The Netmums Podcast - S1 Ep47: Joanne Harris on writing a bestseller with a four-year-old in tow

Episode Date: August 24, 2021

Listen as Annie and Wendy chat to Joanne Harris about keeping your creative juices flowing when you're a mum to little ones, PLUS what it's like losing your taste for chocolate thanks to chemo - when chocolate is the thing you're most famous for!

You're listening to Sweat, Snot and Tears brought to you by Netmums. I'm Annie O'Leary and I'm Wendy Gollage and together we talk about all of this week's sweaty, snotty and tearful parenting moments with guests who are far more interesting than we are. Welcome to another delightful episode of Sweat, Snot and Tears. We're interviewing a very beloved author in today's episode and I'm taking that opportunity to share that I am reading a book, I'm in the middle of it, that I'm so entranced by that you should all feel jolly lucky

that I'm here at all. I'm tempted just to go and curl up in a corner somewhere and never speak to anyone ever again. It's not new. I think it's about 10 years old. It's called The Song of Achilles by Madeline Miller.

And to me, it is everything. I'm living in that world right now. Wenz, what are you reading? I have just finished reading the follow-on to The Handmaid's Tale by Margaret Atwood. So it's called The Testaments. And is it as good? Well, the thing is, I read The Handmaid's Tale for A-level. So it was an awfully long time ago.

But I really did enjoy it. And I'm also reading a plethora of David Williams books to the kids. Ah, yes. Well, it wouldn't be a summer holiday without lots of David Williams books to the kids so. Ah yes well it wouldn't be a summer holiday without lots of kids books reading going on. Would not. Now I think I raise this because I think the power to lift someone out of their everyday life and literally transport them through writing to a whole other world and teach them things about life along the way is probably the most magical superpower that there is

and today's guest is one of those in possession of this greatest of gifts. Listeners please will you welcome Joanne Harris. Welcome Joanne. Thank you it's great to be with you. Oh good. Now Joanne we usually kick off by asking our guests how their lockdowns have been because it's been a pretty unusual 18 months for everybody um but 2020 dealt you an unexpected hand on top of a few lockdowns didn't it because you were diagnosed with breast cancer yeah did lockdown wrote three books got cancer you know the usual just how it goes and i was going to say do you mind first of all if i ask how you are i'm fine thank you for asking i'm actually feeling much better um better than I have in months I've finished my chemo and my radio and uh you can see that my hair isn't quite back yet but my eyebrows are which is

nice I miss them. Is it one of those things you don't realize how much you love your eyebrows till they're gone? Well yeah I kind of I kind of don't realise how much hair I had until I lost it all. And I did wonder why my nose was bleeding all the time. But actually, it turns out that the little hairs in your nose fall out and then shred your nasal passages. And so for six weeks, I had nosebleeds all the time. It was all a bit revolting, really. I used to open the door to the poor postman looking like Carrie at the prom with tampons stuck up my nose and no hair. So, you know, it was all a bit grim, but it's food for the next book, I bet.

I was going to say, I hope, well, not I hope you're going to write about it, but it would be fascinating to read your take on it now one of the reasons we were keen to have you um on sweats not tears as you know we're a parenting podcast and mother-child relationships seem to be a recurring theme in your books i would like to ask you what is it about them that fascinates you or what is the essential truth of them that you're kind of keen to share with the rest of us? Well, I think the answer to that does vary depending on the book. True. Of course, because I have a daughter, and because I write about what I know, at least

emotionally, then I tend to draw a lot upon that relationship. I think it was inevitable that I would. And when I wrote Chocolat, I was the mother of a four-year-old. And so I wrote about the mother of a small child and their relationship. And then when I wrote about those characters again, it was later, I was the mother of a teenager. I wrote about being the mother of a teenager. And I've been on this kind of journey of discovery about what it's like to be the mother of an older child, a child who's left home, a child who's got married. You know, I'm still learning all sorts of things. But it's, to me, it's very much the central relationship of some of those books. And it's obviously one of the most important relationships in my life. Well, I'm going to skip forward a bit, actually, Annie, because you had a

question later about writing around young children. Yes, I'm desperate to know how one does this. So Annie and I are currently both working through the summer surrounded by darling little people who are locked in their bedrooms currently so they don't come and interrupt. And how do you do that? How do you write around a very young little girl and create something so inspirational?

