Bookshelfie: Women’s Prize Podcast - S2 Ep22: Discoveries Special

Episode Date: December 2, 2020

Today’s special episode celebrates the launch of the Women’s Prize Trust’s new writers’ development programme, Discoveries. Zing Tsjeng is joined by three guests, all brilliant writers across different forms - Theresa Lola, award-winning poet and 2019 Young People’s Laureate for London; Nicole Taylor, the BAFTA winning screenwriter of Three Girls and Abi Daré, the international bestselling author of The Girl With the Louding Voice, who also sits on the judging panel for Discoveries.   In honour of the 25th anniversary year of the Women’s Prize for Fiction, and in recognition of the diverse and exceptional writing talent across the country, the Women’s Prize Trust, supported by NatWest and Curtis Brown, launched Discoveries - a unique writers’ development programme offering aspiring female writers of all backgrounds encouragement and support at the beginning of their creative journeys. It launched in late September and runs through to late January, entering writers can be of any age but have to be unpublished and submit only the opening three chapters of their novel or up to 10,000 words – and it is free to enter.   Every fortnight, join Zing Tsjeng, editor at VICE, and inspirational guests, including Dolly Alderton, Stanley Tucci, Liv Little and Scarlett Curtis as they celebrate the best fiction written by women. They'll discuss the diverse back-catalogue of Women’s Prize-winning books spanning a generation, explore the life-changing books that sit on other women’s bookshelves and talk about what the future holds for women writing today. The Women’s Prize for Fiction is one of the most prestigious literary awards in the world, and this series will also take you behind the scenes throughout 2020 as we explore the history of the Prize in its 25th year and gain unique access to the shortlisted authors and the 2020 Prize winner. Sit back and enjoy. This podcast is produced by Bird Lime Media. Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

At Harrison Healthcare, we know that lasting health starts with personalized care. We're not just a clinic. We're your partner in prevention, helping you achieve your health and longevity goals. Our expert team combines evidence-based medicine with the compassionate, unhurried care you and your family deserve today and for many years to come. When it comes to your health, you shouldn't settle for anything less than exceptional. Visit Harrisonhealthcare.ca.ca.com.com. With thanks to Bailey's, this is the Women's Prize for Fiction Podcast, celebrating women's writing, sharing our creativity, our voices and our perspectives, or while championing the very best fiction written by women around the world. I'm Zing Singh, your host once again for a special edition of the Women's Prize podcast, coming to you every fortnight throughout 2020.

You've joined me for a very special episode, which celebrates launch of the Women's Prize Trust's new writers development program. Discoveries. Today we'll be speaking to three incredible writers across different forms who offer insight into their writing processes and hopefully inspire your own creative journey or at the very least provide you with some really great reading recommendations. Hello and welcome to a special discoveries episode of the Women's Prize for Fiction podcast. But before we dive into that, our fortnightly reminder that we are still practicing social distancing. So this recording is being done remotely. Please excuse any minor sound hiccups. Now, in honour of the 25th anniversary year of the Women's Prize for fiction and in recognition of the diverse and exceptional writing talent across

the country, the Women's Prize Trust, supported by Nat West and Curtis Brown, launched discoveries. A unique writers development program offering aspiring female writers of all backgrounds, encouragement and support at the beginning of their creative journeys. It launched in late September, so it's running through to late January, entering writers can be of any age, but you have to be unpublished and submit only the opening three chapters of their novel up to 10,000 words,

and it is free to enter. So today, we are delighted to be joined by a bunch of amazing guests, all brilliant writers across different forms, Theresa Lola, Award-winning Poet and 2019 Young People's Laureate for London, Nicole Taylor, the BAFTA-winning screenwriter of three girls,

and finally, Abby Derry, the international best-selling author of The Girl with the Louding Voice, who also sits on the judging panel for Discoveries. Welcome to the podcast, everyone. Thank you for having us. So I wanted to talk to all of you separately about how you all got started as writers in your different genres, because Discoveries is all about giving new writers encouragement

to put pen to paper, which is very daunting. So I'd love to hear about all your separate journeys to becoming a writer. So, Teresa, when did you first, write your first poem. Do you remember when you first started getting inspiration to write poetry? I think it started when I was in secondary school. So I loved writing fiction first, actually. And then my teacher, realizing I enjoyed writing, invited me to go on a school trip to a poetry festival. And that was when I realized, okay, I think I would really love to write poetry that the poem read just really moved me. And it was just the burst of energy. And it was just a burst of

So that was when I started writing poetry, so around 12, 13. Do you remember what your first poems were about? Of gosh, just teenage angst. It was all about, you know, who I was having a crush on, about friends, family, just, you know, in my world, what was important then made it to my paper, made it to my books. And how would you describe the journey from that to the poetry you're writing now? I think now I probably will say that I've become a more curious writer. I mean, when you're writing, it's all about, when I first started writing,

it was all about, you know, just writing about what I was observing, just getting things down. It was a very cathartic tool and it still is. But I think over time, as I've grown as a writer, you know, from reading, going to workshops, really trying to solidify my practice. It's been all about curiosity now. it's not just about writing. I feel like now I'm writing with intention and I've grown to love writing and poetry a lot more over the years. And so I guess that's a good thing. And it's no longer about just, you know, writing out the world. It's more about trying to understand it now.

