Sara & Cariad's Weirdos Book Club - You Are Here by David Nicholls with David Nicholls

Episode Date: May 16, 2024

This week's book guest is You Are Here by David Nicholls.Sara and Cariad are joined by the phenomenally successful author and BAFTA nominated scriptwriter David Nicholls to discuss Formula 1, Formula 2, sketchbooks, sports bras and the Moomins. Thank you for reading with us. We like reading with you!You Are Here by David Nicholls is available to buy here or on Apple Books here.You can find David on Instagram: @davidnichollswriterSara’s debut novel Weirdo is published by Faber & Faber and is available to buy here.Cariad’s book You Are Not Alone is published by Bloomsbury and is available to buy here.Follow Sara & Cariad’s Weirdos Book Club on Instagram @saraandcariadsweirdosbookclub and Twitter @weirdosbookclub Recorded and edited by Naomi Parnell for Plosive.Artwork by Welcome Studio.  Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

Sarah Pasco. Hello, I'm Carriad Lloyd. And we're weird about books. We love to read. We read too much. We talk too much. About the too much that we've read. Which is why we've created the Weirdos Book Club.

Join us. A space for the lonely outsider to feel accepted and appreciated. A place for the person who'd love to be in a real book club, but it doesn't like wine or nibbles. Or being around other people. Is that you? Join us. Check out our Instagram at Sarah and Carriad's Weirdos Book Club for the upcoming books we're going to be discussing. You can read along and share your opinions.

Or just skulk around in your raincoat like the weirdo you are. Thank you for reading with us. We like reading with you. This week's book guest is You Are Here by David Nichols. What's it about? A very long walk. Impossible Romance. What qualifies it for the Weirdo's Book Club?

Well, it's about people who really like walking. In this episode we discuss Formula One, Formula 2, Sketchbooks, Sports Bras, and the Moomins. And joining us this week is David Nichols. David is a phenomenally successful writer. His books include Start of a 10, Under Sully, One Day. The Book are nominated Us, Sweet Sorrow and his brand new You Are Here. He's also script writer as well.

He adapted the Patrick Melrose books, great expectations far for the madden crowd. He's been publishing 40 languages, and I'm sure you've also cried and worked at his new Netflix adaptation one day. Welcome, David Nichols. Hello. Hi. Talking about your book, You Are Here. That was so calm. I was just say, welcome, David Nichols.

Okay. Okay. I was like, oh, am I going to expose? Are you going to expose? I mean, you were very calm about it. You'll be like a teenage girl. I'm so excited. I'm excited too.

I was like, but I had this thing planned because the book's called You Are Here. Oh, sorry. And he is here. You see? So that's why I was calm. So I was leading up to you are here. You are here. Very slick.

I'm so sorry. It's not really a joke. Okay. But you are here. I am here. I'm very glad to be here. We're so glad to have you. Thank you so much.

It's a pleasure. Firstly, congratulations on everything. Everything. Huge success. Everything. You've won all the things. You've done everything. It's been a very strange year. You know, you sit by yourself for four or five years and just kind of tap away and then everything happens at once. So it's been really exciting. Yeah. So let's go through it. You've got a huge Netflix show. Yeah. Incredible. The success of one day.

Yeah. Which was already a successful book. I know. It's been really wonderful. And I have to give proper credit to Nicole Taylor and her team of writers who did amazing work with it and a brilliant cast and It's been, it's been very, very surprising and really happy. I mean, even if people hadn't watched it, it was a really, really, I mean, we'd have been upset, but it was a very, very, very happy production. And I love what they've done with it. And that doesn't, you know, sometimes it can be a little worrying when people take your work and adapt it.

Hugely worrying. Yeah. Yeah, you've been kind. But they were very, I'm an exec producer, which is a sort of slightly nebulous title, but I was very involved all along the way in the edit and with cast. music scripts and all of that so it's been great. If you want to know the other side of this, my husband auditioned for it and didn't get it.

Oh, yes. He did so for Dext, didn't know what happened there. So imagine the pain of an actor. It's got this massive audition for this thing. You know, oh my God, it's this book. And then all you can hope is that it just fails terribly and they do a terrible job. That must have been an uncomfortable watch.

He's not right for Dex. We discussed it with him. We discussed he's not right. right for it. He was, he's not right. No, of course he's not right. And that's what happens. Yeah. But it's, but I felt like, but some auditions you watch and you're like, oh, that is bad. That's not you. But that was like, no, it didn't feel right. Well, I used to be an actor. I kept waiting for the call. I can play. I can play 22 to 42. Sure, 16. Yeah, of course. Just kept hanging around the auditions, waiting for someone to say,

but no, I never happened. Yeah, I just only found this out that you started out in acting, because you put on Instagram last night about a play, yeah. you were in with an incredible list of other actors. I can't remember who you said now. It was an amazing play called Macanale, which I did at the National Theatre in 1993 or 1994. I had two words, case demurred, and I don't really know what demurred means. And I had said in an American accent, so was it demurred?

