What Leïla Slimani (Still) Can’t Live Without

This is something I always take with me that makes my husband mad because it’s very heavy. When we travel, even for a weekend, I always stick it with me because I read it all the time. It’s a synonym dictionary. This is the best one for French language. I’m obsessed with it. You always find new things, like,Oh my God, I could have used this word. Sometimes from one word can come a whole chapter because this word provokes something in you, and you begin a whole chapter based only on the sound or on the meaning of this word. So for me it’s really a gold mine. I need to have it with me all the time.

Every day, when I begin to write, I reread what I did the day before and I check all the words, and I’m like,Oh, maybe this word is not very satisfying. I should try to find another one.So I will look for the synonym. And once you dive into it, you’ll spend like 15, 30 minutes in it because one word brings you to another and to another and to another. It never ends.

I always have one with me. I have a big one where I write every day — every morning and every night. And I have a small one that I put in my bag so I can make a note whenever I have an idea or when I see something or hear a conversation. I have many, many, many notebooks; I’ve been writing in them since the age of 17and have kept every one, so I have big suitcases full of notebooks. I’m obsessed with them. People know that I love notebooks, so I have a lot that have been gifted to me by friends or by my publishers. I also love to buy notebooks in museums, so they’re linked to a souvenir or to a beautiful painting. And I absolutely always need them to be lined.

I first bought one of theseMuji pensmany years ago while in Paris. Now,
every time I’m by a Muji(anywhere, you know; I was in China three months ago, or, say, in Germany), I stop by and I need to go buy thosepens— always in black ink. And I have a lot. But I lose them all the time. I don’t know where they go. I suppose there’s a special place for all the lost Muji pens of my life. My children probably steal a lot from my office.

I have two pens that belong to my father, and I love this one. It doesn’t work really well. I can’t use it all the time, but I always need to have it with me or have it in my office. My father died a long time ago, more than 20 years ago, but he had a lot of very fancy pens. It’s not the kind of pen that we use today. But I like it very much and I try to have it with me, especially when I begin on a new novel. It’s like it’s going to help me to put some fuel in the machine, in my brain. And [my father] wanted me to write so much that I feel that I’m doing what he wanted me to do. So this pen is a sort of link between between us.

When I begin a novel, I need to write a lot of things on Post-its. Then I put themup on the wall, and that’s how I structure my novel. So I begin with one scene, and then another, or one characteristic of a character. Each color usually corresponds to something: a character, or a specific place, a specific city. And it helps me clean my head and make some structure in my writing.

For years, I tried this and that and spent so much money on hair products trying to find the right one. Then one day, I bought this for very cheap in a supermarket, and it was the best. From that day on, I never stopped using it. I think it’s been like 20 or 25 years. You apply it on wet hair and do nothing, just wait for your hair to dry. Once my hair’s dry, I’ll use my Afro comb for volume. I’m a prophet for this product. Every time I meet a girl with frizzy hair, I’m like, “Okay, I’m going to save your life. I’m going to save you a lot of money and a lot of time.” I showed it to my hairdresser and he called me three days after and said, “It’s a miracle. It’s wonderful. This product is the best.” I’m so obsessed with this product that sometimes I have nightmares that they’ll stop producing it. And I told my sister, who also uses it, that if that happens, we will call the factory and tell them that we’ll buy all their stock, everything they have. Sometimes when I get bored, I go online and I buy like five. My husband always says, “You know, I think you’ll die and there will still be so many tubs of Dop in the bathroom.”

Thiscombis still very, very important. I need it for my hair. I use it to fluff my hair all the time. Sometimes I do it when I’m in the street or even when I sit at a restaurant. It’s something else that makes my husband totally mad because he thinks that it’s very impolite to do that. But I don’t know, I love to do it because it gives some volume to my hair. When I feel that my hair is not good, I take this from my bag. And I have many of them: I have one in all my bags and in my bathroom, in my suitcase. I don’t know what I would do without this.

I’m obsessed with my eyebrows. I’ve been obsessed with my eyebrows since I was a child. When I was young, I had a unibrow, you know, and I was very, very complexed by that. It was terrible. I felt horrible with it and I remember I would ask my mother, “Please, please take it off.” Everyone was mocking me and calling me Frida Kahlo. I remember the first day I went and someone did my eyebrows: wow. It was like an epiphany for me. Now if I go in an elevator or something and I look at myself in the mirror, I will always try to find a hair somewhere that I can pluck. But as I’m getting older, the hairs don’t grow as they used to. I have to be very cautious of what I’m doing because maybe it’s forever that I’m saying “good-bye” to this little hair. And also, my hairs are becoming white, so now I need to dye my eyebrows. I think I’m going to write a short story about eyebrows one day because it’s a big topic for me.