I love the idea of a writing practice because it's really, you know, practice, isn't it? You just need to start putting pen to paper and start getting into the habit of putting words down. Yeah, yeah, definitely. I think when you first start off, you know, you're writing heavily and you're writing all the time and you just want to write something down. Sometimes what happens is you become a lot more conscious of yourself as a writer and you can lose that practice because every pump or everything your writing feels like it has to be this important piece of work. And sometimes you can forget the actual love of writing itself. So it's always good to remember to remember that and keep that practice of writing. I think a lot of people will empathise of that idea. of thinking that the thing that you write down has to be the most important groundbreaking piece of work ever written, at least for you. How do you get over that kind of fear and just get into the habit of just writing more?

I think just allowing yourself to have some freedom and fun with writing. So sometimes I try to write about the most random thing, even if it's, you know, the socks I'm wearing or the piece of fruit I've just eaten or, you know, something that my sister said that I found funny or the music that my neighbour down the street is, it's playing really loudly. So just writing about the, you know, anything and everything. And what happens is I'm not feeling so much pressure when I then come to the page

and I want to write about, you know, something maybe for a commission or something that I want to expand into a longer piece. And sometimes what happens is what you've written subconsciously or without really thinking so much ends up being your favourite piece of work, ends up being the gem that you actually want to expand on. And so just giving myself freedom to write about a different range of things, not just saying, oh, I'm this writer I write about nostalgia, I write about family, so I'm only going to write poems about family.

I'm only going to write stories about family. But just trying a bunch of different things, and it allows you to surprise yourself as a writer, otherwise your work just ends up starting to look the same, and it just becomes boring for you and maybe for your reader as well. And how did you make the jump from figuring out that you really liked writing poetry to thinking, you know, I can start publishing this,

I'm going to start, you know, being a professional writer? I think for everyone, that jump is very different, but it's a really important jump because it changes the way you write and it changes the way you look at writing. For me, it happened while I was at university. So I was studying another course entirely. I was studying accounting and finance. And I was getting to the end of my course.

and I had to make a decision on what my career was going to be. And I knew that if I chose accounting, it would be a lot of commitment. And I probably wouldn't have time. Well, I would have time to write, but I realized I wouldn't have time to be a writer in terms of as a career. And that was the changing moment for me, the defining moment for me, because I realized then writing is really what I want to do. I love reading books. I love following the journey of a writer.

I want to also be that writer. So for me, that was where that jump came. And so I started making conscious decisions. So right after uni, I did the Barber Canyong Poets Program, which was a six-month poetry development program. And I started actively making time for that. And yeah, just I gave myself a year after uni. And that was the year I was going to to see what life as a writer could possibly be like. Listen, accounting's loss is poetry's gain. Thank you so much for sharing your journey with us. Thank you. Thank you. And Abby, what about you?

Did you know that you always wanted to write fiction? No. I mean, I started when I was, I lived in, I was born in Lagos in Nigeria and I lived there for about 19 years of my life. And I, my mother who traveled quite often would come back to me letters from me under her bedroom door. of telling her everything that happened, sort of gossiping. I think that was where that love came from, just relaying my thoughts and feelings into paper. And I remember even sort of desecrating the family album with putting sort of dialogue sort of speech bubbles on the images and just making them speak because I wanted them to do that from the age of five. And then when I came to the UK to study, studied law.

I remember starting a blog to document my experience as an immigrant, as a student, sort of navigating the world in London. And then after that, I felt that I could do more with this. I felt that the blog was quite limiting and quite exposing as well, because it was really about my life

and I wasn't comfortable with how successful it had become, especially within Nigeria. So I turned that into writing fiction. And it took me about 10 years of playing around with stories to actually launching out with doing anything with my writing. So that was sort of my journey into discovering fiction. But I love writing fiction now. Absolutely for everything. Did you start out, you know, writing fiction that was still sort of linked to your own reality and your own experience?

Or did you make a really conscious decision to stop writing stuff that was linked to personal experience? I think it's still closely linked to personal experience. But what I try to do now is to put a bit of distance between what I'm writing and what I've personally experience is more about what I've seen around me and turning that around in my mind and creating. I think that's the beauty of creativity is what you can do with it, the control that it gives you. And I think I allow a lot of that control now to happen. You said it took you about 10 years to kind of fully make the jump to writing fiction.