Doesn't feel like those words go together. No, it was a legal scene. It was a sort of piece of legal jargon thrown out, but it was meant to be a New York accent. And there was all this noise. That's not a massive geek. No. But what a small part? I was understudying other roles. There's no small parts, Sarah.

Only small parts. Two words. I was in a lot of plays, but always lots of silhouettes and lots of small parts and a lot of understudying. So I would learn these massive roles and then never performed them. I loved it, though, and I learned a lot. I learned a lot about writing just from sitting there and watching. Well, they always say that actors, they become writers, have a really good ear for dialogue. And that's certainly something that, you know, they're ever.

So in the book, this book one. You are here. You are here. There's so many funny conversations that sound like real people talking. I think, yeah, your ear for dialogue is kind of uncanny. Because when you're reading it, you're like, oh, this isn't real. But I feel like I'm eavesdropping. And I think that's definitely what, again, I think the Netflix adaptation was so successful.

It kept that feel of one day that I'm just sort of next to this people who are obviously I know are in love, but they haven't figured that out yet. And yeah, it's an incredible ability. Oh, thank you. I mean, it's the part, when I started, I was a scriptwriter before I was a novelist. And when I moved over into writing fiction, I felt very confident about writing dialogue because it's, you know, it's improvisation. And if you know who they are and you know what the attitude is and what they want,

you can kind of riff and jot it down. I just didn't know whether I had to describe the room or the weather or what they were wearing, all of that stuff. And I also was taken aside by my editor and told that, you know, it's okay to say what they're thinking and feeling, which isn't something you necessarily can do as a scriptwriter. You have to rely on the actors for that. So that was very much my training, moving across from acting into scripts

and then into fiction. That there are each mode of creation has its own, listen to me. We are here for that kind of language, David. It has its own tools and techniques. So the first question I wanted to ask actually about this book was the germination, the very beginning, was it about the journey, the exterior, this trip from one side of Britain, the country to the other, or was it about the characters, they were always going to meet, and then you decided to put them somewhere?

Start with the people or the environment. I had two parallel projects. I don't know, I mean, I hope this is interesting, just to how an idea comes together. I had two parallel projects that I was contemplating writing. And twice, once or twice a year, I'd go on this long solar walk by myself. and I love it. And I did want to write about it in some way, but it's very hard to write about a solo experience. So I thought maybe it's about a family holiday or something.

And you write about the comedy of being outside in all weather and things going wrong and dark secrets coming out. And maybe that would be a good novel. At the same time, I really wanted to write about cinema, which is something I love. And I was reading a lot of Anita Brookner at the time as a novelist I love. And I wanted to write about loneliness. And I had this idea for a novel about two lonely people who start going to the same,

matinees and you tell the love story through the films they see. And I sketched out both of these ideas and they didn't seem to work quite in the way I wanted them to. So I just picked up the characters from the cinema and dropped them into the walk, not the exact characters, but the attitude of the characters. And that became you are here. So it's a novel about two people who really are set to be by themselves and want to be by themselves, but are forced into this initially walking group and when the rest of the members of their group fall away, it's the two of them. And they, it's about loneliness and solitude and conversation and learning again what you can get from other people. And, and, yeah, that wasn't, but that idea doesn't drop out of the

sky. That idea comes out of a lot of other ideas that get neither together. Yeah, limitations. There's something that's happened to me actually that, and I think it's really important that you highlight this in terms of walking, that's that you're talking to someone. someone you're not looking at. Yeah. And the way you speak, the intimacy, the way that you speak to someone that you don't really know, if you're not looking at them,

can be different. You filter in a different way. You're not watching someone react to what you're telling them. You're being hurt. They fall into, you fall into a rhythm with each other physically, which means you can fall into a rhythm verbally. Yeah.

And I think that's so interesting when your body is doing something that you're not perhaps conscious of. Well, psychologists show that if you're walking with someone and you're rowing, you fall out of step. You know, cars at night. and walking are much better places to open up to each other than a date. You know, if Michael and Marnie had sat up to each other in a restaurant, it would be awful.

Yeah, it would have been a disaster at day one. But that is lots of people's experience of trying to find someone to love, is staring at them, waiting for a waiter. What we're saying is we need... Do you have any brothers and sisters? We need Tinder to be about walking. Yes. And you go for walks.

