Ore Agbaje-Williams
In Conversation
This week we spoke to Ore Agbaje-Williams about her career as an editor, her pivot into writing, and the twists and turns that led to her addictive debut novel, The Three of Us.
Interviewed by Nancy Adimora and Kimberley Nyamhondera.
NA: We’re good friends and former colleagues so I’ve heard many of these stories before, but I’d love to hear them again so can you walk us through your journey to writing? When was the writing seed planted?
OAW: Hmm, when was the seed planted? I think the seed was planted when I was born as a Nigerian, quite frankly. We Nigerians, we love to tell our stories - whether they’re stories about ourselves or about other people and we're having little gossip - so I think there's definitely a genetic and cultural element to it. But my parents were also very committed to taking my sister and I to the library where we lived in Enfield. We went to the library every week, we picked a book, we read it during that week, and we had to tell them what the book was about. The following week we’d return the book to the library, pick another one, and the cycle continued. My parents were very intentional about making sure we were reading and not just sitting at home, dilly-dallying, and twiddling our thumbs. I wasn’t really a reader back then, so I probably wouldn’t have picked up a book if they didn’t force me to. My sister was the voracious reader so it’s funny how we’ve kind of flipped roles now.
That’s the story of how I started reading. On the storytelling side, I didn't think of myself as a writer, but when my sister and I were younger, I would make up stories for us as we fell asleep. We were pretty good at using our imaginations and sometimes, when we were playing around, we would go into and airing cupboard in my room and pretend it was a time machine. So we'd go in, and then we'd come out and pretend we were from a different time - which was very cute, and also very sad. So I think that was the start of my storytelling journey, but my goal was never to be a writer. I didn't think it was a viable career, so even though I studied English at university, it was only because that was the subject I was best at. I worked as an editor for years and writing was never my ultimate goal, but now that I’m here I can say that it definitely started with a) being Nigerian and b) my Nigerian parents saying ‘you need to go to library, and you need to read some books.’
KN: And how did your role as an editor prepare you for a writing career?
OAW: It prepared me in multiple ways to be honest. It showed me how much goes into publishing a book, and it helped me appreciate the time and the effort that everybody's putting in, especially my editors. This meant remembering to say ‘thank you, I appreciate you, and I know what you're doing is not easy.’ I also know that they’re not just doing it for me, they’re working with about 15-20 other authors at the same time, and yet they still try to make each author feel like they’re number one. It's not an easy job, so I think it really helped me value their contributions to the book. It also prepared me for what edits were going to be like, because I'd given editorial notes to authors before.
When I first started writing, I had my editorial hat on so I was writing what I thought other people would enjoy. I was like ‘this is what's selling, this is what’s in the charts, this is what will get the deal done.’ so I was trying to write a novel that ticked certain boxes. At one point, I sent a draft to my agent and she didn’t get it at all, and that's because I was writing something that wasn't me. I didn't know what my voice was as a writer, so I was just writing what I thought other people would enjoy. So whilst it didn't initially help, as a result of that trial and error, I eventually landed on The Three of Us. It was a story I just enjoyed writing and it helped me find my voice. So even though my journey to publishing wasn’t exactly the way that I would have wanted it to be - in that I wish I hadn't wasted my time on the earlier stories - that process led me here, so I'm grateful for it.
NA: As you know, throughout the publishing process, different people take turns to define the book and people will inevitably have different interpretations, so I’d love for you to tell us what The Three of Us is about from your perspective as the author.
OAW: For people who are reading, Nancy and I share a mutual friend, Ammara, and for a long time, when we'd go out and people would ask about the book, Ammara would do the pitch because I was terrible at it. She would be like ‘you need to fix up because this is embarrassing’ so I had to practice and get used to talking about it. So here’s my current pitch: I’d say, in a nutshell, the story is about a wife, her husband and her best friend, and the story asks what would you do if your two favorite people hated each other? But I think it also asks who gets to decide what the truth is? Who gets to decide who we are? Do we get to decide that ourselves? Or is that decided by the people who interact with us and perceive us?
The story is set over the course of one day, and you get three different perspectives from the main characters - the wife, the husband, and the best friend. I guess you could say there’s also a fourth character, which is all the wine they drink – which also influences the way they behave.
