When bestselling author Bonnie Garmus started writing her latest novel Peck and Peck, she kept the story a closely guarded secret. But then she met The Queen.
“I was so nervous but she’s incredible, really funny. I had in my head the whole time ‘I’m talking to The Queen of England’,” says the author whose award winning novel Lessons in Chemistry was chosen for The Queen’s Reading Room initiative.
“Then she asked me what my new book was about, and I said, ‘oh, I never talk about what I'm writing about’, which is true. And she said, ‘Oh but to me, you will.’ So I told her the whole thing. When people used to say, what is Peck and Peck about? I'd go, I'm not going to say, but Queen Camilla knows.”
Bonnie Garmus is an inspiration in never taking no for an answer. Prior to becoming a best selling novellist at 64, the former advertising executive was rejected so many times, her husband suggested she should give up.
“I said ‘well, that's 98 rejections’. And he goes, so are you going to quit? And I said, no, I thought I'd go for 100,” she tells Ateh Jewel on the Second Act podcast.
“Just because someone says no doesn't mean that they're right. I just decided, no, isn't for me.”
Lessons in Chemistry came about after an infuriating day in the office where a male colleague took credit for her work.
“I was shocked and upset,” she recalls. “I went back to my desk and instead of working, I wrote the first chapter. I was thinking, how many other women in the world right now are in this same meeting, taking this same kind of treatment. I am not accepting it a minute longer.”
It is life lessons like this that she wants to pass on to her two adoptive daughters, Zoe and Sophie. “The amazing thing about adoption is you learn that loving someone has absolutely nothing to do with biology. The bond that people have between people is really, really special.
She adds: “It’s kind of funny because they're both really nice and kind people, so they'll speak up, but maybe they'll be not as loud as I would have been. But I'll give them another ten years before they hit 40.
“As you get older, you give yourself more permission to do things that are more and more out there. And I really want to role model that for my kids; take risks, don't give up, and don't listen to people who are negative.”
She said her confidence kicked in at the age of 40. ‘I just started saying no a lot more. It was just like the clock turned and said, ‘now you can own all the power that you have.
“I don’t have the time to waste anymore.”
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