What, like how did that journey take place? You know, 10 years is a long. time it's a decade. So what kind of experimenting were you doing in that time? I was just writing, sharing with family and friends. And then I think about maybe seven years in to sharing with family and friends and everyone's saying, oh, this is great. You should do more with it. I decided to do an M.A. in creative writing because I thought if I can get into this M.A. then I'm onto something. And so I did my M.A. And that was when I started to write the girl with a loud and voice because it was my dissertation, my thesis, submission.

And then I put that into a competition. And then from there, the publishing process started for me. What was doing the M.A. like for you? Because I think there's kind of a common question that comes up when people want to start writing fiction is, should I do an M.A. Is an M.A. worth it. So what did that academic degree do for you? I think it, what it allowed me to do mostly was to have like minds in a room. You know, it was, it was an adult sort of MA class in the sense that it was an evening class.

Everyone had a full-time job and was juggling everything like I was. And so I love that having like minds and having that feedback, that essential critique that I needed to get from my writing, which I didn't get from family and friends, because everyone loved every, every family member loved what I was writing. So diplomatic that way. Yes, I think he's just having that. And obviously, understanding the theory of writing. I'd never looked at writing as a theory.

I didn't understand why anyone would teach writing until I went onto the course. And I think he allowed me to read novels as a writer, which can sometimes be limiting because you are scrutinizing every sentence or underlining every sentence and awing and gasping at the writer's ingenuity. So I think that was the biggest part. part for me was reading, learning to read as a writer and understanding theory of writing and that experience of sharing, getting, workshopping my writing, getting feedback, which was crucial to my improvement. And in terms of, you know, you talked about having this writing community

around you when you did your MA, do you still have that kind of community of people you workshop ideas with or give feedback to? Yes, we still try to meet regularly once, I think it's once in two weeks or so on an evening, now on Zoom. But before all of this happened, we used to meet in the cafe in London and we just just share our work and give feedback to it. And I think that that is one thing I would never do without. It is so crucial for me to have that good feedback before anyone else sees what I'm working on. And how early on do you show people what you're working on? As early as I've written something a Monday night and I share it on, on a Tuesday morning.

So I really have that, you know, because they've seen everything, right? They knew when I couldn't write properly, I think. And they've sort of seen that journey. So I can share that with them, but with just them, no one else. I love that. That kind of just speaks to how intimate someone you can get with a group of like-minded people where you can just share something you've just written off the cuff the night before. Well, thank you so much for sharing your journey with us.

Nicole, we're onto a very different genre of screenwriting. So this is really interesting because I wonder if you have, you know, heard the stories of the other writers. Is there anything in their journey that kind of has parallels to how you got interested in screenwriting? Yes, I don't know whether it's a coincidence or whether you invited all three of us deliberately because we've all got a very sensible prior career or background in law or accountancy. But I, too, was a lawyer. I read law at university, I went and became a solicitor, and yeah, I didn't start writing professionally until I was 27.

Right, and what kind of made you take the leap of faith? I'd always written. It was always just my single passion and always kept a notebook, just recording mostly things that people said, and I was always writing stories and the usual adolescent poetry. But I'd never known anyone who was a writer. I certainly didn't know there was even such a thing as a writer for television. But I really hated law. It was just a sensible thing to do.

And I always harbored a kind of fashion to write. And after I qualified, I quit. And I thought I was going to write a novel, actually, something that was YA, because that's really what I'd always wanted to do. But then I discovered screenwriting sort of by accident. I'd got a part-time job at the BBC writing quiz show questions and things like that to support myself when I was trying to write.

And while I was there, BBC Scotland were looking for new children's drama and a friend had just won a copy of final draft, which is the screenwriting software in a film quiz. So this sort of unlikely confluence of things meant that I sat down with this software and this competition to apply for and wrote this 20 minute script.

And in trying to write in that format, I just sort of found the thing that I wanted to do and I could do, which is mostly, you know, writing something that was very dialogue-led, unlike the prose that had been trying to write. And, yeah, it won the competition and it got made and it got me an agent. And, yeah, I was late to start, slow to start. But once I'd written, once I'd found screenwriting, once I'd found that format, that was me away.

It sounds like such a lucky confluence of different factors, especially winning final script. Is it final script? Final draft, yeah, my friend. after she winning final draft in a pub quiz. I know. Well, that wasn't me. That was a friend. But even for that to happen, it was crazy. Yeah. I mean, no doubt I've probably redrafted this to make the story more succinct and reality was more untidy. But essentially that is what happened. And did you join any kind of writing communities, you know, to groups of like-minded people who also wanted to break into film and TV?

No. And I had a real chip in my shoulder being 27 because there were things at that time. I think there still is the Royal Court young writers programs and all sorts of programs for young writers and 25 was the cut off and I felt very much at sea because I couldn't do any um participate in any of those groups and um I'd have loved to have done that but one of the wonderful things about working in film and television is that you it's very collaborative so although I didn't have peers who were also writing at that time um I had a lot of contact with producers and script editors and I got a lot out of that and continue to get a lot out of those relationships. But I definitely was envying Abby and talking about her writer's group and writing something on a Monday night and getting people to read it on a Tuesday. Now, I've never had that kind of peer group and it feels very appealing. Can I also just add that 27 is not too old for anything? 27 is not too old.

