Episode 106

full
Published on:

28th Nov 2021

The Real Writing Process of Emma Newman: Part Two

The concluding part of Tom Pepperdine's interview with author Emma Newman. Emma discusses the pressure of writing to generate income, the effect her divorce had on her writing, and what is holding her back on her next big project.

You can find Emma on Twitter here: https://twitter.com/EmApocalyptic

You can find all of Emma's books here: https://amzn.to/3kKie8R

And everything else on her website: http://www.enewman.co.uk/

And you can find more information on our upcoming guests on the following links:

https://twitter.com/Therealwriting1

https://www.instagram.com/realwritingpro

https://www.facebook.com/therealwritingprocesspodcast

Transcript
Tom:

Hello and welcome to the Real Writing Process.

Tom:

I'm your host, Tom Pepperdine.

Tom:

And this episode is the second part of my interview with Emma Newman.

Tom:

Do I need to say anything else?

Tom:

Not really.

Tom:

Here's the intro music.

Tom:

What's a typical writing session for you?

Tom:

Do you have a set structure of writing every day or do you just

Tom:

work sort of Monday to Friday?

Tom:

And do you write in the mornings or afternoons?

Tom:

How frequently do you write and how long do you write for?

Emma:

So when I'm in a first draft phase, I write five days a week.

Emma:

And depending on the project is what my word count goal is for those days.

Emma:

So when I was writing the Split Worlds series, I was writing 4,000 words a day.

Emma:

So I would get the first draft of a novel done in five weeks, on average.

Emma:

With the Planetfall books, it settled to 2000 words a day.

Emma:

They were just harder to write.

Emma:

And also when you're writing book four of a five book series, it's

Emma:

like hanging out with your old mates.

Emma:

It's, you know them all, you just have to figure out what's happening in

Emma:

that scene and then kind of write it.

Emma:

I'm not one of these people who say, "oh, the characters took over

Emma:

and I didn't have any control."

Emma:

No, I am not like that at all.

Emma:

But it flows so easily that it was a lot less effort.

Emma:

When I got bedded into that series.

Emma:

Whereas with the Planetfall books, they are so, they were so

Emma:

challenging to write in terms of incorporating the research I'd done.

Emma:

Making sure that I was paying my tax, making sure I was writing about things

Emma:

sensitively, as correctly as I could, as emotionally authentically as I could.

Emma:

That was hard work.

Emma:

The current book that I'm writing at the moment, my aim is only a thousand

Emma:

words a day because I'm still recovering from over a year of not being able

Emma:

to write a sustained narrative.

Emma:

But I'm finding that I'm usually writing somewhere around

Emma:

1500 to 1800 words a day now.

Emma:

I can feel that coming back to me.

Emma:

But one of the things that I find very useful about having a regularity

Emma:

to my schedule is that it also gives me an insight into when something

Emma:

is not right, when something isn't working, because I slow down and it

Emma:

gets harder to reach the word count.

Emma:

And I may not consciously know why that is until I stepped back and

Emma:

go, oh, actually I don't know how I'm going to get to this next bit."

Emma:

Or, "I'm getting to the end of my five chapter breakdown.

Emma:

I can't see where I'm going.

Emma:

I actually need to stop earlier than I thought and think about

Emma:

the next bit before I write it."

Tom:

So word counts are really useful for you as an indicator of

Tom:

whether something's working or not?

Emma:

Yeah it's very useful from that perspective, but also I find,

Emma:

it just helps me to have a momentum at that phase of the project.

Emma:

And also this is what I consider to be my main job.

Emma:

I'm also a narrator.

Emma:

I also do other things for income, but this is the spinal

Emma:

cord of my working life.

Emma:

So I need to be able to make a certain amount of progress so that I can survive.

Emma:

And having that goal every day helps with prioritization.

Emma:

Because there are lots and lots of things that I do.

Emma:

And lots of concurrent projects when I'm in a first draft phase, I have to

Emma:

have that as my priority because I have to make sure that the majority of my

Emma:

thinking time away from the keyboard is devoted to that particular project.

