INTERVIEW | Catriona Innes: Writer, Poet + Editor at Cosmopolitan UK
on 'success' not feeling like you thought it would, using writing to process your grief and the reality of the editing process.
By day (two days a week, to be exact), Catriona is Cosmopolitan UK’s multiple award-winning Commissioning Editor. Here, you’ll find her commissioning and editing the features section of the magazine (both print and digital), and also writing her own hard-hitting investigations on some of the most pressing issues that affect and matter to young women today.
As an undercover journalist, she’s spent time with specialist police forces, domestic abuse social workers and Playboy Bunnies – all in the name of truly taking her readers to the heart of the story. Unsurprisingly, Catriona has won BSME awards for her longform investigative journalism as well as for leading Cosmopolitan’s features department.
By other days, Catriona is also a published author (her debut novel, The Matchmaker, is equal parts funny, uplifting and heartbreaking!), a poet and the writer of
the newsletter that navigates the human experiences of grief – including Catriona’s own.In her spare time (how she has any, I do not know), Catriona volunteers with Showerbox, a charity that provides free and secure shower spaces for the street and hidden homeless in London.
Here, Catriona tells me about her experiences of ‘success’ not feeling like it should, how writing can help you process your grief and the reality of the magazine editing process.
Q: When you were younger, what did you want to be when you ‘grew up’?
First, a ballet dancer. That was until I was told (I won’t say who by) that my build meant I’d never make it. A very cruel thing to tell a 13 year old. So then I moved all my passions over to writing and magazines – I still have all these notebooks that I made ‘magazines’ out of using Pritt Stitt and clippings.
Q: Tell us about your first job.
I was a pharmacy delivery girl in Edinburgh. I think I was around 14, and I’d dropped my ‘CV’ (of what, I don’t know) around all the shops on Edinburgh’s Royal Mile. Every day, I’d do some work in the pharmacy, sorting out prescription bottles and chatting to the customers – who were mostly addicts who came in for their methadone. Then I’d fill my backpack up with prescriptions and deliver them to all the old people in the area. I lost my job when they realised this was probably quite unsafe, and I was replaced by an adult in one of those proper security vans.
I think from that job I deepened my fascination with people’s lives, and how impacted people are by their circumstance and things out of their control. I guess it’s why I love interviewing people and telling real people’s stories, and it’s definitely why I’m drawn to helping out the homeless – and probably why I ended up volunteering for a charity called Showerbox which provides the homeless with free showers each week.
Q: Tell us about your worst ever job.
When I first moved to London I thought it would be really fun to work for a tour bus company. I thought I’d learn about the city and meet loads of fun people. The reality of it was standing, alone, on the street in an itchy, ugly and unflattering uniform trying to persuade people onto our buses. They were so strict about that uniform and there were targets we had to meet. I didn’t make any friends and I ended up quitting after like, three weeks.
Q: You’re now the Commissioning Director of Cosmopolitan magazine. How did you get to this point in your career?
It’s really strange to look back over my career as I can see that, yes, proving myself was incredibly difficult – it involved long hours and sacrificing a lot. I always worked late, never took my lunch and just took on every single challenge I was offered, no matter what. I’d always been afraid of public speaking so when the then-editor of Cosmopolitan, Farrah Storr, needed someone to try out stand up comedy for a career piece, I went into her office and said I’d do it.
When I was then made senior editor, I made sure to always offer to help the features director, Amy Grier, edit the long-reads. It wasn’t my job at the time (I was looking after the regular pages in the mag) but I would lie and say I ‘totally had the capacity’ to do it – even when I was swamped. I just knew I had to show that I could do the job if it ever came up.
None of this felt difficult because I genuinely loved being at Cosmo – and I loved learning from Farrah. She’s someone who demands a lot, but in a very kind way. Feature edits would go through four to five different iterations and any idea you brought into a features meeting had to be really original. Our features meetings back then were my favourite thing in the whole world, and to be honest, they still are – as we just end up discussing things that fascinate us.