37's not too old. 37's not too old. 67's not too old, but it's just the kind of mindset you have at the beginning where you feel like a bit of a fraud anyway for trying. And then you feel like, you know, that ship is sailed, but it certainly hadn't. I'm glad to say. How did you kind of get over that kind of, I guess, insecurity about, you know, a lot of people think, well, the ship is sailed for me. I'm no longer a young 24-year-old who can apply for these young writers programs. Well, there's always reasons that you can supply yourself for why it's not going to be you. you're not going to be the one that gets to make a career of this.

You're not in, you know, I think most people will, most people will have that kind of insecurity and it will manifest in whatever form. For me, I was like, oh, I don't have formal education in writing. Oh, I'm getting started a bit old. But you know what? I was just compelled to do the work. And these are just like voices in your head that, you know, they come and go and they take different forms.

And even once you're writing professionally, your fraud complex will still, manifest and take whatever form is available to it. So I guess because my relationship with writing was always like it was like a compulsion. I always did it. I always did it for myself. You know, nothing was going to stop me, especially once I'd finally got the courage to really try and give it a goal properly. So I think there's no moment after which you become professional writer after, there's no moment once you become professional writer after which you don't have these naysaying voices. You still have them. You just got to write through them. And were there any particular people who are working in film and TV who really gave you inspiration when you were

starting out as a writer? I mean, I just always have loved and still love the work of Russell T. Davies and Sally Wainwright. So I think British television is just the best, best, best in the world. And they are the two particular voices that I loved back then. And now I would say those two and Michaela Cole. I mean, just such amazing writing going on in this. country. But I've been lucky to have a few mentors as well. That's one of the great things about TV and film being collaborative medium. So I've had brilliant producers, Sue Hogg, Faye Ward, particularly brilliant female director, Philippa Lothorpe. So yeah, I've been really lucky in meeting great producers, also Rowan Abin. I think it just speaks to the idea. You know, you do have a

community around you. It might not be a writing group, but it's a community nonetheless. This podcast is made in partnership with Bailey's Irish cream. Bayleys is proudly supporting the women's prize for fiction by helping showcase incredible writing by remarkable women, celebrating their accomplishments and getting more of their books into the hands of more people. Bailey's is the perfect adultery, whether in coffee, over ice cream, or paired with your favorite book.

I have to say after listening to all of your journeys to writing, accounting and law, you know, if anybody listening to this is currently doing, accounting on law and thinking about becoming a writer, these three women should be enough to inspire you. So maybe don't quit the degree, get the degree, but then, you know, give it a try. Next, I'd love to talk to all of you about, you know, your individual writing processes, you know, the kind of average writing day if you have one at all. Abby, when you were writing the girl with the Louding Boys, did you do a lot of plot and planning in advance before you started

writing or do you just immediately start putting pen to paper? So I think after I lost 100,000 words of a piece of writing, when I said it was it completely didn't make sense, but I didn't want to stop because I just felt it would be admitting defeat. So I kept writing myself into circles. So I have 100,000 words somewhere. I think it was in 2010 or something, somewhere in my inbox. after that I made up my mind to never write without having at least an outline. And so for the goal with the louding voice and for every book after that, I have an outline that I loosely try to stick to. I try to define the goal, the motivation and what the conflict would be for the character.

And I did that for the goal of the louding voice. But I think I departed from it towards the second half of the book to the last quarter after reading. So yes, I tend to have an outline that I want to sort of a plot outline. And how wedded are you to that outline if the novel starts to deviate? Do you try and rein it back in or do you just let it take its course? I let it take its course, but with a loose sort of rain on it because I try to stay true to what the original idea I had at the start. Really, it's really down to what the character wants,

what the motivation of the character is. I try to stay true to that. and what helps the character to get to that point is what I allow to sort of take its own course. And what about, you know, getting ideas for, you know, books for pieces of writing? You know, where do you find inspiration? How do you gather these ideas? The ideas come from anywhere. The girl with a loudie voice came from, yes, there was, you know, my background even in Lagos and having housemaids.