Tom:

Yeah.

Tom:

So when you're in your first stage writing are you, you said five days a week.

Tom:

Do you start at the same time or do you try to start work at the same time and how

Tom:

long for your a thousand words that you're currently working on, how many hours

Tom:

would that you would expect that to be?

Emma:

So it's not so much that I have to start by a particular point.

Emma:

It's that after I've had my second cup of coffee, that's when I start writing.

Emma:

So if for example, recently I did a huge audiobook.

Emma:

And it was the length of what would normally be two and a half novels, but

Emma:

it was a big historical nonfiction.

Emma:

And it was a fantastic project, but whew, boy, it really took it

Emma:

out of me, really exhausted me.

Emma:

And so I was starting later in the day on the days that I wasn't in the studio,

Emma:

I was starting my writing later in the day, just because I was so tired.

Emma:

Because six hours of narrating is exhausting.

Emma:

And yeah, so other projects that I am doing will have a big impact on

Emma:

when I start, when I, when my brain has recovered enough to be able to

Emma:

start that bit of writing for the day.

Emma:

And as for how long it takes, it can be influenced by how tired I am.

Emma:

I'm autistic, but I also have strong ADHD traits.

Emma:

And I found that if I am very tired, my executive function

Emma:

starts to go a bit haphazard.

Emma:

And so I find it very difficult to stay on task and to stay focused.

Emma:

So let's say that all conditions are good.

Emma:

I'm not in the middle of a huge audiobook project, and trying to

Emma:

shoehorn writing days in between several days at the studio per week.

Emma:

And that I'm not too exhausted by life events.

Emma:

A thousand words can take me anything between 45 minutes to two

Emma:

hours, depending on how difficult the scene is that I'm writing.

Emma:

I've written a thousand words in 25 minutes before.

Emma:

If it's something I've been thinking a lot about, that it's in flow, that I

Emma:

don't have to consider carefully exactly how I'm going to execute that scene.

Emma:

Dialogue also can be very fast to write.

Emma:

So yeah, it's I write it until it's done.

Emma:

I will probably have one cup of tea in the middle of it usually.

Emma:

And then the writing phase of the done is, the day rather, it's done

Emma:

by lunchtime usually, hopefully.

Emma:

And then in the afternoon I advance other projects or I do research for the book.

Tom:

So when it's coming to the end of a writing session is it that you're

Tom:

constantly checking the word counts?

Tom:

Is that a thousand words yet?

Tom:

Or is it just, have I got any tea left in the cup?

Tom:

Or is it lunchtime yet?

Tom:

Am I hungry?

Tom:

Or is it just, yes, I want to finish this chapter.

Tom:

I want to finish this section.

Tom:

How'd you wrap it up?

Emma:

So it depends on lots of different factors.

Emma:

So like today I wrote 1800 words where my goal was a thousand because

Emma:

I wanted to resolve a particular thread in a conversation that was

Emma:

happening between the characters.

Emma:

And I just didn't feel satisfied walking away from it when I hit my target.

Emma:

So sometimes I will be like a few paragraphs off the end of a chapter

Emma:

and go, oh, I can't leave it like this.

Emma:

And I'll write over what I need to write, because I want to

Emma:

reach that particular point.

Tom:

Do you have a software that alerts you when you've written a thousand words?

Emma:

Yeah.

Emma:

I write in Scrivener.

Emma:

So Scrivener, you can set your project targets and it does a little

Emma:

noise when you hit your word count.

Emma:

And a little notification comes up saying, you've reached your word count for the

Emma:

day and you can set your project target dependent on the number of words that

Emma:

you need to write by a certain date.

Emma:

So if you overwrite on particular days, it can lower the daily word

Emma:

count that you need to reach to be able to reach your project target.

Emma:

Because I've been overwriting recently, I actually only need to write 607

Emma:

words a day now or something to reach the target word count by the end of

Emma:

August, which is for this project.