Perhaps not isolated walks for people you don't know. That sounds dangerous. I feel like I've invented so... Clark, the pennaway. I think it's gone up to. I think it's not really bad. You're one of those writers that you make it look easy, even though what you're doing is not,

but because it's so readable. And this one particularly did remind me that one day experience where you're like, oh, I'm just Ted. Just love spending time with these people. And I thought it's really, I wanted to talk to you about persuasion, which we have talked before on this show. It's one of my favorites because you open with a Jane Austen quote

which I was very excited to see. And how I find Austin that sometimes it looks easy and people think it's easy to write what she does but that ear for dialogue and that ear for keeping a story movie is not easy. When we were at university

I mean she was essentially dismissed she wasn't on the syllabus well they let you read her but only to talk about the British Empire and the slave trade that was what she was used against but yeah I wanted to talk yeah obviously you must be a fan

of Austin. I am now though for a long time I was really resistant yeah people are people are I don't want to join the club. It's very strange. She's not cool. I grew up on Dickinson Hardy, who I was very passionate about.

And at the same time, I kind of knew that George Elliott and Jane Austen were better writers, more subtle, more detailed, more precise, that there was less, you know. Showboating. Yeah. And yet, whenever I sat down to read a Jane Austen novel, the constancy of the tone and the rhineness and the irony, I found a little bit repetitive. And during lockdown, I thought, well, now is the time to have another go. And I picked up persuasion because everyone says it's the best. It's the best, yeah. And it definitely fed into this book and that it's about, you know, unspoken yearning and regret and coming back to love later in life.

Yeah, I mean, I felt Anne Elliott ghost walking beside them because this idea of like having given up on life and not believing that there's any hope left is so present in Marnie and Michael. and I thought that was a really nice touch that it seems like a very modern book, you know, like the way they're talking and what they're doing, but to sort of link it back to persuasion just felt like, oh, I'm actually talking about humanity. I'm not talking about the loneliness of our age now. Like this could have happened, you can be this lonely at any point in history. And loneliness is in a lot of us, isn't it?

She was lonely, I think. She was lonely, I think. Actually saying what you mean and the social forces that are against that, which you don't have now. So you have to find other barriers to prevent people expressing what they feel. The self is such a barrier. It's such a barrier to these characters. It's self-imposed safety in solitude and also a level of contentment.

Yes, exactly. And I think that's one of the things that you show really brilliantly is large areas of their life, they're very happy with. Yeah. We're not looking at these people going like, oh, they're flailing around, they're failing. They're damaged. They need to be completely. pleaded and healed by another person. If you met them at a dinner party on a walk, you'd be like, that's someone whose life is together. I mean, I think a lot about the genre of romantic comedy,

which is something I love. And I'm very happy to write within that. But often in that, in that form, being by yourself is the worst possible state. It's the enemy. And you're traditionally working towards the ending, the classic ending of a marriage or the modern version of a marriage, getting together with someone. And I look around. that people I know who do who are by themselves and it's it's it's not the worst thing in the world so how do you give how do you express how unhappy loneliness can be well at the same time not making solitude the worst possible situation and that's sort of the line it's walking and I think what's endearing is the thing of when you you're not lonely you're very happy with your life until you fall for someone

and then it's them you miss and it's them that's missing it's not that something it's not that anyone alone is missing something from their life until you meet someone that you want to have in your life. Yeah, and you definitely get that with Marnie and Michael, don't you? It's the absence of the person suddenly becomes, oh, oh, I'm missing walking with someone. I'm thinking about you all the time. Yeah, whereas before walking alone was fine and now you've ruined walking alone. Yes, absolutely.

I think they're imagining a future. And, you know, well, I don't, it's hard to talk about without saying too much about why it goes. Yeah. I'm going to ask you a controversial question, David. Okay. Because I feel like... Today program, she's going to turn on you. So I feel like any character I gave you, your brain, your creativity would want to make them happy.

Yes, I was thinking that. I think that reminds me of Jane Austen, is that she was a very lonely person, but she wouldn't let her characters stay there. I'm not saying David's a lonely person. No, no, no. No, I'm not sorry. But I agree with you. I feel like the sense of like wanting them to be okay. Yeah.

You want to make the world better. You're writing to make the world maybe slightly better than it is, or to show the very best things that can happen in the world. Oh, I'm pleased. I mean, I'm pleased to hear that because I often feel I'm not very good at happy endings. You know, quite often the endings are best that were bittersweet. I've never been able to write a classic romantic comedy ending. And the ending of this novel went through four or five different permutations,

various degrees of happiness and sadness until it ended up where it is. And I love that you feel that. I suppose what it is is that I find, I find it hard to write a villain, I think. And that there's this line, you know, everybody has a reason. And finding out the reason is interesting to me. Why are they like this? So I'm very happy to write characters who do terrible things and are unsympathetic. I suppose I'm holding onto the idea that they're trying their best.

They're trying to be better than they perhaps present to the world. You know, whether that's Dexter in one day or Mani and Michael. I mean, Mani and Michael are perhaps the most likable characters I've written. But they have a sadness inside them. But again, that reminds you that's that Austinian world where the vulnerability of people is very clear, which I think as a reader allows you to understand them. Like you said, their reasoning of why they are behaving pompously or cruelly. And, you know, that classic Mr. Darcy thing, we find out he's not actually cruel. He's in pain, which is a bad example for women generally.

