Interview With An Author

Sonali Misra is an author based in Edinburgh, although originally from India. Her first book, 21 Fantastic Failures, has 21 stories about well-known names who have failed throughout their lives. Grace Balfour-Harle caught up with Sonali to speak about the inspiration behind the book, and what failure means to her.

How did you get into writing?

My life revolves around words; either writing them or getting them out there in a book format. I read voraciously, and I wrote my first short story when I was about eight – we still have it on a hard drive somewhere. It was called The Garden Behind the Mountains, and it was this weird fantasy fairytale with magical creatures and princesses who needed saving, cause feminism came later! So that’s how I started writing and I didn’t really take it seriously but realised I should do what I enjoy best, which is literature and writing. So I did an English Lit undergrad because I thought that learning more about literature would help me improve as a writer. I applied straight out of undergrad for the creative writing masters at Edinburgh, but got rejected. So I needed a back-up plan, which was publishing. But I kept writing on the side, and after four years I still wanted to do the Masters, so I thought ‘Okay, let’s do this again.’ That’s when I started to take myself seriously as a writer, because I got published, and it was the first time I was paid for my writing.

What inspired you to write 21 Fantastic Failures?

I was messaged by an old acquaintance out of the blue. She had an idea for a book and was wondering if I’d write a sample chapter. Obviously I was thrilled. But it was non-fiction, and I’d never really attempted non-fiction before, so I was a bit anxious. And I told her and she said to give it a shot. So I did, and because I’m more into fiction, I gave it a twist – I approached it like the fairy tales I read as a kid. So you have the story in a chronological order and they reach a crossroad, where they’ve failed and must choose between Path 1 and Path 2. (Spoiler alert!) Path 1 is the made-up path that anyone else in their place might have taken. But Path 2 is the more different and challenging step they took. I looked at the fallout of their decision and wrote the ‘moral’ of the story (called the Lasting Lesson) and tried to apply it to the reader and their lives. And that was how the book came to be.

What is your personal favourite story?

I can relate to all of them, depending on what I’m facing. One chapter that has been very prominent during the pandemic is Lady Gaga’s. Her chapter addresses mental health, and taking care of yourself. She pushed herself to the point where her body was failing because she had very high standards for her performances. But she was also failed by society because she was assaulted and told some high level music execs who ignored her, so it’s a mixed bag of failures – industry and society failing her and her failing her body. She needed to take a step back and reconsider her priorities. To this day, the achievement she’s most proud of is her ‘Born This Way’ foundation, addressing bullying in schools and kids’ mental health. I really took it to heart because I’ve been struggling with isolation – I haven’t seen my family in one and a half years, and think about her lesson because my priorities have changed. I have very high expectations of myself but am learning it’s okay to take a step back. Because we’re human, we’re going to fail, and need some love too.

Which story was the most surprising to you?

Oprah Winfrey’s. Everyone knows Oprah. I wasn’t surprised she came from humble roots but I didn’t know she was assaulted and raped repeatedly as a kid, and was even pregnant but lost the baby. She’s come from those dark experiences to where she is today, and she’s used her platform to work on bills that protect children. You know the Sex Offender’s Register? She’s one of the people behind it – it was dubbed ‘the Oprah Bill’ because she testified why this was really important. So she was one of the main drivers of the Child Protection Act. And she went through a lot of racial bullshit too. Like they tried demoting her because of her wide nose and her eyes were too far apart and her hair was unruly – basically for her racial features. So to experience all of that and become a mononym, where you just say Oprah and you know who she is. That’s very inspirational to me.

How has writing the book changed your view on failure in your life?

I think it’s normalised failure because even these big-time celebrities have all failed in quite major ways so it’s fine for us to have our day-to-day failures or even bigger failures. And it’s very annoyingly made my mum right about something. Whenever I have any failure or setback, I like to ignore it, because pondering on it makes me more agitated. But she would ask immediately, ‘What have we learned? What shouldn’t we have done? What could we have done?’ And I’m like ‘Stop talking about this.’ and she says, ‘No. We should discuss this so we know what not to do or what to do next time.’ It’s annoyed me my entire life. And it annoys me that she’s right. We are going to fail and make mistakes and it’s better to take a step back to think on what we could have done differently. Sometimes it’s out of our hands and that’s okay too.

Our theme of the issue is ageing, so what advice would you give to your younger self?

It’s okay not to be perfect – what even is perfect? It’s this weird creature we all envision and place on a pedestal. As a kid, I had this version of the perfect Sonali and every time I fell short, which I did because I’m human and make mistakes, I beat myself up for it – to this day, if I think of mistakes that I’ve made, I can’t sleep. I’m really harsh on myself. So the advice I would give, because it’s been a huge undertaking and it’s ongoing, would be to be kinder to myself, and to normalise failure and mistakes from a younger age so that now it wouldn’t be such a hard task to unlearn and to retrain how I approach failure and mistakes. So I think it would be to accept that I will make mistakes and I will have faults and it’s fine and it’s completely human.

By Grace Balfour-Harle You can buy 21 Fantastic Failures here.