Author Robin Stevens on her autism diagnosis: 'Stories are what help me make sense of the world'
Robin Stevens: "I definitely think that writing, for me, is how I understand myself and the world — and it all makes much more sense now."
“The thing I would always say, when asked why I love writing, is that 'stories are what help me make sense of the world'. I think it's a very interesting phrase that I look back on, and think about now, because I think it's even more true than I really understood, even from a very young age.”
Robin Stevens’ enthusiasm shines through the screen as the writer says hello over Zoom — sat in a home office, with a jam-packed bookcase occupying almost the entire wall in the far distance, her energy is of someone who’s living among her interests and her passions.
The English scribe, known for the best-selling series of young peoples’ murder-mystery tales set in the 1930s, is influenced by the Golden Age of Detective Fiction — and that thread has led to spin-off series casting a new generation of kids as spies-in-training amid the Allies’ war effort during the Emergency of the 1940s.
The second book in the series, is out now via Puffin, and it was amid the building of the world in which May, Eric and Nuala are recruited, and try to crack the mystery of a body found amid the wreckage of a London street after the bombing campaign that levelled the city, that Stevens began assessment for autism.
“I've been writing my books for years. People had for quite a long time been asking me if one of my main characters, Daisy Wells, somebody I can now see as autistic, if she was autistic. Her sense of humour is autistic, the way she behaves and speaks is very autistic, but I hadn't consciously imagined that that was what I was doing. She's slightly based on Sherlock Holmes, another character who I think is autistic, but I think I was too close to myself, too close to my stories to be able to look and be like, 'hold on, does this mean something?'. I was writing about these neurodivergent children, but I just was blissfully unaware.
“One day I started watching a TV show called . I just got totally hooked, watched it over and over again, read all the articles, listened to podcasts, listened to the soundtrack again and again, and I was just so in the zone. One of my friends just joked, 'welcome to hyperfixation'. I do have a lot of friends who had been diagnosed already, prior to me, and I kind-of knew the terminology and I was like, 'hold on, I know that, that's a word that's connected to neurodivergence'.
“Something clicked in my brain, but I had all these ideas, still, about what neurodivergence was, and I was like, 'I just don't think I fit those boxes'. I started doing more research on it, and the more I read, the more I was like, 'actually, I think this all does describe me, I think that I have been creating false reasons why I cannot fit into those boxes, and actually I really do have the very intense interests and emotions, and I do struggle to connect with them, to understand how people are trying to communicate with me'.
“I was speaking to friends who are neurodivergent and, the more and more I researched, the more clear I was, over a number of months. I went into the actual diagnostic process, I wanted to get formally diagnosed, I wanted answers, and I think I also still felt 'I'm just not sure this is real', which is silly, because it was all making sense.”
Having that awareness and clarity on her own emotions has, in turn, helped Stevens understand her process of creation and writing through a different lens, recognising and being able to articulate her style as a scribe driven by a depth and range of feeling.
“It's just game-changing, in every respect, realising that so much of what you were taught as a kid, how to manage your emotions, what emotions you're meant to be having, and how you interact with the world, is just wrong for who you are and how you process. You've been trying to behave in ways that don't work for you, jam yourself into this way of behaving, and being that just doesn't serve you... I feel things so deeply, and [people around me] would be very confused. 'Why do you care so much, why are you so angry, why can't you let this go?'.
“The way that I process emotion is just not the way that allistic (non-autistic) people process emotion. I feel it in my body, in this very strong way, which I think makes me a better writer, because when I'm thinking about emotion, I literally can feel it, and when I'm writing my stories, I feel like I am my characters, I'm going along with them, experiencing what they experience, and that's literally true.
“I can see the room that they're in, and walk through the room with them. I can turn, there's a chair, there's a table, they can reach out to pick that up, something happens, and I can feel the anger they feel, the fear they're feeling. So, I can really translate it very, very clearly onto the page. But, that is a lot to be experiencing [laughs] on a constant basis.”
Being assessed and given a diagnosis in adulthood has been, for many recipients, a life-changing experience, placing one’s life and experiences in a new context — putting a vocabulary on long-held behaviours and ways of interaction, hopefully leading to better self-knowledge and self-compassion, and the language with which to make your boundaries and needs known to your loved ones. For Stevens, however, it also revealed a fundamental and deeply-held truth at the heart of her creative practice.
“I write murder mysteries, which are the ultimate fantasy of fixing problems, there's only ever one thing that goes wrong — somebody is dead, and you have to work out who did it, and you're given all the clues you need in the book. It's an easy problem, a problem that's solvable. You get to get into all of the questions, like morality and motive, and why people do things, what are people, how people hide things... I think being a detective is a lot, for me, like being autistic.
“Each of the books are about things that were happening to me at the time, about questions that I had about the world and the people around me. I'm answering the whodunnit, but I'm also answering, ‘how do you have an argument with your friends and come back from it, how do you let more people into the friend group, adult relationships are so confusing, like, what's that about?’ So I definitely think that writing, for me, is how I understand myself and the world — and it all makes much more sense now [laughs].”
Stevens’ diagnosis has also revealed a strong likelihood of co-occurrence with ADHD, for which she is currently undergoing assessment. The comparisons and contrasts between the two neurological differences as they coincide are grounds for a future conversation, we conclude, but as of now, her post-diagnosis experience has been an affirming one.
“I just look back at how things have happened, and go 'oh my gosh'. There's been moments that I've never been able to understand, like, 'why did I react that way? Why did I say that?', and I finally know why. I've been masking a lot and I think that I constructed my adult personality, not realising how much of that was me constructing a person who was good in social situations, knew the right thing to say, and was polite and friendly. Not that I'm not any of those things, but I was very carefully controlled, very, very tightly wound and realising I don't have to be that person anymore, it's very relaxing and very positive.
“I think that I feel better about myself, I can go and just think about a thing for two hours, because it's what I want to do and that's really nice. I'm going to go do it, and feel more confident talking about things I'm interested in with my friends, realising we're very similar in a lot of ways, and how special those people are. I think I give myself more grace, I think I give myself more kindness. I think I like myself better.”
- by Robin Stevens is published by Puffin and is available in stores and online now.
- Robin will do a public signing in Easons O’Connell Street, Dublin on November 12. Tickets from easons.com/eason-events