But I think that is a really, that bittersweet thing is really lovely. And I wanted to talk to you because I read that Guardian piece you wrote, which I love. And I was very, sorry, I'm just basically using this excuse to talk about things that I like with David, because I was so excited to read that you like the Moomin books. And I was like, oh my God, of course you do. I never would have drawn that line before, but that bitter sweetness is so present in your books. I went back to them to write that article. I was very nervous about writing that article because I don't often write personally.

But I was trying to get to the bottom of the fact that I like being by myself, which is almost a taboo. We celebrate friendship and community and all of that. It's wonderful, but sometimes I do more and more as I get older like being alone. And I was trying to dig into that and also to dig into why I like sad things. And my first memory of a kind of pleasurable sadness melancholy were those later women troll books. Oh my goodness. So sad.

It's beautiful, but they're so sad. And they're all about loneliness and autumn and the sun disappear. death. They're basically death. Things end and there's nothing you can do about it. And I was reading when I was nine or ten and thinking, wow, give me more of this. This is great. And I think it lingered into, you know, 40 years later, my own writing. But it's interesting because you were saying about people being happier and slightly better. And you have that in the movements and you have that and you are here. But there is always this vein of things aren't jolly or perfect.

Or I guess like what we were talking about with Yomi. There's not like a Disneyfication story here. happening. It's not like everything's wonderful. It's like everything is kind of broken but because it's broken, it's perfect. I think there is a jolliness. I really found lots and lots of jolliness in this book. The idea in this day and age, everyone's on their phones, are people going for a walk. No, but what I mean is the characters, the characters still have a, they're not like, there's still this bit which I think comes from what we're talking about with Moomin's, there's this, there's a bitter sweetness to those characters. They're not like, oh, everything's fine with me.

you know that they've got pain. And I think that makes them interesting. Yes. Things like the geography field trip. Oh, so good. The actual reality of either being a teacher or a student on one of the trips. A geography teacher. Yeah, having to explain stones to people.

It must be so hard, so thankless. And actually it's a joyous rump, isn't it, to see it when you're not on one. And no one's going to make you go on one anytime soon. Well, even the humor, and I thought the humor of her being an editor, there's an amazing description of what editing life is like, sat, your own at a desk in your flat. On a train. On a train, yeah.

And I just thought, oh, God, you've really captured that, like, freelance pain. I was reading this on the train to Edinburgh last week. And, you know, Marnie's on her computer doing her editing. And another character is thinking, get off, get off and look out the window. And I was like, all right, David. Just as we got past Newcastle and they got pretty. And David, in the article of The Guardian, talks about, which all Edinburgh comedians talk about, the best bit of the Edinburgh journey.

That's what made him start walking, is that he saw that bit that we all talk about, and he got off and walked there. And I was like, I don't know a single comedian that hasn't gone, oh, it's amazing. No, I'm never going to get. I don't know what's there. I don't know how to get there. I took a picture from my phone. It's blurry.

But that is the moment, especially when you're going to see the Edinburgh Festival, that you look at that bit and you're like, fuck, what am I doing with my life? This is, is it going to work. And on the journey home, that's the bit where you're like, what did I do. It closes in on you, doesn't it? It's a journey. It goes from the sea to some countryside, to the bridges and then. That amazing view.

And then, okay, now you're back in terraced houses. And it's such a thing that we all talk about that train journey. And I was so amazed that, and that's what started him walking. He was like, that's good. I'd like to walk it. Yeah, it's a beautiful walk. And you can, if you leave London at 7 in the morning, you can be on that beach by 11 and you just keep walking north until you get to Barrett and then on to Edinburgh.

We've got to get to the festival, David. We've got to the shows. That's what we're doing. Yeah, we're carrying crops we've made ourselves. I wanted to ask you about writing women, actually. So I really loved Marnie. Yeah, me too. But it was the sports bra.

It was when she was complaining about sports bra and all of that felt very real. I thought, David Sussed a woman. Yeah, I'm wearing a sports bra. And that's how you write so truthily about it. I read your acknowledgments and you thanked Dolly Alderton. And I was like, I wonder if she told her about sports bras. How was it Dolly? I know about sports brats before I met Dolly.

Did you? I just want to get clear. he's not giving me sports bra and pro i was already on that journey way before dolly's like talking about it no i i i have a lot of uh very good early readers who pick me up on things that aren't right but i but i tend not to share it until i think it's in a pretty good state there's a famous onion very funny onion headline about um novelist's wife sick of being asked what it's like to be a woman and and i try not to do that before the writing yeah but i I'm very, very, very happy to be corrected after the writing because my answer to this used to be, oh, it's all universal.

