Continuing our Pride Month celebrations, this week we caught up with Lucy Fry and looked back at her memoir Easier Ways To Say I Love You.

Alex Thornber: I thought it would be fun to revisit Easier Ways to Say I Love You and was wondering where the first seeds of that project came from?

Lucy Fry: The project began as I tried to process some of my very intense sexual and romantic experiences about five years ago, during a specific time in my life where I felt like something enormous was happening in my life, both internally and externally. I used writing as a way of getting it out of my head. I never at that stage expected it to become a book, but then it grew, as I started to link up my current behaviours and desires with certain elements of my past. A memoir began to take hold. I was also reading lots of memoir at the time – female writers like Maggie Nelson, Ariel Levy and Deborah Levy and was massively inspired by their style and passion.

AT: The book is exquisitely honest, even about the uncomfortable parts, did you have to really push yourself to put it all on the page, or did you hold back at all?

LF: There is so much that I ended up cutting. People find that hard to believe because the book is so raw as it is, but really, I edited it a huge amount. I always try to write initially like nobody will read it, or at least not worry about that bit. Then, when I edit, I ask myself if any discomfort I feel about this being read is actually worth going through – does it make the work better? Might it help me and my readers grow in some way? Will it seriously harm another? Once I have answers to these questions I can choose whether to follow that discomfort through or cut certain bits. There’s no doubt that I experienced a re-visitation of a lot of shame when this book was published, though. Looking back, I wonder if I did put myself too far out there as it hurt a lot to hear some people’s reactions, but it felt essential at the time to be brutally honest.

AT: Your story is a vital addition to the wider narrative of queer lives but how has the book’s reception, or legacy, impacted you personally?

LF: I think sadly that the book wasn’t read by as many people as it might have been. I have however received some emails from people who were profoundly personally impacted by the story and the honesty. Even one email like that makes it feel worth the uncomfortable exposure, somehow.  I do feel though that I’ve now moved on from that stage in my life and wouldn’t write in the same way again, or I don’t need to write about those same things anymore. It was certainly an excruciatingly healing act; painful, important, heart-opening.

AT: What has been the most rewarding part of the process for you?

LF: The most rewarding part was piecing the sections together in a way that fitted with my therapeutic process, rather than the way that suited narrative specifically. Or rather, it was about structuring something in an intuitive way that fits with the way that healing from trauma works, rather than suits a typical narrative structure. I love playing with form. I love finding new ways to tell stories.

AT: Are you working on anything at the moment?

LF: This year in February I had another non-fiction book published called Love and Choice. This book told a little of my story but mostly focused on the stories of others who had gone through difficult or eye-opening relationship journeys, and also incorporated my understanding and experience as a psychotherapist. It’s somewhere between narrative nonfiction and self development. Now I am playing around with ideas, figuring out where to go next.

AT: If you could recommend one book for people to read this pride month, what would it be?

LF: I think for me, The Dream House by Carmen Machado is one of the best memoirs I’ve ever read. It happens to be a queer memoir and that’s really important too, but I don’t want to say it’s one of the best queer memoirs as that implies it doesn’t stand up against any other memoirs in the same way, and it really, really does.

Easier Ways To Say I Love You is available now at all good bookshops and at Ethical Shop.