Getting the job of Features Director didn’t happen automatically because I was already at Cosmo, either. I had to apply like everyone else, and write a manifesto as to where I’d take the features department, were I to get the role. Luckily, I did!
Q: What’s the biggest mistake you’ve ever made at work?
I can’t go into too much detail here as I don’t want the person who this affected to be able to recognise themselves. But basically, I once misunderstood something in an interview and in a transcript, and said that someone had a medical condition that they didn’t have. It was in print so couldn’t be changed and she was understandably really angry. Oh God, I feel shaky thinking about it now.
What it taught me was to always triple check everything, to always read over my transcripts, to listen again, and to check and read sources as much as possible…
Q: Is there anything you wish you’d done differently over your career?
I had a very small period when I was between jobs and freelance. And essentially I spent that whole time comparing myself to everyone else and telling myself I was just crap. If I didn’t hear back from a pitch, I wouldn’t pitch again – assuming that the editor hated me. I’d examine articles written by other writers and declare that I’d never be as good as that.
I now know that most articles have gone through a thorough editing process, nothing printed is exactly as it comes in on raw, so it’s so stupid comparing your own rough writing to the published words you read. Also, that the majority of commissioning editors (myself included) have like 800 emails a day. If we’re not replying, it’s not a personal attack!
So yeah, I wish I’d stopped being so harsh on myself and just tried a bit harder to develop a thicker skin.
Q: You recently took the plunge to go part time, expand your freelance career and launch your wonderful newsletter on grief – how did you get to the point where this decision felt so right?
It’s cliched, but it was the pandemic. My book (The Matchmaker) came out in November 2019, and then obviously we were in lockdown just a few months later. Just before my book came out, I had this period where, looking back, I was quite mad.
I had this strong urge to just run away from my life and everything I’d built. I’d been working so hard on moulding myself into what I considered successful – I’d always wanted to reach this level in magazines and I’d always wanted to have a book out, but it didn’t feel like how I wanted it to. It made me question why I wanted the things I had achieved, was it just for status? To prove myself to old bullies? What did I actually enjoy?
I went into therapy about halfway through the pandemic and my therapist pointed out that, since my mum died when I was 19, I’d thrown myself into work probably as a form of avoiding what had happened to me. (I should point out this is all making out like I’ve just worked non-stop for years, which isn’t the case – I’ve had a lot of fun along the way too!)
It resonated and I realised that, as much as I love Cosmo, I had been neglecting myself and throwing everything into the brand. No one had made me do it, but I’d chosen this life for myself – becoming so focused on achieving and climbing up that ladder that I’d lost sight of what I actually wanted. I had to take time to figure out what I wanted to do next. And so I decided that space away from a full-time job would offer me that.
But I really didn’t want to leave it behind, as I believe so much in the journalism we do. So I asked my editor, Claire Hodgson, if I could go part-time and just work on the longer reads, which she agreed to. So now… I just need to actually do that figuring out stuff I promised myself!
Q: You’re also a wonderful poet. What inspired you to start writing poetry?
Ah thank you! I still find it very weird to be called a ‘poet’ as I just started writing these very short expressions of how I felt as an outlet. It was during the pandemic and I found I couldn’t write anything long at all. I was supposed to be working on my second book and felt stuck. I was also going through a big health scare and I just found all these wee words coming to my head, explaining it all for me. I started sharing them on Instagram and people said they were poems!
It’s funny though, as they came as a way to be creative when I couldn’t write longer stuff. Now that I’m back writing longer things, I’m struggling to write poems again – which could be because my brain wants me to concentrate on finishing my book. Or, it could be that Instagram algorithm making me cripplingly self-conscious…
Q: What’s your favourite poem you’ve ever written?
I wrote a poem expressing how I felt about losing my grandma – as an almost letter to her. It makes me cry every time I read it and I think it was needed in helping me process how much I miss her. I’d always felt quite ashamed of the grief I felt when we lost her, like it wasn’t valid… I wrote about the grief of losing a grandparent it in my newsletter, where I explored this more.
Q: What’s your favourite poem you’ve ever read?