KN: Hahaa that’s a really good pitch! And how did the idea for the book come to you? Or did the characters come first?
OAW: So both of those things are true, but technically the idea led to the characters. I had just started seeing someone, and one day I was talking about him with my best friend, Grace (who the book is dedicated to). I was like, I really like him, and she was like, ugh, now you’re going to get a boyfriend and I'm never going to see you, and I was like, no, he will have to understand that you are number one, you come first. And so then I started wondering what would happen in a situation where you were with someone, but your best friend literally hated them. She wasn't saying that she hated him – she does hate him now, we both do – but at the time I was just wondering what would happen if that was the situation.
I didn't think it was a groundbreaking idea, and it's not really, but right after that conversation, I sat down and I wrote the opening line of the book, ‘Temi comes over at twelve.’
NA: I loveee that. I also never talk about this book without mentioning National Novel Writing Month (NaNoWriMo) and the fact that you wrote the entire book in just over a month. I would love to know how the hell you did that. What did it look like in a practical sense? Were you waking up at a certain time? Were you writing a certain amount of words every day? Walk us through your approach.
OAW: So no to waking up early in the morning - I was still working full time when I wrote this book so I would write after work. I think what was helpful was that I had the conversation with Grace in early November which coincided with NaNoWriMo so it was perfect. I also had another friend who was attempting to write a novel too, so it all worked out perfectly in terms of having someone to keep me accountable. But it was hard because, like I said, I was writing at the end of every workday; I certainly wasn’t going to do it in the morning, because that was my time to sleep.
I think what kept me going was two things. The first was that I’d been signed to my agent for just under two years, and she had been waiting for a first draft. And then I was also thinking about the fact that I just really wanted to complete something that I was happy with. I didn’t want to get to the end of NaNoWriMo without a finished manuscript and so that’s what kept me motivated. When I started writing this book, I felt like I had finally found my writing voice. Once I figured how to write the book in terms of style, I just had to figure out how to make sure I finished it. You’re supposed to write 1000 words a day but that’s physically impossible. I didn’t write 1000 words a day, some days, I would just open up the word document, squint for a couple minutes, type the word ‘and’ press save and update the tracker with one more added word.
It took me just over a month to finish and I sent it to my agent on December 23rd. She obviously didn't look at it until January and, to be honest, I was too tired to read through it myself. I wrote the last couple of words, pressed ‘save’, put it in the email and said Hi, here's the first draft, and sent it off. So when she called me in January and told me she really liked it, I was like Thank God because I don't even know what it says.
NA: Kim, can I just jump in with a quick follow-up question. You said something about finding your voice during the process of writing - how did you settle on this particular voice and do you think you’ll stick to the same writing style in your future books?
OAW: How I settled on it, hmm… it was definitely trial and error. And to be honest, it was mostly errors during the trials because I was initially trying to write like other authors and replicate books that were selling really well, but it just wasn’t my style. So I started thinking about the kind of writing I liked, and I realised that I love really sparse writing, I don't like over-describing things. Dialogue is not my strong suit, so there's very little in the book. There's more internal monologue than direct speech; and even the direct speech is told from the narrator's perspective. I was like, okay, dialogue’s not your strong suit, you like sparse writing, and you really don't like describing things - you just like to say what’s happening, matter-of-factly, and you like dry humor. The thoughts didn’t come to me in that exact way, but as I was writing everything was clearer to see and my style gradually formed from there.
KN: I'm so glad you said dry humor because I laughed so much as I was reading it. All of the characters have their own distinct personalities and the person I found the funniest was the husband because he’s so savage, even though he tries to pretend he’s nice. What was it like to carve out such distinct personalities for each of the characters?
OAW: What's funny is that I think I was expecting writing a man to be really hard because I thought I was going to approach it with a men-have-wronged-me attitude, but what really helped was writing character profiles for each of them. And that came from a conversation where my agent said I needed to have a better sense of who the characters really were. Character profiles helped with this in the sense that I could figure out what each character liked, what they disliked, what their hopes and dreams were etc. and then I think everything else naturally flowed from there.
NA: Another thing I loved about this book was the unapologetic opulence. Wealth feels like such a key part of the story, and although we see rich British-Nigerians in real life, we don’t always read about them in fiction. Why did you choose to make affluence and luxury such a core part of this story?
