Ruth Doris Reports

Within seconds of speaking to her, you know Cathy Kelly is a person with bundles of energy. The best-selling author’s opening sentence in our conversation was about an essay she’s writing that includes an item about the strangest thing she’s ever travelled with, and how she needs to get back to someone in Australia.

‘Well, I’m up since half five this morning!’ Cathy Kelly exclaims when I ask her where exactly she finds the time to raise two children, take care of three dogs, mentor other writers, write a new book annually almost every year since 1997, and do huge amounts of work for UNICEF.

She started writing novels after a successful career in journalism writing social features and then taking the helm of an agony aunt column in the same paper. ‘No, I don’t sleep enough at all,’ says the self-identified Duracell bunny, ‘I’m always on the go. I usually wake at 5.45am and then read for a bit. I have normal things to do. You should see the state of my office – it’s full of those bags for life and bits of paper and it hasn’t been tidied for two books!’

Theoretically she says, she gets up and gets everyone ready and brings the kids to school, then has coffee with sugar (which she declares is her secret weapon) and then settles into her study to work. She makes approaching the publication of her twentieth book sound easy, until the business side of writing rears its head. Cathy has a no-nonsense attitude to it.

‘I write, but I run a company. I do publicity for different books and I respond to emails. I try and park that side to get some writing done, but it’s work. I get cross if people think that it’s just about making things up.’ Perhaps this diligence when it comes to addressing the business side of being in a creative industry has a hand in her having such a successful career.

Cathy Kelly is not a woman who takes things for granted and surprisingly she still gets nervous when she has a new book out, ‘The nervousness never goes. Every time I finish one I worry and I think I made a hames of it and I worry and go back over it and worry some more that I left a bit out or it didn’t make sense… so yeah I still worry about that.’

 If someone as successful as Cathy Kelly has imposter syndrome, what hope is there for new women writers trying to get a foothold on the author ladder?

‘Well, I tried to write two books before I wrote a whole one, but you have to remember, you can’t write what isn’t in you and that it’s a business, and publishers want to sell books. It’s probably easier for those with a background in journalism because we aren’t precious about our writing. We’ve already had years of people saying “I don’t like this” or “You should change that”. You’ve got to be a realist.’

For this writer though, being a realist certainly doesn’t equal accepting the status quo of how women authors are treated. When we begin discussing the stereotyping of women writers, you instantly know this is a subject she’s passionate about. Cathy would much prefer to be referred to as a contemporary female novelist than romance novelist.

‘For years I didn’t say anything about how women authors are pigeonholed because I didn’t want to seem ungrateful, but if you write in a way that reaches a lot of people or is about people’s lives and relationships, it’s viewed as a lesser work than a guy writing a “great novel”,’ she says.

‘There’s a ghetto of women writers that you get thrown in and people criticise when they haven’t even read any of these books and that isn’t a good way to judge writing. If that’s the way they want to think, fine – but they’re missing out.’

It’s obvious that Cathy is incredibly supportive of other writers, and tells me in great detail about the seven books that she’s reading at the moment. With all this experience of writing and reading, who better to mentor other writers in her spare time? She tells me that one of the pieces of advice she gives to those she works with is to be your own voice and be as feminist as you like, and listen to experienced writers if they tell you to change something.

And I’m struck by just how much Cathy wants to change things – she speaks as much about her work with UNICEF as she does about her writing career. ‘Working with UNICEF has had a massive impact on me,’ she says, ‘and it is a phenomenal privilege for me to go to places and meet people and try and be a voice for people who you don’t normally hear.’

Cathy is a fervent believer in the power of using her platform for this work. ‘The people we work with are just like us. Ok, their homes might look different – if they have them at all, but they all just want the best for their kids and they are just hoping for change.’

She tells me about how she once met a child in Mozambique with her mother and they were waiting for the results of a HIV test for the mum. ‘People need to hear those stories,’ she continues.

‘It’s a very patriarchal society there and lots of times there are guys not using condoms so they pass HIV on their wives and unfortunately the mums sometimes pass this on to their babies while breastfeeding, but even if they were to get formula and use that instead of breastfeeding, the local water is often dirty and can kill the baby that way instead. It’s like Sophie’s Choice and it’s going on all over the world. This has to change.’

And it’s pretty clear that Cathy Kelly just won’t rest until that change happens