Making it something I was proud to put on the page, that was hard work

Lottie Hazell had a stellar career working with the brightest and best names in cookbook publishing before leaving London to pursue a PhD at Loughborough University. That academic work – exploring the intersection of food writing and disclosure narratives – resulted in her debut novel Piglet, a biting satire of the foodie lifestyle. Here she talks to Jenni Muir about the importance of rewriting and editing, and how to be commercially-minded about your creative work.

Have you always been interested in food?

Yes, I’m just a greedy individual. I like eating, I love cooking for people and eating with people.

Even though Piglet is a novel, your experience working in cookery publishing must have been useful...

It was a fascinating space to be in – partly because it was wonderful, and knowledge giving, and it expanded my way of thinking about food – but also sinister in some regards, thinking about how food is packaged and sold to people, especially as it’s a majority female audience that buys cookery.

It can also be an insidious industry and I’m fascinated by that side of it. That’s partly why Piglet works in cookery – I had the knowledge, but I also think that it’s an interesting facet: to know how to package food and to sell it, in the lifestyle sense.

What would be your advice to people who don’t yet know the publishing world?

If you’re writing fiction, read. Read as widely as you can and read the shelf mates that you think your book would sit alongside. If you’re looking for an agent, look for who has worked on those books and who has published them.

Whilst it is, and feels like, a personal dream to have a book published, for an agent and a publisher it is part of a business. You need to have an awareness of the commercial nature of book publishing without losing the grit and intent of your own work. It can’t just be ‘It’s Richard Osman but for (whoever)’ – because it probably isn’t. Really knowing what your market and niche might be, and selling that is, I think, a really great place to start.

Previously I would’ve recommended being on Twitter and following agents but I’m not on that space anymore. I don’t think it’s as useful as it was because of the way it’s been changed through algorithms etc but…

You seem like someone who doesn’t do much social media…

No – I find that when I’m on social media I’m not writing. I don’t have very good self-control about social media, so I just try to avoid it.

What was the biggest challenge you faced pulling Piglet together?

Morale during the first draft. The first draft was terrible. Like: terrible. The book shed a skin in the edit. It transformed and evolved into something else and it was like: There you are! I’m not a complete idiot.

But the first draft was terrible by design. I called it a Trash Draft because I personally need to work with words on a page – so I wrote the first draft at speed, following a plot, in order to then have something to work with. But reading it back was like: Oh. My. God.

One of the things I was learning about writing at that stage is that there is work – hard work – involved in the editing. When writing a rubbishy draft, I could bang out a couple of thousand words in an hour or two and be done. But returning to it and making it something readable, making it something I was proud to put on the page, that was hard work. But satisfying when it came together.

I remember a late edit and reading the first 20,000 words and thinking: I like this, I’m compelled to turn the page. That’s so satisfying – to have stayed with it, and to have got there.

In terms of foodie novels or memoirs, do you have any particular favourites?

I’m a fiction reader first and foremost – but when it comes to foodie memoirs, I like Nigel Slater’s Toast a lot. And I like Laurie Colwin. I like How to Eat by Nigella Lawson.

I find Rebecca May Johnson’s writing and non-fiction work really interesting. Eat Up by Ruby Tandoh is another one [like Small Fires] where the recipe is taken and used and transformed into something else that’s also kind-of a social issue.

In terms of fiction, I’m mostly interested in books that use food in a secondary sense. I really like Megan Hunter’s The Harpy, which is about a woman struggling to come to terms with the reality of her domesticity. It’s not a foodie book, but food is a strong undercurrent in terms of how the character is portrayed and we get a sense of her unravelling. It’s those books that I particularly like – that aren’t putting food front and centre and showcasing it, but are using it in a way that I might think about it in an everyday sense.

It’s funny because I suppose Piglet would be described as a food book but it was not my intention to make it demonstrably foodie, even though it is really.

On a practical level, how do you go about generating the kind of empathy that we’re able to have with Piglet?

Other than editing and re-editing: having a really trusted reader in my agent, who signposts when a character wanders beyond the realm of the reader’s empathy.

Whilst Piglet’s behaviour is sometimes erratic and frustrating, I’m hopeful that we can always understand why she’s doing what she’s doing and give the reader enough information to empathise with her and stay with her and the book. And I think that comes through keeping that at the forefront of one’s mind when editing.

If anything, Kit [Piglet's fiancé] was harder in that regard – not to make him too very two dimensional and villainous. I tried to make their relationship seem – at least to Piglet – desirable, because otherwise he just becomes a kind of straw man.

But yes, I wish I had a better answer because it really is just re-read, re-read, re-edit, re-edit. Am I with these characters? Do I believe them? And if I don’t, then it’s a matter of changing it and trying to work out how I would buy the actions and how I would continue empathising.

How did you find your agent?

Once I finished the first draft of Piglet, which I worked hard to polish and to have in a good position, I submitted it to a handful of agents in January, which I think is a really great time to submit a book. I was counting on those agents being like me and thinking: right, a fresh start, let’s do something, this is what I’m looking for in this year.

I was really lucky to have a few agents respond to me, and then I met with a couple, one in person and a couple on Zoom (it was still fairly Covidy but not properly Covidy) and then I signed with one.

So it was a really organic process but it came with: I had worked hard on the submission package and pitch letter and then targeted the agents that I was after – which was mostly me finding my favourite books, looking in the acknowledgements and tracking them down like a stalker.

Do you see yourself doing more food writing in future?

I imagine so, because when I use food in fiction, I find it to be the most efficient way to talk about a character. To describe what someone has for breakfast, I think, tells so much, and I struggle not to use food.

I’m writing something new now and while it’s not as food-centric as Piglet, there is food throughout because I feel it’s textural and nuanced and hard working as a device, and I love it. I’m conscious of it not becoming my signature but I can’t put it down, so maybe it will.

You also work as a board game designer and publisher…

Yes, I’m working on a game right at this moment, in addition to writing, which is a bit of a brain scramble.

I’m very monogamous to a creative project. Once I’m in something, I want to be in it. I feel like novel writing especially is chasing at energy for a couple of years, or for as long as it takes me to write it, and that is so much easier when I’m not thinking about something else that also requires creation.

Piglet by Lottie Hazell is available now from all major booksellers in the UK, US and Australia. You can follow Lottie on Instagram @ldhazell.

📸 Siobahn Calder