You know, whether it's envy or disappointment or unrequited love or desire. All of those emotions are universal. But of course, it's more complicated than that. And I think there are things I wouldn't do. I don't think I'd write a novel in the first person. I think when you're writing in the third person, you're putting on, you're not putting on the costume. You're keeping a little bit of distance. I'm very happy to write characters outside my experience in the third person.

But to go into the first person and write first person female sex scene, I think, would be, you know, a challenge. If only because the reader can see your name on the cover and they're suddenly aware of your performance. And it becomes just a little bit distancing, I guess. So in the third person, I don't worry about it too much, but I do, I'm very grateful to my early readers and my editors, who keep an eye on those things. What you'd never want is a reader to be sort of bounced out of the novel going, oh, you know, oh, it's a man doesn't know that we put those over there. Yeah, yeah, we do this that way.

Yeah, yeah. We take our boobs off before we put the sports power on, which we just don't tell them. Oh, okay. Yeah, that should have been in there, but it's fine, it's fine. We'll get it in the next. Yeah, when they reprint. Talking about comedy, yes. So Marnie is a very funny woman.

You make her a funny woman on purpose, but that means you have to write. write her jokes. Yes. I thought that. You did some really good jokes. Can I read this? But when she when she's talking about coming down to dinner, I laugh so much. And it's, you know, like a woman like being like, I'm not, I'm going to be good and I'm not going to be a twat, basically. And she's got her like nice dress on and she's ordered a gin and tonic. And, you know, she's like, it's all going to be fine. The rest of the group was already seated. And as she approached, too far from the table, she shouted, I think that's a man of cow shit. Effervescent, fascinating, an enigma to all.

And I was like, oh, that moment you're trying so hard not to be a trap and your real personality appears. And there's nothing you can do. Like, it's like, oh, that's just who I am. And that's why Marnie is lovable because she is never, she can't hide herself. The great joy of writing is it slow. Yeah. So I'm in no way as funny as Marnie.

You know, I'm just not. But I, and my family, if I try and tell a joke at dinner or something, you can feel the tension around the table because I can't do it. I can't construct a joke. I'm not spontaneous. I'm not witty. I have none of that, but I can spend three years constructing this. And so it's like the dream of going back and putting in the funny stuff afterwards. You can fix it and refine it and you can do things with punctuation, very small things that will give a suggestion of comic timing. And so I can work at that by myself sitting in a room over the course of several years and get it right without actually having that quote. myself. So you can write somebody is much, much funnier than you. And even though all of the comedy is ultimately coming from you, it's, you're still not as funny as there. To set up a

situation and then show why what that person has done is funny, you're controlling everything. A funny person in real life is just reacting to the environment. So you're doing both things, aren't you? You're a puppet master and puppet. Puppet. And because it's such a, it is such a superpower, Amani's humour. Yeah. She doesn't realise it is. So one of the people on the walk is sort of a posh guy who doesn't get her jokes. Oh, Conrad.

Conrad. I love Conrad so hard. She's a bit odd or just ignores what she's saying. And then again, as a reader, sort of fall a bit more in love with someone. What's Conrad described as weirdly attractive. And then I love that her friend, she sort of sees her and her friend is like, oh yeah, I know. Like it's weird. How handsome this man is.

The sort of relationship between her and Cleo is also really lovely. But it's a very, again, I'm aware of how much I've stolen from Jane Austen. It's a classic Jane Austen truth that, isn't it? The gorgeous guy is not the one you want to. It's not necessarily. So it's a very, it's very, so it's another version of that. And she stole it from someone else. You know what I mean?

It's such an inevitable human cliche that a gorgeous person doesn't need to be as witty and funny as Marnie. Yeah, to listen as carefully. Yeah, because people like Marnie doesn't mind walking along him because he's so handsome. Even though he listens to nothing. when she's like getting him to explain Formula One I was like she has hit rock bottom if you're like tell me

when she says is there's formula two and he's like actually there is I didn't know there was but you don't want to hear about it you don't want to hear about it I just can't believe I never knew there was Formula 2 I didn't know but I also didn't know but I also I don't want to know these are my own prejudices as well I hate all sport and probably

people should absolutely enjoy what they want to enjoy but the idea of watching Formula One race for me is I feel the same as Marnie I I just wouldn't know what I was looking up. I think most people listened to this show will be on your side about that. Okay. I'm worried about the angry correspondence. No, we don't get many sports fans. I don't think. I don't want to speak for our listenership.

I'd be very surprised if there was anyone in the middle of that Venn diagram. It's such a great idea. That bunch of characters walking together. What I love with the friendship group is that the money disparity is explored. When you've got a friend who has more money than you who just assumes, you know, or let's split the bill or let's go there or let's not go there anymore. or, you know, go for a walk when you don't have the equipment. Yeah.