Well, I had a certain amount of help from my mother who did childcare. So I had Sunday mornings to work on and that was good. But really, I think much of it was to do with just grabbing any time that was available and not expecting too much of yourself. I think, you know, the best advice I've ever been given is don't set yourself impossible tasks. And so I decided quite early on that if I could just keep an idea going in my mind and maybe just write 300 words a day, that's 20 minutes, then I would have the first draft of a book within the year, which is pretty much how it works. So when I'm very busy, I still do this. And when I was, obviously, I was the mother of this four-year-old, I was teaching full-time. I was an examiner for the A-level board. And I was

writing this book as well. I don't really quite know how I managed it, but I think the thing was, I wanted to do it. I loved it. I gave up things that I didn't love to do the thing that I did love. And so ironing kind of disappeared. I was going to say, what were the things you didn't love? I'd quite like to make a list of mine. Well, most housework just didn't get done, I think. It still doesn't get done really, but you know, sacrifices have to be made. And if ironing is one of those sacrifices, who are we to argue, honestly? Yes. Duran Harris said we didn't have to iron, so we're not going to. My mother is appalled. I haven't ironed anything since 1997.

I very rarely. I got very good at just sort of buying things that didn't need to be ironed although my mother still irons things like pants yeah my mum ironed socks like what's that pants pillowcases oh for goodness a woman with too much time on her hands as far as i'm concerned we'll tell her she needs to start with 300 words a day. It only takes 20 minutes. She could have a book done in a year, right? You've met my mum. No offence, mum. So we know you're close to your daughter and you've clearly passed on your love of language and your gift for storytelling

as she also works in the industry, I believe. Yeah. So how do you do that? As mums of younger children, I've got one who loves reading and writing and one who loves trampolines and thinks isn't particularly keen on the humble written word at all.

How do you pass on that love? How can our listeners help share their love of reading and writing? Well, for a start, I don't think that reading and trampolines are necessarily mutually exclusive. I'm pretty certain that Anoushka would have loved trampolines when she was a kid if we'd had one. But no, I think these things have to be started early. And they have to be meant. I think, you know, I meet a lot of parents

who would really like their kids to read, but they don't read themselves. And the children don't see them reading and don't hear them talking about what they've read and don't feel that they're enjoying books. And so they don't really have very much of a guideline. Now, I was read to as a child from a very, very early age. My parents both read to me, my grandparents read to me. I was very lucky. I remember my father used to record these kind of proto-audiobooks for me on these big reel-to-reel tapes, because in those days, even cassette recorders were just few and far between. But I read to Anoushka when she was very little, and every night I would read to her. And even long after she could read for herself,

I still read to her, because we both liked it.. And so I think if you can make it part of a bedtime routine, and something that you genuinely enjoy, and the child genuinely enjoys, and it's not a duty, or a kind of schooling experience, or something that you do out of worthiness, but just something you do out of fun, I think that can go an awful long way. Who was the clever person who said, you don't do what your parents say, you do what your parents do? I think it's one of those things, isn't it? Absolutely. Absolutely. And also, I think one of the important things when you are encouraging a child to read, and my younger brother was quite a reluctant reader,

and he was quite bad at reading at school, and I read to him to try to encourage him to read for himself. And I realised that the books that I'd liked were maybe too complicated, or they just didn't appeal to him. And so I found something that he liked. I think it's quite important not to judge what your child likes and what they want to read, but to go with the flow and to let them enjoy whatever it is and never to say, well, that's a stupid book or that's a worthless book or you should be reading this book, which is better. Because even if you think that, it's quite easy for a young child to associate reading with disapproval. And then they just won't do it at all. as a teacher of boys and with my brother who, by the way, started off reading for himself from those old Steve Jackson, make your own role-playing adventure books that you did with

the dice. And he took off like a bird with those things. It was amazing. I was so pleased. So it's about letting them find their groove. What interests them might not be what you feel is an appropriate choice. Or it might not be what we read when we were kids and loved. Do you know what I mean? Absolutely. I think sometimes we are like that. We want to share something that we loved as children. And we feel slightly rejected when the child thinks it's too complicated or it's boring.

