Laura Jane Williams

[Kirstyy]

If she could end the friendship all over again then she would but apparently, according to the article, she’d “demonstrate more grace.” Writing an article so patently pointed about one person and essentially criticising and highlighting their flaws is cruel. Especially when the other person is well-known both socially in the same circles and by the same followers that follow you. She’s using her platform to have the last say and denying a right of reply. To me, that’s nasty, humiliating and akin to bullying. She wants to be this boss woman who stands for girl power yet has totally acted to the contrary. It’s just not nice. Yes, we all use personal experience to inform our writing but a tirade so obviously aimed against one person is so wrong. She could have written a general piece and referenced a plethora of friendship fall outs; god knows she’s had enough- this won’t be her first or her last.

It’s also odd to me that the whole article is about how great it was ending the friendship when in reality she asked for more space (presumably with a view to improving the friendship or re-assessing the friendship) and it was the friend who blocked her on social media, fundamentally ending the friendship. She makes NO sense and clearly isn’t even bright enough to consistently keep up with her own lies within the confines of one article.

Yes, we have all experienced friendships fizzling away and we have all endured romantic break ups etc but I’m sorry most normal people do NOT consistently have these issues with people time and time again. It speaks volumes about her other (let’s be real, non-existent) friends when somebody new comes into her life and is immediately deserving of “best friend” status. She has had a rocky relationship with her parents, she has lost friends consistently throughout her life and she can’t hold a relationship down for love or money...perhaps, Laura Jane Williams, the common denominator in these shitstorm relationships that you have is...you?

 

[Lanavalentine]

I bought it for very little on kindle. Please read it, come back and let's discuss further.

Ok. So I begrudgingly purchased Becoming on Kindle last night (first attempted to find a free copy). So sorry that I’m late to the party and most of you have already read it. Please skip my comment it you’re not interested!

I got about half-way through, and I’ve been making notes so I don’t forget anything. There are a LOT of notes, because she is so very... well, just read my bullet points:

- Narcissistic. We all knew that, but the levels of it know no bounds. Let’s just say that every single man in the book adores her beauty and her incredible arse, and repeatedly tells her. Even the gay men want to sleep with her. She talks about being happiest when she’s centre of attention and it doesn’t ever seem to occur to her that her friends might want to talk about something other than HER. One of the most breath-taking moments is when she compares her doomed relationship with Chad (an 18-year old American boy totally out of his depth with her) to a story her friend told her about ACTUALLY ALMOST DROWNING. Actually capsizing in a boat and fearing she would die. Yes, LJW makes that comparison without a hint of irony.

- Very predatory about men. Some of her sexual escapades, if you reversed the sexes people would be calling her “rapey”. Begging the French guy to fuck her when he’d said no, and unbuckling his belt, attempting to get him to “resign” to the fact it was going to happen? CREEPY AS HELL. Oh, AND she’s gotten with two different 18-year olds so far, when she’s around mid-twenties at the time, I think?

- Insanely needy and emotionally draining and not at all embarrassed by it. Her friend stops answering her calls because she rings her DAILY for WEEKS to discuss her ex, she pours her heart out to unsuspecting strangers in chip shops, even her own dad admits he finds her exhausting!

- Calum is quite misogynyistic - calls her “sugartits” and at one point essentially says that it’s not the patriarchy that pits women against each other, it’s that we all get confused because we give each other too much advice and we all need to chill out and women’s magazines are the cause of this anti-feminist cancer (so I’m really interested to hear his thoughts on Laura’s Grazia and Red Magazine columns?)

- oh I forgot, not only does everyone think she’s a world-class writer but she is also a renowned travel expert, everyone wants her opinion and asks her questions as if she is some kind of new world explorer, AND she is a culinary genius and total foodie who at one point threatens to “cut” Calum if he ever puts ketchup on her lovingly-prepared omelette again. Should point out she has yet to make anything more complicated than a omelette, and I am sure many of you remember her Instagram Story years ago admitting she had never roasted a chicken before and needed help. But yes, she is an expert foodie!

 

[Honeybear]

I had the misfortune of meeting this self obsessed fake one year, Stylist Magazine went to France for 2 days to produce a copy of their magazine there. LJW was there as an influencer, she spoke to myself & my friend basically just to find out if we had anything to offer that would propel her on! It soon became pretty clear we didn’t, she turned her back and cleared off, we ended up sitting next to her at dinner and she COMPLETELY turned her back to us. During the trip we had a chance to sit in on an editing meeting for the mag, it would have been quite interesting but all you could hear was LJW in the fake effin voice banging on about blow jobs...Oh my god...She’s as shallow as a worms grave, I cannot stand her. Definitely a narc!

