SINGAPORE – Romantic comedy author Sophie Kinsella knows first-hand what it is like to suffer from burnout, the topic and title of her latest novel.

The 52-year-old says: “I’m the type of person who scrolls on Instagram and sees a claim to the cure for burnout, so I try it. I’ve tried meditating, bullet journalling and exercising, and a lot of them do have merit, but I think you have to be in the right place at the right time for them to work.”

For the British author, recovery was about finding and making little changes that benefitted the rest of her life.

Over a Zoom call from her home in Dorset, England, she says: “Where I start with preventing burnout is sleep. I’ve learnt that to fight burnout, having a good sleep routine is crucial.”

Her family home in the Dorset countryside is a getaway from the hustle and bustle of her London base. Surrounded only by fields and cows, it also became a space for her to get her writing done.

“Instead of being on a screen all day, I try to get fresh light and air outside because that helps my body rhythm normalise. Regular exercise has stuck and I do believe that if you move your body daily, it will help you sleep better and put things into perspective. When you’ve slept well, none of the problems seem quite as huge,” she adds.

“My exercise is very haphazard. I have a selection of videos that I put on and follow because I get bored easily. Sometimes, I’ll follow Yoga With Adriene or do standing cardio with no jumps. Other times, I lift weights.”

Although her camera is switched off during the Zoom call, Kinsella’s bubbly personality comes through in her frequent giggles and self-deprecating humour.

No wonder romantic comedy is her preferred genre.

The Burnout (2023) follows Sasha, a burnt-out office worker who finds herself with three weeks of doctor-mandated leave.

Armed with all the tips for recovery (and a hula hoop), she returns to the beach town that her family frequented before her father’s death.

At the once-beautiful beachside hotel, Sasha faces the next big challenge – how will she recover from burnout when the grumpiest, most stressed, handsomest man is the only other person occupying the space?

Kinsella says: “I could have written a serious book with research and discussions with psychologists, but I wanted a romantic comedy because that’s my medium. I wanted to explore burnout as a phenomenon against the backdrop of a sweeping beach romance.”

She noticed burnout being a topic of discussion among friends and the media, heightened during the Covid-19 pandemic.

As a writer who finds inspiration from current events, she began writing about the subject, knowing that it would resonate with readers.

“It’s increasingly hard to avoid. We have our e-mails on all the time and our laptops with us. Everybody is expected to be on duty all the time and that’s the trouble. It’s really hard to escape, and that’s what I was trying to get across in the book,” Kinsella says.

Born Madeleine Sophie Townley, she debuted as a writer at 26 with her standalone The Tennis Party (1995). The novel was re-released in 2011 with a new title, 40 Love, and she wrote six more novels under that name.

She has four sons and one daughter with husband Henry Wickham.

In 2000, she used the pseudonym Sophie Kinsella, combining her middle name and her mother’s maiden name, to submit the manuscript for Confessions Of A Shopaholic (2000).

The best-selling series follows Becky Bloomwood, a woman whose compulsion for unnecessary shopping lands her in a variety of tricky and humorous situations. The series has spanned 10 books thus far.

Kinsella says: “It felt liberating to take it under a different name because I didn’t know if anybody would want this book about shopping. The instant I had the idea for the Shopaholic book, I knew I wanted it to be really different. I wanted to focus on one character and get tangled in her thoughts and have silly jokes.”

The success of the series has resulted in her being categorised as a “chick lit” author, a term she does not care for.

She says: “I try to entertain people and make them laugh with my books, regardless of gender. Saying that I’m writing for women is wrong. I’m writing for anybody with a sense of humour. The term I’ve always preferred is ‘romantic comedy’. I once saw my books labelled ‘wit lit’ in a bookstore and thought that was brilliant.”

She adds: “I think ‘chick lit’ was a shorthand for funny contemporary books about women’s concerns. We’ve grown out of that now and I don’t see why it can’t just be called fiction. Why women’s fiction and not just fiction? We don’t have a section called men’s fiction.”

The Burnout ($23) by Sophie Kinsella is available on Amazon (amzn.to/3Sf0JiG).