That people who've got, and are used to having a comfortable amount of money, never take into account what it's like to not be able to spend your money that way. Yeah. And in dating, that is a prospective problem or not as well, isn't it? If you don't live in the same place as someone. Yeah, it's another taboo, isn't it? Loneliness and feeling poor, I guess. Even that word sounds awkward.

and not a dramatic, but that's what it is. Her life decisions are to an extent formed by the fact that she can't afford to get a taxi, that she can't change her train ticket. She has to finish her work, or you don't get paid and you don't get the next one. If you miss a deadline for her, then you're missing out on the next job. Yeah, I'm keen to keep that kind of detail in novels. I mean, it makes sense to avoid the specific sums, but the feeling is important to have there. Also, it can drive plot, you know, as it does in this.

If you can't afford to get a taxi, you'll start walking. And the judgment, I thought, again, which also sits in that Austin world of Michael judging her for working on the train. That's like that instant, you know, across the ball, you see someone, you think, oh, they don't want to dance because they're arrogant. But it's like, no, there's something else going on for money here that she has to work because it's all she's got. And again, I think that comes back to, which I think is why we keep talking about it, is that loneliness thing of how people hide. their loneliness as well. Like you said, you know, Marnie is a jolly character and everyone and is cracking jokes and everyone would say, oh, she's great, but no one's getting under the skin of Marnie being like, how does it feel to go home to that house and what do you

want and what do you need? Both of the characters don't have children. Yeah, I wanted to talk about that, yeah. There's a slightly different, slight difference in age. So for the male character, he's maybe on the cusp of thinking he's not going to have children, that he's going to be childless or child-free and not by choice. Yeah. And then with Marnie, she's a slightly younger, so she's not sort of confronting, but maybe aware

of it. She's divorced. There was an opportunity. Yeah, her life didn't take that path and she's gone a different way. Yeah. Yeah, she's coming around to the idea that it might not happen and Michael has thrown everything at it and I was interested in that word broodiness and what it means for men and women

and I wanted to write about that as the stress that causes in a relationship. It's part of the reason Michael's relationship falls to pieces. And it felt like something that, again, you know, it takes Michael and Marni a little bit of time to take a deep breath and talk about it. But then they do open up about it and frank. And it felt important to have it there, but I didn't also want it to be central to the novel. It's there as a topic that they need to embrace and discuss, but alongside other things.

But it's also a glinting little winking hope on the horizon, isn't it? Because this couple getting together, if they do, if the reader wants them to, which I did, there's this. Oh, I didn't. I felt very. You're working out the ages and going, hang on, he's only this and she's that. You can't help with heterosexual, like, poor enough of each other. Yeah, it's a female reader as well, hitting the ages that we are hitting of like, this needs to hurry up, guys. Like, don't muck around.

But it's also not a done thing. They're not meeting. We read Marianne Keyes' book. My favourite mistake. My favourite mistake. And she's made a conscious choice of a perimenopausal definitely past that point. You know, will they, won't, and they with people where it's not going to ever be. Can I think it comes back to what you're saying of like it's part of their characters, but it's not, like you said, it's in the back.

I feel like it's why your characters are so rounded. They have, there's all these different plates they're spinning. And Marnie, there's definitely that's there in her process as much as, you know, her work and who she wants to be. And that's how it is when you're friends or someone. You don't constantly talk about the same thing. You know, you know that they have all these other, yes, they might think about being kids, but they also got this and they got this. And it's a rounded human experience. If they do fall in love, then they might also have this extra happy ending, especially for him. You wanted that. I know, for him. Yeah. Yeah. What is your writing routine

like? Like you said I sit there for three or four years alone. Like, is it? It changes with each book. You know, I don't think there's ever a technique. I've never found a process that works every time. So it's different every time. More recently, when I started, because I was a scriptwriter, I used to plot everything out, scene by scene, chapter by chapter. Now I have a kind of sketchbook, a kind of, I was going to say mood board, but that's potentially.

You can say mood board. A mood board. I mean, a word document that I just throw things into over the course of a year or more that gets pretty big, and it's scraps of dialogue and character sketches and little ideas. and scenes and bits of description, and it builds and builds and builds. And often what I start with now is less a story and more a feeling. So the last novel, Sweet Sorrow, which was about youth theatre, was, I'm not selling it, but it's a really good novel. It's about the end of summer.

You know, it's about the summer of your 16th year and that sense that autumn's in the air and things are about to change. Move in land, moving times. And with this book, it was the idea of a walk in spring, and the same. sense of hope and change. And so that's part of it. It isn't always just plot. Sometimes it's an atmosphere of feeling. And this document grows and grows and grows. And then I put it to one side for a little while and go back to it and see what I like in there and what might make a novel. And then it's only then that I type chapter one. And then I write chronologically. There are two documents. There's this notebook. And there is a final novel, which if something terrible would happen to me,

would make sense. It's grammatically correct. All the characters have the same names. But there's also another document that I never want anyone to read, which is messy and full of scraps. And that's where the novel begins. You must have a lot of trust now.