But it really started with a conversation with my daughter talking, arguing about, getting the dishwasher emptied. I get inspiration from any and everything and it's amazing how a tiny seed thought can blossom into 100,000 words of fiction. It amazes me all the time. How do you recognise when you have a good idea and that you're on to something? When I can't sleep, when I'm excited about it, when I can't wait to be with the character again, when I can't wait for, to spend time with my characters, when I'm dreading to write and I'm not looking forward to it and it's just a chore, then I know that, you know, I get excited about what I've written on the page. And so if I'm rereading what I're reading and there's a flat feeling of

this just not working, I think it's instinctive and, you know, there's a kind of intuition I get with my work. Right. And Nicole, when you write scripts, do you tend to plan them first in the same way that Abby does or do you just dive straight into a moment of dialogue? When I first started doing it, I would plan meticulously because if I was writing an episode of a series, I would have to demonstrate to them that I had a plan for the episode. They wouldn't just commission me to write 60 pages off the bat. I'd have to submit a prose outline of the episode, which meant figuring out all the twists and turns and so on. And oh gosh, they were like very dull documents. They're like 20 pages long and I don't do that anymore. I don't have to do it, but also I don't

need to do it for myself. I think I used to be in such fear of the blank page that I needed to just work everything out in advance. Now I can't imagine doing that. It would be so deadening. I know, I guess I never start until I've had the idea in my head for such a long time. So the characters feel real. So when I'm writing their dialogue, it feels like I'm transcribing existing conversations between real people. If I ever am sitting there trying to make things up, then that just I should never be in that position. So if I'm writing, say, a 60 minute episode, I'll know where the turns are, as I call it,

I guess maybe I'll call them like act breaks or something, but as I don't have any like dramaturgical background, I don't really think in terms of acts particularly. But for me, at this point, you sort of know how the rhythm of an episode should feel. So I'm writing, kind of freely, freely, but also knowing where I have to sort of where the twists and turns are and where the rhythm has to change and that sort of thing. So I started off, I've always been able

to write dialogue, but obviously had no experience. So I was a bit gender on structure. You get a lot of help with that when you're starting out with script editors and producers and so on. But after I've been doing it for a while, it's sort of in there. So I feel more confident to just embark without having a full outline written. And how do you write dialogue that feels really true that, you know, people can imagine real people saying it as opposed to being fed lines through the page by the author? I think dialogue is something that you probably have to have a bit of a, a bit of facility with to start with on three girls.

I'm mentioning that brilliant director, Philippa Lothorp again. She asked me to come to rehearsals. So once you've got actors in front of you, then you can get rid of a lot of your dialogue because so much, they can play so much just with their faces or with movement. And that was a real education. So for me, the ambition of dialogue is as little as possible is the target. And yeah, it's not about beautiful writing. It's just about sounding really, really, really truthful to that particular character. And if you cover up all the character's names on the page, you should still be able to tell who's speaking because no one can.

person speaks the same as any other person. And is there a particular place or time where you like writing? Oh, just like Abby, the kids thing means that a lot of the writing has to go on in your head while you're doing other things. And then you can voice record or you can write renotes to yourself. But I've got a relatively new baby and, you know, all night with the breastfeeding and everything. I've always got my characters chatting away in my head. And if they're not chatting, then they're not real and they're for the bin. So I was really worried before having children. How do you write if you can't write all the time and whenever you want? But the ratio of thinking to writing is so much. There's so much more thinking that is required than writing. So

I don't mind if my writing life is a little bit more haphazard than it used to be because thinking can happen anywhere. And Teresa, what about you? Because I guess the thing is as poetry, it's much shorter in length than a script or a novel. How do you distinguish the good ideas for nuggets of poetry versus the ones where you should just leave them alone and before you develop them into any further? Well, I try to give every poem a chance. I always try to give it maybe first, second, third chance and sometimes it takes years to develop a poem so it could just mean it's not time yet for that, you know, poem to be

develop. Sometimes you come back to it three years later, or sometimes it just takes two weeks. But I always, you know, enter the poem first with a rough story. So what am I really interested and curious about uncovering? Is it, you know, something I saw on the train? Is it a conversation I heard? And then I enter that story with, you know, one driving device. So it's a way I think would be a very interesting way to tell the story. So it may be a conversational form, a conversation between to characters or objects or maybe a metaphor or a particular form like a sonnet. So, you know, what would be the interesting way to tell that story? And when I do that, I then come back to the poem and see if there's anything else that's

popping up. So, you know, maybe there's something really interesting happening with sound or happening with place in this poem. And then I'm able to edit it. And that gives me a sense of control, but also gives the palm freedom. And so it just gives the palm a chance to do what it wants to do also. And if I've done all of that and the poem is still not working, or I read the poem and I'm not excited about it. And by excited, I mean, I read it and I feel like it's not telling me anything new. It's telling me what I already know.

It's just narrating back what I've observed back to me. And that poem hasn't done its job. The poem is supposed to, what I feel is supposed to excite the writer. And then it would excite the reader. So when I've done that and the palm is still not work, and I give it space. I try not to scrap it immediately or sometimes it might just mean that the palm is supposed to be a few lines. I think sometimes, especially, you know, if you're a poet who shares your work, often there's often this pressure of your palm being, you know, really long and telling this, you know, long narrative story. Sometimes the palm just wants to be four lines or maybe it wants to be a page or two.