But actually, that's what kids are like. That's what we were like when we were kids. I think the wanting to share thing is an interesting concept. And in fact, kind of segues very nicely into something else I wanted to ask you, which is another thing that comes up quite a lot in your writing is a sense of community and kind of the outsiders and the insiders and communities. And obviously, Netmums as a website is a community, but strangely one where

people never meet and might not even know each other's real names ever, which completely baffles me and fascinates me. What is it that you find fascinating about communities to the point that you like writing about them? Well, we all live in them. We've all experienced what it's like. We don't all live in a village like me, but we all know what it's like to either go to a school or work in an office or a hospital or somewhere else where people come and go and see each other on a daily basis and interact and where human dynamics play out and where the chemistry of that community can be affected by the arrival of somebody new or the departure of somebody. We understand and we build these communities for ourselves. And I think

that online communities are very similar. Actually, there's the same human dynamics there. In fact, I wrote a whole book about this, a rather nasty book called Blue-Eyed Boy, which was all about the communities that we build for ourselves on the internet and how we choose to project ourselves, how we portray ourselves. Because, you know, I mean, I've been part of internet communities, but not usually as Joanne Harris, the writer, unless it was a writing community. You know, I can be many things and, you know, I could go on a cancer survivors forum and I would not be the same person as if I were on a writing forum or let's say a fan forum for Buffy the Vampire Slayer I'd be a different person there too

and you know we are all these people and we're able online to to connect with the people who are able to share our experiences or the people who share our passions and that's great it's one of the the wonderful things about the internet. And you joked earlier you said oh the your experience with cancer over the last year it's a book in the making is everything something you've personally had exposure to or have you just got the most creative imagination of anyone i've ever met well know, I've not murdered anybody yet. No, I think it's not quite so much as, it's not as binary as whether you've experienced it or not. I think sometimes some of what I write does come out of my experience. I mean, my new book, A Narrow Door, is absolutely drawn from 15 years of teaching in a boys' grammar school. I would never have chosen to write about

that world if I hadn't known that world, because I wouldn't have school. I would never have chosen to write about that world if I hadn't known that world because I wouldn't have been able to project into it or to bring readers into it. But I do think that on some level, there has to be an emotional realism with what you write. I don't think you could write about being in love if you'd never been in love, or bereavement if you'd never had a loss, or murder if you've never felt as if you kind of understood what it was like to want to kill somebody. I think these things come from deep inside, and you don't have to have necessarily played them all out, but you have to feel that on some level, at least, you can connect with that character through something that you yourself have felt. And I think that very often being a writer is a bit like a method actor.

You are not becoming that person, but you are trying to inhabit that person for a while to see how they work. Do you find it hard to let go of a character once you've inhabited them? A few of your books have kind of, the characters have popped back up again obviously with the shocker love follow-ups and and some others cluster together is it really hard to let those people go how do you do that how do you stop inhabiting someone and then go and inhabit somebody else well i don't really think of it as letting them go i think of them as kind of drifting off and having adventures outside of my circle. And then when they have something interesting to tell me, they sometimes kind of pop back. And it's a little bit like getting letters from people you've almost forgotten about.

And all of a sudden, you get this long chatty letter about something that's happened to them, and you are back in their world. And I feel a little bit like that with some of my characters. I mean, with other characters, I'm just really glad to see them go. And I know I'm not going to write about them again. But most of the time, exactly. You know, it was like, no, it was really hard being you. And I'm really glad I don't have to be you anymore.

Sometimes that happens. But a lot of the time, because I've thought so much about them and why they are who they are, even if they're quite difficult characters and they're not necessarily all that likeable, I genuinely feel something for them by the time I finish the book. And so this is why characters hover on the outside of things and sometimes come and either come to the forefront of a book, as they have in the Chocolat books, and continue with their story a few years later. Or sometimes they just give a little wave from a completely different plot, where I feel that those two worlds have just intersected just for a little bit. And I quite like it when that happens, because to me, a lot of my books are,

they're not standalones, they're parts of a jigsaw, which once it's finished, and that will be my life's work, people will be able to stand back from it and go, ah, that's what she was trying to say. Do you know, this is going to sound really odd, do you know what you're trying to say? Or does it become apparent in the saying of it? Oh, it's not a silly question at all. No, it's absolutely something to do with the writing and the progression of the plot and the development of the character. And at some point, what I hope for when I'm writing a book, when I've really studied a character and thought about their voice and their feelings and their background and their past, at some point, I hope that that character will sit up and start to talk to me. And I know that sounds