OAW: I always wanted them to be stupid rich, because I love TV shows and programs where people are rich and their lives are messy. I love rich, messy people. And so I was like, this is my writing brand - rich, messy people. Remember there was that Channel 4 series about all those rich British-Nigerians, and you even see it in films like The Wedding Party. Rich Nigerians are literally everywhere and they’re usually obnoxious and snobbish (not all of them, but most), and it makes for great entertainment because rich people’s problems can often feel so futile and miniscule. So it felt like something I could really play around with because the characters I created weren’t thinking about whether or not they could pay their bills, they were thinking about how they can kick their wife's best friend out the house so they can live in peace. I also loved playing around with the idea of their pettiness and some of their stinginess - like when the husband wanted Temi to pay for her own food…
NA: Oh my god, I couldn’t believe that!
OAW: Hahaa I just really wanted to have fun with it. There’s also a second part to it where a lot of our stories can be very sad and negative, and I didn't have the capacity to write that kind of story, a) because I'm tired, and b) because I wanted to write something joyful. People who have read it have told me that they felt more stressed than joyful - but like Kim, a lot of readers told me that they laughed a lot too and that's ultimately what I wanted. I want my readers to be entertained, and what's more entertaining than rich, messy people? Literally nothing.
KN: I love what you said about rich, messy people because that's 100% what I love to read. You kind of answered my next question, which was going to be about what films and TV shows inspired the plot and the themes…
OAW: Real Housewives for sure, the franchise has so many different versions and people are literally addicted to it. Even old shows like Gossip Girl. Dan was the interloper, but at its core it was a show about a bunch of rich kids with rich kid problems. It's always entertaining.
I also think shows like Insecure were partly an influence as well, just because of the friendship aspect to it, and how those friendships can change and evolve when a friend enters a new relationship. The way the wife and Temi relate with each other is similar to how Issa and Molly relate to each other. I also infused the way my friends and I talk to each other in the book as well, because I wanted everything to feel authentic, so I also needed to be able to pull from reality.
NA: The Three of Us is a lot shorter than you would expect from a debut novel. Most writers would try to pad it out to get it to the required 70-80,000 words, so when did you know and accept that this was going to be a shorter book?
OAW: I’ve always loved short books - I don't like massive long books unless you are really pulling me in to a deep rich narrative that I can read in two days. So again I had to ask myself what I enjoyed reading and I decided to focus on that. I think that’s part of what helped me to be successful in writing this book. I was selfish about every aspect of it and that’s so important because if you genuinely enjoy writing the book, that will be reflected in the reading experience. If you haven't enjoyed writing it, how can someone else enjoy reading it?
KN: You’ve sprinkled in really good bits of advice about building character profiles and being selfish in writing – do you have any other advice for aspiring authors?
OAW: Yes I have two. Tip number one is don't write to make money. That is the worst possible motivation because you will end up doing what I did - you’ll have a bunch of ideas that you can't execute because they're not born of your own passions. It will be a waste of your time.
My second piece of advice would be to be gracious to yourself. No one's writing journey or experience is exactly the same. Some books might sell 200 copies for the first six months, and then somebody picks it up and writes a review about it, or somebody picks it up on TikTok, and then suddenly it's the best book ever. So be gracious to yourself, but also be patient with yourself in terms of how long it takes you to write it - it could be really quick, it could take forever. I’m currently writing my second book, and for the first six months I wrote absolute rubbish. I have a document full of 28,000 words worth of stuff I'm not going to use, and that's just the process. Some people take decades to write their books, and that's absolutely fine.
There are peaks and troughs in writing. It can be fun, it can be stressful, it can be nauseating, it can be frustrating, but it can also be really, really enjoyable. It's all kinds of things. But find your moments of joy. Find them and hold on to them, because it’s really important to have those moments and those times that are just for you to really enjoy your writing.
Ore Agbaje-Williams is a British-Nigerian writer from London who has written for gal-dem, Glamour and Wasafiri. She is an editor and wrote the novel in NaNoWriMo during lockdown. It was originally submitted to editors under a pseudonym.
You can read an excerpt of The Three of Us here.