So giving that space to edit and do all those things before deciding that this palm needs to be. needs to be scrapped. Or maybe I'm just being a bit too kind to the poems, but that's what I tend to do. I love the idea of, you know, the poems are there and they already have this idea of the direction that they should be going into and you're really trying to just channel the desire of that poem

to reach its end point. Is that what it feels like to you when you're working on redrafting poetry? Yeah, definitely. I think that, you know, given it, well, when I enter a poem, I try to give it a sense of direction but still give it freedom because

if I'm completely in control when I'm writing that poem, I don't feel I'm really tapping into the excitement of writing or tapping into the power of writing. I'm just, I'm not giving myself enough freedom to generate new ideas as I'm writing it. I'm just going into the poem with the idea I already, already have. So giving the poem a chance to be what it wants to be, because that's the only way that it will come out to the best. That's the only way it would be the best poem it intends to be. If you force it, then it's just going to sound like something that you want to hear and something that you already know. It's not exciting you anymore. And how do you know when the poem is finished and you should, you know, stop revisiting it? It's just, it's arrived at the end point.

I don't think any poet ever knows when to finish a poem. I don't know what it is about poetry, but even after a poet has published their book, you still want to do some edited. I don't know if it says something about us poet. But for me, I know a poem is finished. If I feel, feel that peace with it. And by piece, it doesn't mean, you know, I read the poem and I don't feel the wounds of what I've written about anymore, but it just means that the poem is, you know, resting where it needs to be. There is no more, if I'm trying to edit the poem, the poem is not really giving me space to do that because the poem is content where it is. And where do you tend to write, you know, both Abby and Nicole talked about voice notes and just sending messages to themselves

on their phone. Is that kind of something that you do as well? Or do you have a very particular kind of writing habit. You have to be at a certain room somewhere in the house or it has to be a certain time of day. It's interesting because I just changed my, the way I write during lockdown. I actually just changed it because before I would, and I think this was because, you know, I was writing a lot in transit, so writing on trains and my way to places or planes or while I'm, you know, walking or something. And I would always write on my phone. But recently I had, you know, quite a massive migraine. And I found that I used screens quite a lot.

It was always on my phone and my laptop. So I decided to start writing on paper again. So I picked up my notebook again. I found it much more free. And I can write anywhere. But my bed really is the place I love to write because it makes me most, I like to write in a place.

I feel most comfortable. I like it. It's a very analogue situation for digital age. So during lockdown, obviously people haven't really been getting out, much as they usually are. You know, where do you gather ideas for your writing if, you know, people aren't out and about in the same way that they used to be? I think it's about, well, two things.

One is, you know, trying to still keep yourself busy. So for me, I've been reading a lot and watching a lot of films and TV series and documentaries and ideas have actually come from them. So wherever it's a scene and I see a conversation between two characters. and I'm like, oh, that reminds me of, you know, something that I saw a few years ago or something I've experienced. So I would really like to know more about that. I'm curious about that. Then I write about it. But also in lockdown, there are still a lot of inspirations. There's a lot of negotiations of relationships that's happened definitely during this pandemic.

And that is also a source of inspiration. You know, now all of us are at home. My siblings and my mom were all at home and we've not been at home like this in years. So it feels like we're, you know, my siblings and I that we're like, you know, seven years old or at home again. That's definitely, you know, something interesting to write about. So I think I've tried to try to be as positive as possible and, you know, just see it as a new source of inspiration rather than, you know, there is nothing to write about because I'm no longer in contact with the world in the same way I was before. I think that's a really great way of looking at it. Finally, I wanted to ask all of you about the highs and lows of writing, because I think this is something our Discovery's entrance might well have encountered when they're preparing their first three chapters for submission. So how do you stay motivated when the going gets tough or you're not feeling inspired or it's getting to be a bit of a slog, you know?

Nicole, how do you stay motivated through a bad writing day? Deadlines. And if you don't, that's why it's so great to have a competition to apply to or something or a scheme. apply to our competition to enter because then you've got a deadline. I really can't do it without a deadline anymore and that's from someone who used to be such a school swat and do my homework on the day it was issued. But no, I need a looming deadline. And if it's not going well, I've done this now for long enough to know that if it's a rubbish day to day, it might be a good day tomorrow. You can have whole weeks that are rubbish and then you can have a day where you are just on fire and you leave your desk thinking you're a genius. You're just going to have days that you think you're an idiot

and the idea will never work on other days. You, you overestimate how good it is. And that's just part of it and sort of riding those extremes. And also, if it's not going well at my desk, then I'll just often go out for a walk. And if I go out for a walk, it sort of shake something loose and then I can hear the characters chatting to each other again. But if you're having a bad writing day, the key thing is to not draw conclusions about the value of the work overall, not take them too seriously. And you don't torpedo yourself.

