My First Time...with Rosy Edwards

Rosy Edwards is an author, journalist and proud co-founder of The Riff Raff. After reading Politics at Durham, she moved to London to work in PR despite having no idea what PR was. Turns out it didn't matter, as she fell ill with kidney failure (for the second time, which is careless) and left to pursue her three-month held dream of becoming a teacher on the Teach First scheme. She taught for a bit before doing a Masters in Child and Adolescent Psychotherapy then got a transplant and book deal within four months. Her first non-fiction novel, Confessions of a Tinderella, was born.

She now works as a freelance journalist and copywriter but everyone knows her true love is The Riff Raff. She lives in Balham, London with her boyfriend and is seriously considering rekindling her passion for the descant recorder.

Describe the moment you decided to write your book.

At home, after another ridiculous Tinder date, probably a bit drunk.

I was having a litany of laughable experiences and it struck me that if I wrote about them I could connect with someone else, anyone else, who was having the same.

A few days later, a friend was telling me how shit she felt at having been rejected yet again. I wanted to show her it was happening to everyone. This is Tinder – if you haven't been rejected at least once, you're doing it wrong.

That all sounds terribly worthy. Can I just say I did it for the money?

What’s the one thing you wish you’d known before you started?

The value of planning. Really planning, not just making a table in Word and filling it with some notes.

Also, you can't worry what your readers will think. Write for yourself, and the people that you want to like your book, will. The rest are not your audience, god bless 'em.

What was the biggest tantrum you had while writing it?

I had a total freak-out just before it came out. I convinced myself that I should have written the whole thing differently.