 

[NotMySky]

I know a few people who were into her work and friendly with her a few years ago. I admired her energy and enjoyed reading some of her blog posts and articles. Then the memoir came out and she just got a bit too full-on and buzzwordy for my tastes. The more I thought about it, the more it seemed incredible that a debut author could get a whole book out of breaking up with someone and going travelling, and I’m ambivalent about whether or not that’s something to be admired. There’s a fine line between wanting to grab life by the balls and being full of yourself. I have a lot of mixed feelings and concerns generally about the direction twenty-thirtysomething women writers have been pushed into in recent years. I think it’s brilliant that people with lived experience of all sorts of struggles are talking more openly about them rather than suffering in silence. But I also worry that the media elevates too many people into believing they are some sort of all-round expert on all of life just because they’ve lived, loved and lost. The market for women’s life writing is turning into a middle-class version of going on Big Brother or Love Island. People write about themselves and their crazy twenties lives, then nobody will employ them to write about anything else, then they get sucked into this incestuous cult of “influencer” and just end up monetising their every move and offering courses in how do to the same. People can get absolutely huge reach for talking about perfectly ordinary experiences simply because they are known to some commissioning editor and/or good at self-promoting. People’s stories get spun for hate clicks because writers either don’t know the game or are unhealthy enough not to care. And women who write about genuine trauma (beyond the standard age-typical stuff) don’t get the sympathy and duty of care they deserve from editors and publishers. Writers are also getting younger and younger; they don’t have the right amount of distance and perspective on events. People who write to process trauma need to be helped to do it in ways which aren’t going to hurt them or anyone else, and the market needs to move away from giving women a choice between misery memoir or ballsy buzzwords and sunny hashtags. The women who do life writing well, IMO, tend to be a bit older and less “Here’s me in Soho House with a Bellini, buy my stuff!!!!”

 

[xoxo]

ooooooooooh.

 

[Milly Moo]

She’s terribly self-indulgent isn’t she? Always going on about taking naps in the daytime, highlights lots of useful passages from the many many books she reads. Always looking at the ‘self’ and self-care. Who has time for this navel-gazing?! She’s like the friend you put off meeting because you come away drained from hearing about them talking about themselves/their self-care/their ailments while you’re busy trying to prop up and support 100 people. The single white privilege in her chat with Toff was revolting really.

 

[missT]

Guys...I know she deleted her blog but her blog posts are still up on Goodreads, so until she reads this post and deletes those swiftly, may we all remember this post, titled Fabio https://www.goodreads.com/author_blog_posts/15694016-fabio


I look at you sometimes, and I think: give me your seed. I look at you and I think, give me your seed. Plant yourself inside of me and grow and grow and grow, let two become one become three and let’s build something beautiful, together, forever. I love you. I am you. We are we.

 

[Ellabella]

Right so let me get this right, the Insta wankers hate forums like this as we dare to say things other than just kind words. BUT they then call us all the names under the sun, make untrue claims about our mental health, we're miserable, evil, bitches etc.

How is that not the worst hypocrisy ever?

 

[majestic26]

It's quite arrogant of her to think she can go on these long social media sabbaticals and then pop up when she has a book to promote and expect everyone will be interested. If you want to stay away from social for the most part, that's fine, but recognise that part of the reason you got your book deal was because of the online audience you had cultivated over years of spilling your guts on a blog, in articles and in your Instagram captions. You can't have it both ways.

 

[JammyEmmy]

I have a real mix of sympathy and pity for her. She comes across as really lonely. She doesn't seem to have many friends, and the ones she does make soon disappear. (she did some website called IRL or something with another social media girl who swiftly vanished off the face of the earth, replaced by mysterious comments in posts), she made out like her house in London was rented alone, even though she once stayed at her housemate's fancy family pad, (they soon disappeared off her feed) and she doesn't have any friends from her 'high school' days. If my mates saw me talking in that weird accent or talking to myself so often on the camera they'd call bullshit pretty quickly!

The kick in the balls for me is that in other jobs there's someone who oversees what you're doing, there's a code of conduct, and guidelines to follow - where as the advertisers (cos that's actually what Instagram 'influencers' are) can freely spread their bullshit around like butter without any regulation or comeuppance. She does cooking posts without admitting it's from one of those meal delivery boxes, she's able to promote herself as this wonderful caring human who wants to adopt - making it seem like a selfless and beautiful experience - without ever ONCE stopping to acknowledge how truly awful it will be for the child to have been born in to difficult circumstances and removed from his or her family, and then the parents who - regardless of the circumstance - will be losing a child. That child will not be a mini version of those London kids she babysat. They will have problems and most likely some deep trauma. It's fucked up, and THIS is why I pity her. She cannot see beyond the end of her nose and the John Lewis blazer department (wtf?!) to consider ANYONE else apart from herself. Anyway, how is that mini Boden kid gonna have space to swing its artisan wooden blocks in that tiny flat with all those nik naks on every surface?!

Her whole schtik is based on being 'authentic' but ever notice how sometimes stuff doesn't add up? The 'year of celibacy' that lasted ten months, the decade long relationship with the 'high school sweetheart' that must have started when she was 12 in order for the dates to work, the yoga retreat she quit, the Bali trip she quit and never mentioned again? If she wants to be authentic, then do it, not this over priveldged middle class crying down the camera fuck wittery she's congratulating herself on.

 

[xoxo]

Bit late on this one as I only saw that outfit post once the comments had closed, but UUUURURRGGHHHHH.

That post put all of my hairs on end with how awful it was.