It sounds like you used to have to be very organized so that you knew what's going to happen. Whereas now you can trust. Oh, my brain can do it this way. I can burst and explode and be messy because I'll also be able to tie it altogether. I mean, I do have that fear of writer's block. And so not writer's block, but not being able to do the day's work.

And so my defense about that, my defense against that is to have little modules, scenes, set pieces, moments that I look forward to writing and that I can pick up at any time. So it's almost like filling in a box, you know, and then you move the boxes around, and that's the novel. And it means that you don't necessarily have to move from one chapter to the next. So there's always something that you're keen to write, but it takes a long, long, long time to get to that state. And that thing you see in movies where people sit down with a blank page in Type Chapter 1.

To me, that's, that's, it would never happen. You'd obsess about the first sentence. You'd never get beyond it. You'd do the thing that they also do in films of screwing up the piece of paper and throwing at the bin. And so I try and avoid that by having a lot of material to draw on before I start. So you feel like, I guess it's like a research pool. You can always go back to the days where you're like, this is shit.

I can't do it. You go back to that sketchbook and you're like, there is other things in there. That's nice. It's like having a lovely safety net. Do you know what it is? You are creative. It's the child and the adults in terms of your creativity. Yes, exactly.

So you're letting the child play with crayons, which means you're always going to be excited to go, oh, now I want to do this today. There's never a wrong answer. Yeah. And then some days you've got your grown-up hat on going, okay. They do have to have names. They do have to do something. Yeah.

The trick with the scrapbook is not to censor yourself, not to worry. about it, just put anything in there because it's never, no one's going to publish it against your will. You know, it's always going to be... Have you made a document? Like when I die, the scrapbooks must be burnt

or trodden on, my hard drive. They're full of terrible things and, you know, just things that don't work, but you have to, there's no such thing as wasted work in that document. There are these prototypes that have to crash for you to write the thing that hopefully takes off.

There we are, that's a metaphor. I liked it. Do you find the characters do things that surprise you? No. So you've got a plan and they do something else? No, I always feel, I'm always aware of the construction. I mean, I'm always aware of pretty much who they are and I've worked out the story. I suppose what I do have is a lingering sense.

This is the most superstitious I get. A lingering sense that they exist once the novel is finished, that they are in some way real and that you might be able to write them again and pick up their voices. You feel that with your books, definitely. I feel like I know where they're going. and what's happening and I can imagine it. I mean, one day, fucking have you done that? You definitely get that sense of one day.

And the Netflix show made it even more prescient of like, I was worrying. I was fucking worrying about them. Have you yet come back for a sequel? No, I'm very, I have been tempted. I mean, I love it. Marion does it really brilliantly, the recurring characters across the novels

and Elizabeth Strout does it wonderfully in the Olive Kittridge novels. And with this book, a small part of me, I thought, I wonder if Dexter could be Conrad, you know, if it could be a kind of cameo. It's not out of completely impossible. He has shared some qualities with Conrad. And with Sweet Sorry, the previous novel, there was a character who had a kind of an Emma-like point of view and voice.

And I thought maybe I could make it a kind of prequel and it could be young Emma. And I've always resisted it in the end because, I don't know, it is a dangerous little bit of a gimmick or that you might shape the story. to fit those characters rather than write the story you need to write. I'm really glad he wasn't Dex, because I feel like he's Conrad. He's not Dex. And Dex is a much more sympathetic character than that's. Yes, yeah, yeah, yeah. But what about Michael and Marnie?

Could there just be the next part of their story? Are you after a sequel? I'm just asking if it's possible. You want to know what happens? How happy are they. I know what happens. I decided I'm a very arrogant reader. I decide it. Yeah, yeah, yeah.

And I'm right. And so David could write it and I'd be like, dear David. Sorry you got your book wrong. in the book you have put maps the real places that they're walking and are you worried that the walk's going to become incredibly popular and the next time you're doing it to be alone there's going to be people waiting with their book autograph

well I'm particularly worried because the pub they stay in on the first night by the shore of the lake really doesn't exist yeah I saw you wrote at the end by the way it's not real because you'll end up in a car park No, I want that lovely curry hat. The curry night, that's the one I'd love to dance.

Yeah, yes. All of the pubs and the restaurants and hotels are all made up, but the landscape is real. And, yeah, the coast to coast is already quite a busy walk. I mean, you see the same, if you, I walked it to research the novel, and you see the same people every day and you have to book the accommodation a long way ahead. And I do worry about that. I suppose I also think. The Wi-Fi codes.

The Wi-Fi codes are fictional. Yeah. But they were coming from a place of truth. I was like David's. There's an emotional truth in the Wi-Fi codes. But I mean, the thing I feel about the coast to coast is it's very beautiful. It's an amazing walk. And there's something almost symbolic about walking from one side of the country to the other.

