How this Former Fashion Writer and Stylist became a Published Novelist

Real-Life Relaunch Story

Nicola Harrison, Author

“You don’t have to quit your day job to write a book. If you write just one page a day, after a year you’ll have a book length manuscript. My advice is to just do it.”

I met Nicola Harrison years ago when she was a men’s personal stylist in New York. When I learned on social media that she’s now the author of two novels – Montauk  and The Showgirl – I had to find out more about her inspiring pivot. 

If you love to read or feel like you may have a story in you to tell, read on to learn how Nicola made her dream of becoming an author come true.

Q: Tell me about your career path before you become a novelist.

I was always writing. In college I studied English and creative writing as a minor. After college, I moved to New York, and worked in fashion journalism. I was the style writer for Forbes, and I worked at various publications.

Even though I was writing for work, it was a different kind of writing that I wanted to be doing so I took creative writing classes on the side. That was a constant throughout my life.

After I got married and had a baby, I started writing freelance. But I ended up going through a divorce. I had a four-year-old at the time, and I had to work but it was difficult to work full time. 

That’s when a friend actually suggested that I start a men's personal styling business because I’d been writing mostly about men's fashion. There weren't a lot of other men's stylists at the time and I found that I was good at it. Things were going really well, I was making money, and I could work around my son's school schedule.

Q: You were a single, self-employed working mom. How did you make time to write a novel?

While I was going through a divorce, my son would be in bed at 7 p.m. All of the sudden, I had all of these evenings to myself to write. I was working on my first book, Montauk, but not with an expectation that I was going to publish it.  Even though it was fiction, I was putting a lot of myself into the main character. It was very cathartic to just get that out. I think it was healthy for me just to get the thoughts out of my head and onto the page.

I was in a creative writing workshop, which was a group of maybe six people, and we would meet in person once a week and share seven pages of writing. We’d read each others pages out loud and give feedback. Having that self-imposed deadline was really helpful, and knowing that I was going to share my work with other writers motivated me to make it the best it could be.

So, I finished the book by joining this weekly workshop and working on it at night while styling during the day.

Q: How did you get your first book published?

Once I completed the manuscript it was time to find a literary agent. There is a website called Publisher’s Marketplace. I recommend it to anyone who is at the point of looking for an agent. You can look up which agents represent which kinds of books. I had just read Gone Girl at the time, so I approached the agent who represented that author. I sent a query letter explaining what the book was about, explaining a little bit about me, and I attached the manuscript. She read it and liked it, and she offered me representation. Within about a month, we had an editor who was interested and ended up offering me a two-book deal. 

Q: At what point did you consider yourself a full time author?

I kept working as a personal stylist until I was about halfway through writing my second book, The Showgirl. In this time period, I remarried and had another baby. I realized that to write well and meet these deadlines, it needed to become my full time job. And, as much as I loved styling and was sad to give it up, writing and publishing books is my dream job.

Q: How do you keep your creativity flowing?

I think really, for me, because I have kids and a busy lifestyle, it’s about discipline. Sometimes it’s not about creativity. Sometimes it's just about putting your ass in the chair and being like, okay, I'm going to write for a few hours today. If I were to only wait for the moments that I was inspired, then it probably would never happen. 

Obviously you have to feel inspired about the topic, writing has to be something that you want to do, that you feel good when you’re doing it. I think it’s the same with any creative pursuit, whether it’s art, painting, dance or whatever. That’s one of the themes of The Showgirl. The main character has this passion to perform and she feels alive when she’s on stage. I think I was channeling myself in some ways when I was writing that, because that’s how I feel about writing. 

Q: What would you tell someone who feels like they’ve got a story to tell, whether it’s about their lives, or a message that they want to get out into the world?

I think it can feel overwhelming to think about writing an entire book but just consider writing a scene at a time, a chapter at a time. You’ve got to remember that there's probably somebody else out there who needs to hear the story that you want to tell, someone else will relate to it or connect with it. 

Before I published books, I went to back school part-time, and I got my Master's in Creative Writing.  I wrote a memoir about a loss I suffered when I was younger. My brother had passed away in a car accident, and it was very cathartic just to get all those thoughts out. I was worried that if I didn't write down these memories from childhood, that I would forget them one day.

I ended up putting that memoir in a drawer, but some of that story comes out in my first book, Montauk, in a fictional way. One of the characters loses a brother. And so, even though it was a different character in a different time period, I was able to explore those feelings and emotions from my own life.  I was able to get them out into the world through a fictional character, which actually, was better for me.

I think everybody has a story in them, and everyone is so unique and so different. You don’t have to quit your day job to write a book. If you write just one page a day, after a year you’ll have a book length manuscript. My advice is to just do it.