ‘working’ writer looks like a life where writing ‘works’ for me, not only creatively but financially, too.”

There are so many ways to have a creative career. What would life as a ‘working’ writer look like for you? 

Good bread in the bread bin, clean clothes in the cupboard, books on a bookshelf with my name on the spine and a proof copy of an early draft sitting on my desk, with scribbles in red pen, ready to be read. I’ve spent a lot of time this year picturing what life as a working writer could look like, and it’s a complicated exercise – one I tried to talk about yesterday in the dappling Clissold Park sun. I am living life as a working writer now, but there are things left to look forward to; financial stability being one of them.

Life as a ‘working’ writer looks like a life where writing ‘works’ for me, not only creatively but financially, too. It looks like a publishing deal, maybe a TV adaptation of my work, with me in the writers’ room. Interviews in a newspaper and panel discussions with a microphone being passed to me, if I’m lucky. Hosting talks at literary festivals, on sofas upholstered with patterned wool. Emails answered. Bliss. It looks like buying a coffee out this week on my writing break. Saying ‘I’ll get this one’ to my sister, at the train station cafe.

But even without all of this, now, it’s still bliss, or closely resembles bliss. It looks like reading in the morning, writing in the nighttime and thinking in the afternoon. It looks like pieces of paper with five sentences repeated in black ball point pen, over and over and over and over;

I love what I do. I am lucky to love what I do. I am lucky to know what I love, and to spend my time doing it. More is to come. Just keep going.

Writers at Work is a creative development programme for Welsh writers at Hay Festival, with the support of Literature Wales and Folding Rock, funded by Arts Council of Wales.

Offering a fully-programmed ten days of creative development opportunities, Hay Festival Writers at Work allows the selected writers to engage in Festival events, attend workshops with publishers, agents and, crucially, with established international artists.

Check out some of our recommended events for this year’s Hay Festival here, including showcase readings from the 2025 Writers at Work cohort.