Emma:

Cause I need to go back to my other one in September.

Emma:

But I don't take much notice of it.

Emma:

I'm not one of these people who say that you have to write a thousand

Emma:

words a day to be a serious writer.

Emma:

And if any kind of writing advice that starts with should or features should

Emma:

just needs to be thrown in the bin.

Emma:

And then that bin needs to be set on fire.

Emma:

And then thrown into the sun.

Emma:

I hate all of that.

Emma:

The thousand word goal for me at the moment is a focus, a prioritization

Emma:

focus, and a way for me to feel any bumps in my momentum to alert me to there

Emma:

being an issue with something that I'm writing, that something isn't working.

Emma:

It isn't a, if I don't write a thousand words a day, I'm a terrible

Emma:

person and I'm not a real writer.

Emma:

It's not a tool to beat myself up with.

Emma:

It has been in the past.

Emma:

I'm not, but I'm just more sage about it now.

Tom:

And do you have any particular writing rituals?

Tom:

So you said you've got to have your second cup of coffee and

Tom:

you tend to write before lunch.

Tom:

Do you write with silence?

Tom:

Do you have mood music?

Tom:

Do you have certain items of clothing that you like to wear?

Tom:

Is there anything quirky within your rituals that you need to have?

Emma:

No, they've all fallen away over the years.

Emma:

I realized that they were crutches.

Emma:

So when I wrote the first three novels, which I, the first three novels I

Emma:

completed, which were not the Split World series, they were another series.

Emma:

The first of which was published and never should have been.

Emma:

But anyway, that series I wrote to music and that was because it was based on a

Emma:

role playing game that I had GMed and I had invented the world and I'd run the

Emma:

game for a couple of years and I decided to write a trilogy based on the game.

Emma:

And so I played the music that I played in the background whilst

Emma:

running the game for my friends.

Emma:

And that helped me get into the mood.

Emma:

And then I just discovered that actually I couldn't, and didn't want to, be

Emma:

precious about anything that I needed because as life became more complicated

Emma:

and more demanding, I had to fit writing in where I could, because when I was

Emma:

writing, the early Split Worlds novels, I was still working as a SEO copywriter.

Emma:

My God, that is a soul destroying job.

Emma:

See, this is why I never, ever want to go back to other kinds of work.

Emma:

When I was writing the first three novels, based on the game, I was a teacher.

Emma:

And so I had already learnt some skills in how to maximize small

Emma:

amounts of time to be able to write.

Emma:

But yeah, I started to realize that the only thing that I absolutely had

Emma:

to have to be able to write was coffee.

Emma:

I had to have my coffee in the morning, but that I need that to do anything.

Emma:

I'm just addicted to caffeine.

Emma:

It's not just writing.

Emma:

I write in silence now.

Emma:

I like to have my own space, but I can write in a cafe if I need to.

Emma:

I've written on planes.

Emma:

I've written in hotel rooms all over the world.

Emma:

When I had deadlines.

Emma:

When it's your full-time job, pretty much, you have to be able to write,

Emma:

regardless of what is going on around you sometimes, because there's a deadline.

Tom:

Yeah.

Emma:

So yeah, the only thing I would say is that I would probably

Emma:

write some really rubbish words if I hadn't had my two cups of coffee.

Emma:

I, you know, obviously I set my office up in a way that is

Emma:

comfortable, but is it ideal?

Emma:

No, I don't think I've ever found my ideal office set up.

Emma:

And I don't know if I ever will.

Emma:

But the most important thing is that the words get written.

Tom:

Yeah.

Tom:

And with uh, it's something that's come up with a lot of people and we've

Tom:

spoken a bit tangentially about mental health, but is there any point during

Tom:

a writing project and does it happen regularly that you have a sudden

Tom:

belief that you're a terrible writer.

Tom:

And that, yeah, you're worried like why on earth do people employ me?

Tom:

The complete imposter syndrome.

Tom:

What am I doing?

