Liane Moriarty: The Aussie author opens up on her writing process and the eight words that stopped her in her tracks | Exclusive Interview

Liane Moriarty is one of Australia’s most successful authors, having sold more than 20 million books worldwide. 

But that doesn’t mean it gets any easier to write a bestseller, with Moriarty admitting it sometimes “feels like an impossible task”.

Speaking to 9honey ahead of the 2025 Sydney Writer’s Festival she will headline this month, the novelist shared details of her writing process, how she comes up with ideas for her books and even offered advice to budding authors.

“I definitely have days where I think I can’t do it,” Moriarty, the author of 10 books, admits.

READ MORE: At 10, her dad paid her $1 to write a book. Now she’s sold millions

“I always remember interviewing a cellist for my book Truly Madly Guilty and I was so surprised when she said, ‘Some days I feel like I can’t play’.

“So that was sort of comforting because that’s exactly how I feel with writing.

“Some days it feels so clumsy and either it means you have to take a walk, you have to take a break or you have to write your way through until you lose yourself in the story.”

Moriarty also admitted getting started on a new book could be the hardest part.

“When you sit down to write a book, it feels like an impossible task,” she said.

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“That audacity of thinking, ‘I am sitting down to write a book’, but once you have got a few pages it feels like it is real.”

She admits she sometimes starts a book before putting the idea aside. 

“I look at old notes and realise I started that before or it came from something else,” she said.

“I was writing something about a group of people going away somewhere, but then something happened to me at a barbecue.

“And so I put the people going away – at the time, they were going off to a tropical island resort – aside.

“I started on that, then the incident happened at the barbecue, so I started Truly Madly Guilty.

“Then I went back to my tropical island and changed it to a health resort,” she recalls of what became the setting for Nine Perfect Strangers – one of four of Moriarty’s books to so far be adapted to the screen.

There are two types of Moriarty fans: Those that knew of her before Big Little Lies became an Emmy Award-winning TV show, and those who only discovered her afterwards.

“I definitely have people … who call themselves the ‘OG readers’,” she said.

“People who don’t read at all know Big Little Lies, but my editors will say The Husband’s Secret was my breakout book because it hit the top of the New York Times Bestseller List.”

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Still, not everyone was a fan when Moriarty “took a turn to the darker side”, as she calls it.

She laughingly cites a US fan who wrote a letter asking what happened to her.

“It wasn’t a deliberate decision – it is just that I came up with the idea,” she said.

In the same way, other fans have told her they prefer her thriller-esque yarns.

Ideas for her books can come from anywhere. Moriarty says she came up with the concept of her second book when she was still working as a freelance copywriter. 

“I wrote the history of the NSW Railway & Transport Health Fund because they were a client of mine, and I think that very much influenced my second novel,” she said.

“The ladies I was talking to for that particular project, I am sure, influenced The Last Anniversary,” she says of the book, which is the latest to be adapted for the screen.

Moriarty has just completed the first draft of her much-anticipated 11th book – an as-yet untitled sequel to Big Little Lies.

It has been made trickier by the fact she had already written a 50,000 word ‘treatment’ to form the basis of a second series of the show.

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“I wrote that as a sequel to the series, and I wrote that not to be published,” Moriarty said.

“So it was quite confusing when I came to write this but it can only make sense if it is a sequel to the book, so it has to follow completely on from the book.

“But luckily I never named Perry’s mother in the book, so I can still have Mary-Louise in my sequel,” she says, in reference to the character she wrote with Meryl Streep in mind for the role. Mary-Louise also happens to be Streep’s real name.

“The children are teenagers, so it is set as if it is 10 years later,” Moriarty said.

Having just handed the manuscript to her editors, Moriarty is feeling the familiar mix of relief and anticipation.

“It’s a glorious relief that I actually got to the end, and then there are definitely nerves as to what they will think of it. But there is also a sense of anticipation because I do enjoy the editing process.”

She encourages anyone who wants to write a book to “go for it” – even if, like her in the early days, you have to keep doing your day job.

“In some ways that can be wonderful. You need to have an interesting life and have other things going on besides sitting at your computer,” she said.

“I would say, also, even if it feels like it’s impossible because you don’t have enough time, even if you just devote half an hour to it.

“And I still have to tell myself this now.”

Moriarty will make two appearances at the 2025 Sydney Writer’s Festival (May 19-27).

She will join One Day author David Nicholls at Sydney Town Hall on Wednesday, May 21, where they will discuss their experiences of creating Australian-based stories that went on to become acclaimed films and TV series.

She will also appear alongside her sisters, Jaclyn and Nicola, for a panel discussion, “The Moriarty Sisters – One family, three successful writers”, at Carriageworks on May 23.

More information about the festival program and tickets can be found here.

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