If you work in the Australian beauty industry, you know the name Zoë Foster. The former beauty director of Harper’s Bazaar, beauty editor of Cosmopolitan magazine, editor of primped.com.au and columnist for The Sunday Telegraph and Cosmopolitan, there’s not many writing pies that Zoë hasn’t dipped her finger into. Her latest venture? The non-fiction book Amazing Face. We talked to Zoë about what we can expect from the book, why she decided to leave the magazine world and her career tips for bloggers and wannabe authors.
Can you tell me a bit about Amazing Face?
It started off with my publisher suggesting Why don’t we take all your best beauty quotes and some of your primped and best tips and tricks over the years and put them all in a book? But I’m so much of a control freak that I rewrote everything and added heaps of new stuff. Basically it’s my favourite tips and the things that I always end up using at dinner parties when women ask me questions about fake tan or eyebrows.
You seem to move constantly between fiction and non-fiction…
They’re two very different projects and I tackle them very differently. When I’m writing a novel, I get really immersed in it and then I get sick of the characters and the enormous word length and keeping one narrative going for a hundred thousand words, so then I want to do non-fiction because it feels easier and like writing a bunch of columns all at once. It’s good for my brain to have a break and divvy between the two.
Did you always think you wanted to be a novelist?
It was an accident. My dad’s an author and he was like Don’t go into books there’s no money”, so I got that out of my head. And then I was at an antsy period at Cosmo and I had a serious chat with Mia [Freedman, former Cosmopolitan editor] about what I wanted to do next and she said Oh for God’s sake, just write a book or something, get all this creative energy out.” But it comes to me easily and I enjoy it, so I feel like it must be the right path.
When did you decide to leave magazines for the web?
Harper’s was a beautiful, amazing experience and I learnt a lot, but it was very grown up and anyone who knows me knows I’m a child, so I needed to get back to being a little grub. I was called mad at the time because I had the top job at Harper’s and I was being asked to go work for a job that didn’t exist yet. It was an amazing opportunity being able to create your own website and have all this amazing backing and people working with you to make it happen. It was such a good choice at that time because mags suffered a bit after that and I felt like I’d left at just the right time without meaning to.
Which medium do you prefer writing for?
They’re all different and I’m very lucky to be doing all of them. I can smash out a tumblr post in 10 minutes and love that, it doesn’t even register that I’ve done something, whereas some of my Cosmo columns I put a lot of thought into them and shape them into a big piece of work. I don’t have any desire to kick online and go completely back into paper and I don’t have any desire to do the opposite. As long as people allow me to do all of them I will.
What direction do you see your career heading?
I feel so happy and content where I am that I don’t really look too far ahead. I’m around such amazing people all the time. My boyfriend [comedian Hamish Blake] is incredibly brilliant and funny and positive and inspiring and he just makes me want to push myself harder as well. So I’m in such good hands to just keep trying new things and seeing what works and what doesn’t.
What’s your top tip for beauty bloggers?
It’s a funny one, because when I started there weren’t many. I now feel like a blogger, it’s a lot harder because there’s so many out there to get noticed and to feel unique. I think what a lot of bloggers are missing is having a bit of magazine or masthead experience. If you’re really passionate about it, try and do work experience and do as much magazine work as you can. With more and more noise in the bloggersphere, it’s going to start coming down to people whom readers trust who have authenticity and authority.
Do you have advice for anyone who wants to become a novelist?
Probably what I should have said about the bloggers, which is just be so sure that what you’re doing is not being offered by someone else and not being offered better. Looking for gaps in the market, looking for a unique voice or looking for an interesting perspective that no-one else is doing.
Zoë Foster, a look behind the books: Part II
Amazing Face is published by Penguin Australia and is priced at $39.95.