Act II – from an adland high-flyer to a New York Times best-selling author
or… How giving up alcohol and blogging about it changed Clare Pooley’s life
Sarah Baumann summarises our November WACL Speaker Dinner
On Tuesday 19th November, a lot of very sparkly WACL-ers and their guests descended on the beautiful Orchid Room at The Dorchester for the first speaker dinner of Karen Stacey’s Presidency, with our Vice-President Claire giving us a sneak-preview of the wonderful hosting we will all get to enjoy next year (Karen – all of WACL sends support, and we can’t wait to see you again soon).Everyone agreed The Orchid Room was a lovely, more intimate venue (thank you Rachel Bristow!) and it was lovely to see so many new members there.
Our guest of honour was the incredible Clare Pooley, who captivated the room with the honest, inspiring, (and at times very funny) story of her “Act II”, which followed an adrenaline- and alcohol-fuelled Act I. Clare was one of the most brilliant and highly respected account people at JWT. Indeed, I remember her clearly as a Board Account Director from when I joined as a grad. We were all in awe – she was brilliant, hilarious, talented and a force of nature. But she was also juggling an astonishing career with the Ladette x Bridget Jones x Sex and the City demands that women faced in the nineties and noughties.
Clare was the youngest woman on the Board at the age of 30, but realised by the age of 39, now with two young children, that she was one of the oldest women in the agency. “Where had they all gone?” (A question we’re all too aware of and now, thank goodness, are having open discussions about to drive change).
A few years later, she realised why, and with three young children under five, she left advertising to focus on her family and to be a “perfect mummy”. And then the culture of drinking that advertising so effortlessly created at that time seeped into the daily life and the pressures of motherhood. Before she knew it, she was drinking ten bottles of wine a week and suffering the anxiety, insomnia, bad health and borderline depression that came with it.
The day after her 46th birthday, she realised she had to stop, but was too ashamed to tell anyone. And here began the start of Act II: Clare started an anonymous blog (hidden even from her husband at first) called ‘Mummy was a secret drinker’, and she swiftly realised she was not alone. The blog went viral, and with it a huge network of support and understanding emerged from her readers and her community. A community that became even more supportive and integral to her recovery when she was then diagnosed with breast cancer eight months later. [Spoiler alert: there is a happy ending!].
Fast forward a year, Clare was in remission, she was sober-proud, happy and healthy, her husband had discovered her blog, and they decided that turning the blog into a book would be an adventure that they would willingly go on. The Sober Diaries were published in 2018 after 48 rejections (thick skin and persistence is a must to get yourself published) and went on to sell 200,000 copies and continues to provide support and inspiration for many people today.
From then, Clare took the leap into fiction and the rest is history. Six-way bidding wars for her novels, agents pitching HER for representation (how nice it is to be on the other side of the table) hitting the New York Times Bestseller list with over 1m books sold.
Making it in publishing is clearly not easy, but Claire gave us eight tips to help get those bottom drawer ideas into print:
- Advertising and Marketing give you huge advantage in pitching your book. We know how to position it, who will read it and why it will land in the market. Keep going til you find the right agent and publisher.
- Making yourself vulnerable is terrifying and empowering; but if you’ve opened up about your story, there’s not much else they can say!
- Creative writing courses are amazing – and help you find your tribe and your writing community.
- Find your voice – it’s annoying when publishers say that but start writing your own blog, substack, novel and you will find it.
- Write what you know – cliché but true. Publishers want to know why you are the person to be telling this story.
- Publishing is a real rollercoaster (cf covid!). All the best laid plans… but you’ll survive.
- However successful you are, there will always be bad reviews. Read 1 star reviews of your favourite novels or famous authors to cheer yourself up! They are hilarious.
- If you’re sitting on an unfinished attempt, keep going, get it down on paper. It will all come good in the edit.
So, as well as the wine bill being significantly less than usual last night, the happy ending is a happy ending on many levels. The cultural pressures of the workplace on people to drink alcohol have already changed, as we see in so many gen z-ers. And the brand image of being sober is definitely on the way to normality and aspiration. Clare is writing amazing novels that AI won’t ever come near to replacing (we all decided vehemently in the room) and most of all, we all left knowing we can all have an Act II in our lives and careers whatever our age.
About the author