I love Kim Addonizio. She perfectly sums up what it means to be a woman and a need to desired. I love Lush Life. Also Yrsa Daley Ward – she has a line that is “the person who hurts you the most in the end will be you. Almost every time, you. You’d better learn to forgive yourself, forgive yourself instantly. It’s a skill you’re going to need until you die.”
It’s so useful and I gift her poetry collection ‘Bone’ to a lot of people.
Q: Anything to get off your chest?
My first thing is that I wish more freelancers credited their editors. A huge part of my job at Cosmopolitan is coming up with ideas, finding the right person to write that piece, writing a detailed, researched brief and then going through (usually multiple rounds of) edits with that person.
I am not saying the final product is any way ‘mine’, and I’m not underestimating how much work a writer puts into a piece (I write them myself, so I know!). But, an editor often puts a lot of work into a piece and then when the writer boasts about their piece on social media it’s so rare to see the editor thanked or mentioned. I don’t think it undermines your own work to say you had help, it just acknowledges someone else’s role in the final product. It also helps to break down the idea that all the published work that we read arrives in an editor’s inbox as raw copy just like (with no amends or edits) – which just makes others feel bad!
This is also something I need to get better at too, as every piece in Cosmo is also down to brainstorming ideas with my editor (Claire). Also I want to shout out the amazing work that subs, art and pictures do in magazines more, as they do so much amazing work that can sometimes be ignored.
My second note is one that I feel quite embarrassed about, as it feels quite whingey and attention-seeking. But, if you like someone’s work then please, please engage with them on their Instagram, Substack or wherever they have posted it!
So many writers I know (myself included) have huge crises of confidence because of the nature of algorithms, where we have to use platforms to promote our work but then for whatever reason (I swear Instagram hates me at the moment as I keep talking about Substack), it won’t put it in feeds. Then, people get less ‘likes’ than normal and it can throw you and make you feel like that particular piece of work was crap. The more people who engage, (through liking, commenting and sharing), the more likely Instagram is to push it to others. It really helps!
God, now everyone could be reading this and thinking ‘nah it’s just that we don’t like your work, don’t blame IG’...
QUICKFIRE
Q: One work-related object you can’t live without?
Muji pens. I find it incredibly difficult to write without them and I live in fear of Muji going into administration.
Q: Best advice you’ve ever been given?
‘It’s paint on a wall’. This was decorating advice from a builder to my husband, but I now apply it to writing. If I ever feel intimidated by the blank page, I just tell myself to get some paint on the wall. I can refine later.
Q: Worst advice you’ve ever been given?
I can’t remember the exact words, but I was once told that I had to harden up if I ever wanted to be a successful journalist. This idea that, in order to report on hard, or tough stories, you have to be able to totally remove yourself from them I think is bullshit and sexist – as often sensitivity and empathy are seen as female traits.
Yes, obviously don’t sob your way through every interview or make it about yourself, but I believe that caring for the people I interview comes across, and them trusting me to tell their story in the best way possible means they’re more likely to be open and honest, resulting in a better story – and a better moral conscience.
Q: Your dream person to recite one of your poems?
Ooooh this is good. I love Taylor Swift and her lyrics influence my poems a lot, so I’ll choose her.
Q: The person you admire the most?
Marian Keyes. The way she wraps up some of life’s most serious issues in humour and lightness is what I strive for in my own books. I also love how she talks about sexism in the female fiction market and how supportive she is of other authors. She’s an incredible writer but just seems so nice as well.
Q: Ever faked being sick to get off work?
Do hangovers count as faking sickness? As technically you are sick… it’s just self inflicted.
Q: Any last words?
Have fun! I have been trying to figure out what I want out of my life and I’ve found that as long as I follow the things I find fun I’ll be OK.
You can read
and see Catriona's latest writing and poetry shared on her Instagram and Twitter. Plus for longer reading, The Matchmaker is available from all good book shops, including Waterstones here. | A guest post by
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Finding this almost a year after it was posted but really enjoyed the interview - thank you both!
Agree with your point on acknowledging the guidance and support that goes into putting an article together, both to uncover the process of writing/publishing more, but also simply giving credit where it's due ☺️x