But there are lots of, I think, nicer walks. I think a lot of it is quite tough and quite plain. I mean, that walk we talked about earlier, the Northumberland Coast Path, I think, is an incredible walk. And I recommend everyone do that. It's stunning. My mom once had a boyfriend who made a walk up best of. nervous. And I bring this up because I thought of her a lot in this book because it was at the time quite a happy relationship, but he liked walking. Yeah. And was so convinced that she would love it

if she just gave it, she came along. And that thing, you know, the weather, either is going to exhilarate you that you're outdoors and cold and wet, yeah, and experiencing it. And I think my mum came on a period, like halfway up. And so she's had like a jumper tide round her ways. And there's a picture of them at the summit. And it's so great to say. see how angry she is. Just how angry she is. And someone's going, no, we're here now. You've done it.

You know, it's downhill. Easy. The thing about these kind of things in relationships is that when you really love something, it doesn't have to be a walk. It can be a film, a piece of music, a book. You are so sure that the person you love it will love it, yeah, yeah. We'll love it too. Yeah.

Or the offering it to them is like offering a part of yourself. And if they reject it, it is they are rejecting you. Yeah. It's huge, isn't it? Which is why I thought the Marni's, Marnie's slow acceptance of walking is very funny. Yeah, my kids are like, yeah, great. My kids are really fought against it.

I'm not surprised. Oh, geez, a dad that wants to take you walking. Just take me to spay for two weeks. They always wanted to keep the car in sight. And the longer the walk, the more, the more angry they'd be by the end of it. Yeah, yeah. Because you've got to walk back, haven't you? Yeah.

Yeah, I'd be furious with you as well. Is this where you wanted to end up? Like, even though I know you were saying you, an actor and scriptwriter, was your heart always thinking, I would like to be a novelist. Oh, wow. Well, I wouldn't have put a name to it. I mean, it would have seemed completely improbable

like being an astronaut or a pop star, one of those things, when I was younger. And I think a lot of the reason I stuck with acting was because I liked the idea of writing, but I didn't say that I was a writer until quite late into my 20s. I didn't show anyone my work. It took a long time for me to find that confidence. A little bit like Emma in one day, you know,

it felt like such an affront to give someone something I'd written and say, do you mind giving some of your time to this? It took me a long, long time to find my way into it. And I did it via script editing and script reading. But, I mean, now I still can't quite believe it. I love it. I love being able to write fiction and scripts

and to work with actors and brilliant directors and collaborate. But then also find time I can sit by myself and have absolute control. To be able to do it for a living for me is a, yeah, absolute dream come true, really. I mean, it amazes me every day. I don't know how it happened, but I'm extremely grateful. I do. You're very good of it. There's a kind of cognitive dissonance with huge success. Well, I heard Marion talking about this. Yeah, I was to say you have also been published in 40 languages. Yeah. Yeah. I mean, and also you have to accept that part of it is luck. I can name a lot of writers who are much, much better writers than me technically. And

in terms of their imagination and their range. They're listening going, please see you. I asked you when we first came in before we were recording David about, because obviously you are having this huge success. The kids are discovering you. Then you have a brand new book coming out. Does it feel like, oh, great, it's the next stage.

I can't wait for people to read my novel. Or is there a sense of, oh, how will people receive this? Yeah, definitely. I mean, especially now I'm six books in. you're aware of repeating yourself and you're aware of your own, you know, tropes and preoccupations and whether, is it a good thing to repeat yourself? Is it a good thing to develop a style or a range of subjects? Jane Austen did a right on it. Yeah, I mean, but I sometimes punish myself a little about that. I think, well, maybe the next book should be a sort of sci-fi saga. Is it like being an actor

who, are you Carrie Grant or are you Alec Guinness? Who do you want to be? And I guess I'm accepting now that probably I have a particular voice and that changing it now would be a bit like changing my signature or my speaking voice. It would be very difficult. At the same time, I want to push at the edges of that and write as ambitiously and as well as I can and make each book different but not so different that I fall outside my natural range.

Well, I think you have 100% achieved in pushing yourself but keeping the thing that people love about what you do and it's such a lovely book. Harry has gone all dewy eyes. Yeah. Not just is because of the Austin connection. I know. When I thought the persuasion quotes.

You already really, really like David. And then he wrote a Guardian article. And then I opened the book and the quote is, the quote is like Jane Austen, persuasion, as you know, from listening to the persuasion episode. Thank you so much. Thank you so much. We couldn't believe you said yesterday coming on the podcast. And absolutely just loved this book.

It's brilliant. It's so brilliant. Thank you. Yeah. On my ass going for a walk. Thank you for listening to the Weirdo's Book Club. You are here. It's out now. Guess what else is out now?

My novel Weirdo and Carriads book, You're Not Alone. You can get them in paperback. So light, so easy to carry. You can find out about all the upcoming books we're going to be discussing on our Instagram at Sarah and Carriads Weirdo's Book Club. Tag us, tell us what you're reading. Thank you for reading with us.

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