That's why, again, it's so good to have, like, Abby's got, like, a writing group or me producers, because Sue Hogg, my producer in three girls says, often her job is just to get me to not throw things away. and there's a difference between having a bad writing day and just going with it and writing it off and then having one and thinking, right, this is crap, I'm going to stop this idea, I'm going to start another one. Don't do that. Don't be blown hither and nether by the winds of your own moods. Just try to get to the end of the thing. And if it's not going to happen today, it will happen tomorrow or it will happen next week. And do you set your own deadlines? Do those work or do they have to be deadlines set on you externally?

No way. Externally. Externally all the way. Teresa, what about you? How do you stay motivated when, you know, the going gets tough? I definitely agree with deadlines. I kind of driven on deadlines. I do like it because it definitely enhances your discipline as a writer. I think also maybe having a writing partner or writing group, it could be a writing partner and you both set yourself, you know, deadlines and say, I'm going to send you something, you know, once every. every two weeks and you also send something back and we give each other feedback. It just also helps you and not living in a bubble and you're getting to read other people's workers as well, keeping that community. How do all of you juggle the responsibilities that you do have, especially those of you who have children around your writing? Because I think that's a really big concern for writers who are

just starting out. You know, how do I balance my family commitments, my work commitments against what I what to do as a writer. Nicole, how do you, how, what would you advise? It's really hard and I feel really lucky that, um, I got started before I had children because I feel like I taught myself how to do this and it took a really long time and for years. I didn't, I didn't really do much other than work and just keep chipping away at it and try to figure out how to do it and build my confidence up and all that's taken a long time and I was able to do it uninterrupted. Um, If I was starting now with young children, I would definitely, I don't want to be discouraging to anyone in the situation, but I would find that very difficult because there was a period where I was able to just focus on writing exclusively. But it's true what people say that when you've got many, many tasks, you just become more focused.

You can just get more done. So, yeah, I'm glad I had an experience of being able to just focus exclusively. on the work for a good long while before kids came along. And now I find writing very complimentary because, you know, you can do more than one thing. You should do more than one thing. And that includes, by the way, having another job, which I think writers don't talk about. And I hope that that's encouraging for people who are submitting work to this competition. Anything that you do out with writing, just, of course, feed to the writing,

whether it's looking after children or having a day job. So, yeah, don't be discouraged on any count. And if you are discouraged on a Wednesday, just, you know, show up again on a Thursday. I think there's a lot to be said for the value of just showing up and trusting in yourself to do the work. Abby, what about you? I'm one of those who I've always had a day job in pharmaceutical technology.

So I work with very smart people. and I think that really is inspiring. So what I tend to do is I tend to write in snatches of time. And it's funny because I'm now almost scared to have all that time to write fully. I don't know what I'll do with myself. Because I'm so used to writing on weekends and at night when the kids are asleep or first thing in the morning while I'm having coffee before I get them up for school or to homeschooling, yeah, I think that's a school.

I think that's made me very driven and determined to finish. Not having that luxury of time allows me to be very driven and determined to finish a piece of work. Sometimes that piece of work is not publishable, but I tend to say to myself, in one year, I will write 100,000 words of fiction. And then I could spend the next year editing that. So I just steal time wherever it comes from. And Teresa, what is the best piece of writing advice that you've ever been given? The best advice I've been given is to try and take risk sometimes, to do something different,

sometimes to use a new form that I haven't used before, to play with language in a new way, I haven't done before. And so to switch it up once in a while and, you know, almost like a relationship, just switch it up and do something new once in a while. Keep yourself excited as a writer. That's the best advice I've gotten so far. Keep it spicy for yourself as a writer. Yes.

Nicole, what about you? What was the best piece of writing advice you've been given? I think just finish the thing, even if you're having doubts about it, rather than chuck it. Just don't chuck it. Just try to get to the end of it so at least you can print it out and have a look at it. And that's really where it all begins. Once you've got a vomit draft of something, then you read it back. It tells you what you need to do next.

you never get to that stage if you just keep abandoning things. So I would say try to get to the end of whatever you're working on. Abby, would you agree that there's, you know, a value in finishing things? What kind of writing advice have you been given? Absolutely. I agree in finishing. I think it's from when you finish that you can start again and make sense of it. In addition to that, to what they've both said, I think for me, it's also be willing and sort of submit yourself to learn from other writers who've done something similar. Maybe not something similar. I find that I learn a lot from reading other writers. For me, that's been one of the biggest lessons.

And I think learning to read as a writer. So when I'm reading a novel, I tend to read first for the story and then I go back and then read as a writer, which is what I said before. I think that's such a valuable thing for me. I always edit with all the books beside me. And, you know, in terms of 2020 as a year, you know, obviously there's this whole idea that, you know, 2020's been a rubbish year, it's been the year of lockdown. But I'm really curious to know about your creative experiences of 2020 as writers.