Then I saw this just now, and knew EXACTLY who she meant. (Now deleted, shame.)

 

[Bette Lunch]

I said this would happen! No one would take on her book launch, Poorna Bell agreed without knowing HERstory, so she subsequently gets 3 likes out of 37k followers and this comment. I should be a fortune teller.

 

[missT]

I just came on here to get some things off my chest because I think I've finally reached my limit with LJ and I sure hope she reads this forum.

I’ve been a fan of hers for years and I’ve been following her since before she moved to Bali. I have her books, I was even at her first book launch and met her in person. I've been rooting for her for a long time, but I think I'm finally really done now.
Making a joke about sexual abuse in a quirky outfit description because it adds “something” to the narrative, is heartbreaking. It’s just crass and irresponsible, especially as she's embarking on this adoption journey. There are so many institutionalised children who have to live with an insane amount of trauma and abuse. I’m a writer too and I understand and respect artistic licence or whatever she wants to call this, but this is just not okay. She's a public person, her social profiles are public and while no one expects her to be a role model, joking about child sexual abuse/rape is too much for me. And a trigger warning doesn't makes this any better.

Doesn't she realise the child she might end up adopting could have gone through something horrible? That the social worker handling her case could be reading all of this shit? She wants to adopt as a single mother, and I respect that tremendously but holy shit, LJ, put it in your book if you must and if it adds a layer to one of your characters but don't try and defend it for a stupid instagram post where you're showing off your fucking sweatpants.
Phew.

 

[Lanavalentine]

Someone commented saying that it was inappropriate to send such a message via an outfit post, and Laura is defending herself by claiming it was a deliberate choice to “get favoured by the algorithym”.

I’m sorry but I don’t believe her. I think she made some good points in her caption, but doing it as one of her characters to me screams that she wanted everyone to praise her for being so clever and such a good writer and being a good ally to black people.

It absolutely does come across as insensitive. It is inappropriate to connect the very real issue of racism with her pathetic outfit posts, just like the child sex abuse from last year post was inappropriate too.

I hope she puts her money where her mouth is and proves she’s actually the ally she wants to be seen as - give space on her platform to black writers, for example. Lift up their work, rather than bleating on about her own all the time.

Also, absolutely minor side note, but that outfit is ridiculous and incredibly unflattering. I guess she’s going to claim that was a choice based on the racist character now, or something!

 

[Sherry50672]

That is hugely insulting to Marian Keyes, who writes all her books, has sold in the tens of millions, is incredibly funny and charming, and a general super star there’s nothing wrong with romance or chick lit.

 

[Kirstyy]

Her latest post is vile. I felt for Laura when she found this forum but I feel more sorry that she hasn’t got anyone decent enough in her life to sit her down and be honest with her. My parents/friends/husband would definitely have steered me away from the false accent, the inflated ego and the hypocrisy etc. They aren’t attractive qualities. Where she lacks in talent (let’s be honest her writing is awful) she makes up for it with business acumen and shameless self promotion. An empire built on authenticity when you yourself are disingenuous is hardly going to end well....

 

[Rfffd]

I actually don’t follow Laura BECAUSE of the reason I called her out. I noticed that she never replied to people who were sharing personal experiences with her, but always replies to other influencers with a big following. It just wasn’t my cup of tea.

It got me thinking how impractical it is for users with a big following to be the ‘matey’/real persona they use to market themselves in REAL life - especially with such a large audience. She prompted me to look at all the influencers I follow and swiftly hit unfollow!

If you’re using a persona to sell things (books, articles, courses, events) on a public forum you’re opening yourself up to criticism, dislike, hate/trolling but also praise, love and community. The fact Laura doesn’t really do community well despite giving off that image prompted me to criticise - it doesn’t go any further than that. To me, these posts are critical and don’t cross the line into nasty.

It’s also worth noting if your persona isn’t really how you are in real life, it’s either going to annoy people as the falseness will come through or people will enjoy and follow along. As we see here (some comments on the thread are positive which she hasn’t noted!)...

I don’t see how this forum is different to Instagram really - it’s a safe space to have a natter. It’s almost ‘crueler’ to shame people for opinions you don’t like (as Laura has done to incite sympathy) than to express them in the first place. I mean, setting a google alert up for your name is never going to end well.

Let’s be real, she was never going to read the comments here and say ‘bit mean to say stuff about my appearance lads but you know what, there’s a point - I’m going to write an article about how Instagram isn’t reality’ because it’s hard to admit people aren’t keen on you.

She’s actually got it a bit wrong because her online persona would have had a good giggle about it, maybe read the comments in a comedy accent, buy a Boden baby grow. You know the matey Bridget Jones stuff she’s always doing . Turning into a pity party will just get exhausting.

I actually don’t really dislike her as I don’t know her and wish her very well, her content just isn’t for me and I have no issue saying so! Don’t feel bad guys, opinions are simply that

 

[Skiddidlydaddle]

How crushingly disappointing. I think it's Pete from Becoming, here to give his side of the story.

 

[jecca]

Her circle of v "grounding" friends has more changes in lineup than the Sugababes.

 

[xoxo]