slightly like demonic possession. But actually, it's something that I need to really believe in that character, to believe in their life and their agency. And so yeah, a lot of the time, the character tells me what it is that they want to say. And sometimes it's something that I believe and sometimes it's something completely different. Have you ever preemptively just got rid of a character because they were annoying you so much have you killed them off yeah you're gonna die in the next chapter because I've had enough yeah I've had a gut for you I'm done that's it not exactly no but I don't generally find boring characters worth pursuing and so if a character just isn't interesting enough I usually blame myself it's either because I don't know enough about them because actually most people who say

they're boring people you talk to them for 10 minutes everyone's got a story haven't they yeah they have this extraordinary life and so if the character's boring or tiresome then I've done something wrong in getting to know them and I need to know more about them. Or sometimes I'll just let them go for a while until something suggests itself. I mean, with the book that's just come out now, A Narrow Door, I had two distinct stories, which I thought were two different books. And I realised that actually they belonged together. And so I put them together in the same book and they completed each other that way. So we've interviewed a few singers along the way

and we often ask them do they mind that there there's one song that kind of stands out and do they mind always singing that song and I guess the same question can be applied to you in terms of Chocolat do you ever get annoyed and think oh I wish they'd asked me about something else and you're probably wishing I'd asked you about something else. But is it something that you love to talk about or do you get a little tired of it? You know what? I don't actually get asked about it all that much anymore.

And people do mention it in passing. But it's been 22 years now since Chocolat and a lot of people who have read my books have entered through a different door. They've either entered through the fantasy novels or through the novellas which are based on folklore or through the thrillers. Some people haven't even read Chocolat and so it's not quite as pronounced as it used to be. I mean, yes, some people remember Chocolat, but most of the readers have actually pretty much moved on and they'll talk about that book.

And I'm really grateful that they still love it and that it's in print and people still talk about it. But it's not 100% of the world anymore. And it was, at a certain point, I thought it was going to be. I thought, you know, I'm never going to be able to talk about another book. But that feeling went away really fast. And I think it's partly because I write so many different things. And so I've got different audiences for different avenues of storytelling.

I mean, I've even got a very small fandom that just wishes that I'd write another Doctor Who book. Yeah. I was going to ask about the fact that you write for very distinct audiences. Do you ever find yourself writing for one audience and think, oh, I wish I was writing the other ones today? Well, if I do, I write for the other ones. So you can write simultaneously. That's fascinating. Yeah, I usually work on two, three things at once because I don't necessarily work on them in the same day. But I find that my writing has cycles and because I haven't

necessarily always planned everything out really intricately as I go, because a lot of what I write is based on reveals and new ideas coming to me and sometimes having to stop and do some research. And so usually there's a point after a certain number of weeks working on one project, I will need to let it rest for a few weeks. And so I'll move to another project. And so I've always got at least two projects. Right now I've got three going on pretty much at the same time. It's a bit like having, you know, like preparing a meal. You're prepping something while something else is simmering away on the hob and then you turn the thing down or maybe you then do something else with another pan and then you leave that for a bit and you try to coordinate it as best you can. And so that's kind of how I work. It's a bit of a messy way of doing

things in some ways and it's not always predictable which one is going to be finished first but you know it it kind of works for me because it means that i'm not waiting for the next thing to happen and worrying about whether it will that's a good point what something else i wanted to ask you is does a niche can mind that so obviously you you mentioned earlier you wrote Chocolat when she was four and the and in the book there's a younger there's a young child and and then in the as the books go on they were it was almost mapping your life like mapping your life as a mother and children growing up and the continuation of that journey so it kind of feels like we grew up with her is that something that she minds does she mind kind of sharing you and and your experience

as a mother and a daughter together or is it something that she loves like you could almost read it all as a as a love letter to her really couldn't you you could and and i think it's it's easy to see the parallels because there are parallels but i am not vyan and anushka is not quite anook either and she knows this she's known this and she's known about what I've done and how I've done it for such a long time that I think she's used to it and she doesn't think it's weird she also knows that although it may feel very intimate to people reading it I am not telling the whole story I'm holding back an awful lot of stuff. So yes, certain things are coming out in that story, but it's never the whole truth.

