Daniel Sillett is a newly published author. His brand new book, The Butterfly Garden, is a self-help guide to restore peace to your busy social life. Sillett's life philosophy for everyone, now available on Amazon, reveals how we increasingly agonise over winning the approval of others in our relationships, the workplace, and on social media.
In this interview, Sillett explores some of these key arguments from his book, as well as talking about his motivations for writing it. He insightfully discusses the highs and lows of the writing process, a must-read for budding authors and readers, and hints at his plans for writing more books in the future.
What is this book about?
The Butterfly Garden tells the story of society, with a focus on how we have arrived at the present: a society of people pleasers, sweating and scurrying to gain approval from others. It is a self-help book to restore some peace into your busy life.
I would sum it up as this. When you post on social media, what are you trying to do? Posting a selfie on Instagram that has undergone the uplifting surgery of Photoshop can only be to impress others. You’re not posting edited selfies for your own benefit, as your mirror still tells the same story - no matter how often you deploy Photoshop.
The same principle applies to LinkedIn through a careers lens. From job announcements to reciting chapter and verse from an ‘interesting’ event about tax regulation you attended, LinkedIn thrives as a ploy of false self-marketing. Social media encapsulates a broader trend in life: society revolves around keeping up with the Joneses.
It’s true. And it’s the same in your relationships. You fight and fight to win over someone - only to find you have to eternally fight off rivals in a treacherous battle to stop your heart and soul being wickedly broken.
It’s true in the workplace, where people agonise over perfecting an often false CV solely to impress an employer - only to get the job and agonise some more, working all the hours God gives to continue impressing and keep the job you loathe.
But it never used to be this way.
And that is what this book is about. It’s about restoring our instinctive solidarity with nature and, most importantly, ourselves. Whatever happened to self-love? There’s a reason meditation and journaling are trendy. Social media’s constant social stimulation is the last nail in the coffin of self-care - and our hearts, minds, and bodies are paying the price for it.
As for why it’s called The Butterfly Garden, you can find out by reading your copy.
What made you decide to write this book?
The seed was first sown at university. About two years ago, I studied Jean-Jacques Rousseau for the first time in one week of a political theory module - and I was hooked. It was like an epiphany. Suddenly, everything just made perfect sense.
I decided to look into Rousseau’s ideas further, applying them to my dissertation’s modern focus on how we’re all shackled by the judgement of others on social media. I remember I did a mini case study on BeReal. Remember that old lockdown trend? On BeReal, you’re invited to share a snapshot of their life, once per day within a two-minute window, using both the front and back cameras for maximum honesty. Such concentrated social activity struck me as disastrous, as I explore further in this book.
Since my dissertation, I never viewed life or people’s behaviour in the same way again. That’s why, when I suffered a bout of socially-induced personal trauma and depression, I knew I had to take action. I had to write this book - one, as a self-care treatment for me; and two, to share my epiphany with others. I wanted to help you avoid the same self-neglect I unknowingly caused myself. I wanted to help you avoid the same pain as me.
Did you enjoy the writing process? What was it like?
I definitely enjoyed getting my ideas out onto paper. I wrote the majority of the book about half a year ago within about six weeks of starting it, only for it to get lost amongst other projects.
When I revived the effort again a few months ago, I didn’t enjoy it at all. Critically reading through your own work to purposefully pick holes is not a nice process. That’s another reason why I am eternally grateful to the editorial team at Europinion, who helped out with this monumental task.
Additionally, if I write another book, I’ll never again leave all the formatting to the last minute. When you’re writing, you don’t want to disrupt your flow by faffing about deciding what size font you’ll have, what font style you want, where your page numbers should go, and so on. But this is a huge task. Ensuring all your chapter headers, contents page, page numbers, section breaks, margins and cover sizes are all correct is a total, utter rigmarole. It was a big learning curve - when else would you need to know how to do all that except if you’re writing a book? Having said that, it was one of the most rewarding projects I have ever worked on.
What was the most rewarding part of writing the book?
One night, I was sitting on my sofa listening to music during that terribly difficult phase of critically reviewing your own work. By this point, I hadn’t touched the book for months. As I was reading some of my favourite pages which I knew had an extra power and emotion invested in them, I felt an epiphanic connection with the book that I rarely feel when reading.
Now, there are always moments during the writing process where you feel like giving up. Imposter syndrome sets in - it feels like everything you’ve written is a load of old dog. But that night I knew I’d expressed a complex feeling on paper in the exact way I wanted to. I knew I had been true to myself.
You’ve written this book aged just 22. By any stretch, that’s an early stage in life to become a published author. Surely you’ll write more books in future?
It hasn’t quite dawned on me yet that I’m in a minority of young authors. I had hoped to be changing the world by now - so, by that measure, I need to work harder!
Jokes aside, yes, I’d like to think this first book won’t be my last. When I’m gripped by an idea, I have an irresistible urge to explore it, think about it, and share it. That was the case with this book. I woke up one morning and the ideas just started forming in my head. That sounds like a cliche, but I promise that’s what happened. I was going through a rough patch and pondering deeply about how to get my life back on track - and then it hit me. Maybe that will happen again one day, although I hope a rather less painful experience could trigger it.
But I have no idea when my next book will be imagined - or what it will be about. If you’d have told me three years ago that at 22 I’d have written a self-help philosophy book, I’d have laughed in your face. That’s what makes life exciting - you never know what’s round the corner.
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