You know, has this year allowed you to be more creative? What kind of writing have you been reading? Has lockdown led you to have more time to discover? of the writers that you wouldn't have encountered before. Teresa, how about you? What do you think? I mean, lockdown has, in some ways, it has given me more time to read coming in. I did have a set thing I wanted to write before lockdown happened or before the pandemic happened. So it's just been a case of pushing myself to continue that and pushing myself to do that. So it's really been about motivating myself as much as possible. And Nicole, what about you? Do you think that, you know,

2020 as a year itself, you know, the period that we're living in is going to be kind of fertile territory for you as a script writer. Gosh, that's a good question. I saw that Jack Thorne is already writing or might already have written something for Channel 4 about the experience of staff and patients in care homes. And because it's written by him and he's so amazing, I can't wait to see it. And it's got Stephen Graham in it and Jodie Comer as well. But part of me also thinks, gosh, it feels too soon. It would be so hard to look at art about this period for a very long time, I think, because I think just a certain amount of time has to elapse before we're ready to look at it again

and before we want to think about it or try to process it. So I've got no predictions. But I found for television, it's quite interesting what's happened. I had a series that went out just at the beginning of the first lockdown, and it went out week to week because it wasn't finished. couldn't go on iPlayer as a box set because we were still finishing it when lockdown started and it was really fun at the beginning to have something go out week to week and people had nothing better to do than watch the nest and talk about the nest and i feel like it's elevated television to this thing

that people have really depended on because there's nothing else to do and so in that time there's been a couple of like things that have been shared experiences like normal people um like i may destroy you but apart from that, I mean, I just got on with looking after my baby and tried to think about the next thing I'm writing, you know, in the middle of the night or whenever I can. And Abby, what about you? Do you think 2020 has allowed you to be more creative? Has it led you to discover more art writers? I think I struggled with my creativity. So I had my book come out in March and then we went straight into the lockdown the week after.

And so with two children at home and the uncertainty of what was going on in the world, I went into a sort of reading slump and a creativity freeze. And that went on for a while. And because I was also trying to homeschool two kids, which I absolutely hated doing. I think I'm not meant to be a teacher. But I loved being with my kids, but I'm just not meant to teach them anything academic. So that was really tough. And then also trying to write as well was really difficult because I was never.

the writer that would write at home. And that was, you know, well, at home when everybody else was there. So it was either people were asleep or, yeah, people were asleep really, middle of the night or first thing in the morning or weekends in a cafe. So having the cafe shot was really hard. So I've had to learn to write at home. And I now love writing at home. So it took me a good, I think it took me a good five months or so to slowly come out of that slump and start to pick up words again and try to get creative. So it was really difficult for me during the lockdown. Right.

But I guess the important thing is, you know, you can go through slumps and you can exit them, which I think is, you know, good for people to hear as well. Finally, are there any new writers that you'd like to recommend or give a shout out to? I'm very excited about Nima Shah's Cololo Hill, which is out next year. It's a story set in Uganda and it's sort of a migration story, which I'm really, really excited about. And there's another author called Abidia Misanusi, who's a Nigerian novel is Looking for Bono, who's just come out actually last month. Very, very interesting story that I've just started to read.

What about you, Theresa? I would say Rachel Long, her poetry collections just recently come out, but it's very narrative and has this surreal tinge to it. in this dark hubert that i i think you know writers of other genres would really appreciate and also teresa y coco not because we share a name together but i've been that she's a brilliant writing she was co-writer of the of the film um rocks um which are quite good with you so i think that she's um she's also a playwright as well so i'll definitely recommend um her as well and nicoe Teresa's pinched my one. I was going to say Theresa Okko and Claire Oakley, her co-writer on Rocks. Oh, Rocks. Just best film of I've seen in many a year just absolutely destroyed me. I think Teresa is amazing. I can't wait to see what she does next. There's another girl who's just at the beginning of her career called Celia Morgan. She is from Birmingham and she plays the tuba and she writes really interesting stuff. And I think she's really going to pop this year.

Yeah. And there's another girl called Amelia Spencer, who's writing an interesting screenplay. But definitely, Theresa Coco is my one my one to watch. I can co-sign that because I watched rocks recently and it absolutely blew no way. Isn't it wonderful? Cried like a baby, which I wasn't expecting. But, you know, there you go. It's 2020. We all need a little bit of breath. Right. But thank you so much, everyone, for joining me on this podcast. I think, well, I hope that the things that you've said, the tips that you've given,

will hopefully give a lot of people through for the result. Thank you. I'm Zing Singh, and you've been listening to the Women's Prize for Fiction Podcast, brought to you by Bayleys and produced by Bird Lime Media. If you're a budding writer and have been inspired by what you've heard today, why not enter discoveries? We want to encourage female writers of all ages and backgrounds at the beginning of their creative journeys.

Entering writers have to be unpublished and submit all. only the opening three chapters of their novel, all up to 10,000 words, with a synopsis. And it is free to enter. Head to the Women's Price of Fiction website for more information as well as tips and advice for preparing your entry. The closing date is January 17, 2021. Please click subscribe and don't forget to rate and review this podcast. It really helps spread the word about the female talent you've heard about today. Thanks very much for listening and see you next time.