So the next big question is, what's next for Joanne? What are you working on at the moment? What are we going to see next? I'm not sure what you're going to see next, because I'm not sure which one of my three projects will be finished, but I'm working on one of my fantasy folklore books, one of my Loki R folklore books one of my low-key rune marks books um and there is another thing which is allied to my my honeycomb project which is a kind of extended fairy tale and I'm also working on something much more in the region of A Narrow Door, which hasn't really got a title yet,

but it's a very dark, feminist, supernatural comedy, which I'm really enjoying. And that's a standalone, that's not connected to any previous book at all. That sounds very intriguing. And have your experiences over the last year changed how you write at all? I'm in awe of the fact that you were writing three projects while going through chemo while living through lockdown. I barely managed to live through lockdown, let alone anything else. I think anybody who lived through lockdown has already done really well. Yeah, I second you on that. But has your experience changed the way you write? Has it changed the way you think about your characters at all? I think it's a difficult question to ask because I think that as a writer,

I'm always evolving, learning, experiencing new things and feeding those experiences into what I'm writing. And so it's very hard to know. All I know is that I'm on a kind of arc of exploring different narratives. And I hope I'll always be on that arc, really. I mean, I don't think there's ever an end to the journey. As soon as you think that's right, I've made it now, then you're beginning to lose whatever it is that you had. And so I'm always trying new things.

And I think that's always been true. And I think inevitably some of what's happened over the past 18 months is going to get unpacked somehow into fiction. I just don't quite know how it will happen because I never do know that. All I can do is watch and see what comes out of it. I love that, that it's just, you seem so chilled about it. It's just, what will happen? It'll come out. Well, I'm not that chilled about it, but I know that it will. So how would you like to be remembered by your daughter? We're not being morbid because you've been poorly, by the way. We ask this question of every single person on our pod. Oh, I hope she'll remember me with love and affection. And I hope she remembers all the stories that I told her when she was little and all the songs that I sang to her.

And she tells those stories and sings those songs to her children. And, you know, she's carrying on a tradition. I've not been a perfect parent in any way, but I don't think anybody is. And I hope that she knows that and that whatever good is in me, she inherits and whatever bad she leaves beside. Like a book almost that's being edited, take the rubbish bits out and leave the good bits behind. Now, our penultimate question again

is another that we ask all of our guests and I'm particularly fascinated to ask you because food is a big thing in your writing and also you've written several cookbooks. What's for tea, tea Joanne and who's cooking oh well whatever it is it will probably be me but I haven't planned it at all I don't really plan meals particularly not when I'm working on something so at the moment because it's summertime it will probably be something pretty easy to assemble and there might not be

much cooking involved in it at all it might be a nice fresh salad with a zesty dressing and maybe some grapefruit in there. I'm just getting my taste buds back after months of chemo and not really being able to taste anything at all. And so I'm really enjoying really ordinary things like tomatoes. I realised that I could actually taste tomatoes properly the other day. So that's fun. So I'm going through all the things that I could actually taste tomatoes properly the other day. So that's fun. So I'm going through all the things that I can taste. It was very exciting last night when I realised that finally chocolate doesn't taste disgusting anymore. So that's a big victory as far as I can see. If chocolate had been ruined forever for you, it would be the biggest crime ever.

Oh, that would have been very sad. Right, Wendy, over to you for the final question. She's done it again, listeners, every time she leaves this question to me so joanne our very last question and you can choose the language you do this in in fact is sing us your lullaby when anushka was little what lullaby did you sing to help her go to sleep well it is a lull that, it's a French lullaby that my mother taught me. I'm going to sing you just one verse of it because it's a very long lullaby because it's supposed to actually sing your child to sleep. And it's a 17th century song about a girl living on the palace steps who is courted by many people but who gives her heart

to a young man who makes her shoes and it's because he tells her a wonderful story about the bed that they're going to sleep in and it goes like this au marche du palais, il y a une si belle fille l'on a, il y a une si belle fille. And the verses repeat over like this and the young man tells the story about how the bed will be very large and how there will be curtains like sails and in the corners there will be little bunches of flowers and in the middle of the bed which has got larger and larger throughout the song there will be a river and all the king's horses will come and drink from this river and and it's it's a beautiful very old song and i don't actually know anybody but my family who remembers it oh i love what an incredible story

and of course you had to sing a song that had a story attached to it. I love it. Thank you so much, Joanne Harris. You've been an absolute marvel. And we're all so delighted that you're feeling better and that you can taste things again. Thank you very much. It's lovely to have been your guest.

Thank you for inviting me. Thank you. Have a lovely day, Joanne. And you too.