Tom:

Has that ever happened?

Emma:

I'm laughing because that has never not happened.

Emma:

That is every single day.

Emma:

That is, it would be more apt to ask.

Emma:

Have you ever had a day where you have ever not felt this way?

Emma:

Have you ever had a day where you've sat down to work and gone, "Yay.

Emma:

I'm a writer and I'm going to write things that people love."

Emma:

No.

Emma:

I've, I've never, ever felt secure in my ability as a writer.

Emma:

Um,

Tom:

And how do you get past that?

Tom:

Cause a lot of people would give up because of that.

Tom:

But obviously you haven't.

Tom:

So what's your coping mechanism?

Emma:

One of my cope, it comes from from living with what I thought was generalized

Emma:

anxiety disorder for 20 odd years.

Emma:

And it turns out I was just autistic and nobody diagnosed me.

Emma:

But in the process of living with what I thought was generalized anxiety disorder,

Emma:

I developed a variety of techniques that enabled me to still do things,

Emma:

even though I felt crushing terror or massive physical symptoms of anxiety, or

Emma:

I basically developed a way to overcome the mental obstacles, because if I didn't,

Emma:

I wouldn't do anything, I wouldn't be able to achieve anything in my life.

Emma:

And in fact, I do a workshop on the techniques I did developed at conventions.

Emma:

I'm thinking about doing it for YouTube actually.

Tom:

Yeah, that'd be great.

Emma:

Um, where it's basically, I just did a lot of work over the years, looking

Emma:

at when I found it very hard to write.

Emma:

I didn't write for 10 years because I was running away from writing

Emma:

after a significant success from my writing and learning to overcome

Emma:

that fear, recognizing that the root of all procrastination

Emma:

behavior in writing is fear and then addressing those fears directly.

Emma:

And then just having to do that for 15 years you learn to see it as what

Emma:

it is and you learn to recognize, or rather, I shouldn't say you learn.

Emma:

I have learned to recognize it as self-sabotaging and the, it is mood.

Emma:

And as Gurney says, mood is for cattle and for love play.

Emma:

It's not for professional writers.

Emma:

You have to just accept that you may never feel like an accomplished writer.

Emma:

I've accepted I will never feel like I am a good writer and that I'm

Emma:

going to be okay and that this book I'm writing is going to be sold.

Emma:

There are no guarantees.

Emma:

I'm terrified that this shared world book that I've been commissioned to write

Emma:

will be the last contract I ever have.

Emma:

It's a very common feeling amongst my friends, but I can't let

Emma:

that get in the way of the work.

Emma:

I have to write.

Emma:

It is what I do.

Emma:

And I have come to appreciate and understand that about

Emma:

myself, that I have to write.

Emma:

And there have been periods in my life, one of which has been very recent,

Emma:

where I've looked at walking away from it seriously and thinking I can't do

Emma:

this anymore, but I always come back.

Emma:

It always comes back to me and I just accept it now as part

Emma:

of the job is accepting that I don't have to be in the mood.

Emma:

I don't have to believe in myself.

Emma:

I don't have to have any confidence in my ability.

Emma:

All I need to do is to show up.

Tom:

Yeah.

Emma:

And in fact, that entire workshop I wrote because I was so fed up of reading

Emma:

writers on Twitter back when I was really struggling to be a writer saying, oh,

Emma:

all you need to do as a writer is to just sit down, bum in seat, start writing.

Emma:

That makes you a writer.

Emma:

No.

Emma:

You have to do the work to get into the seat.

Emma:

You have to do the work on facing that fear, accepting that you may not

Emma:

always feel like a writer, that you will always have imposter syndrome.

Emma:

That is where the work lies.

Emma:

And once you can start to do that, then you can sit down and have the

Emma:

bum in seat writing experience, but for service, it's a longer and

Emma:

harder journey to get to that point.

Tom:

Yeah, definitely.

Tom:

And that's really interesting to hear how you've gone through all of that.

Tom:

And it's a very common thing I hear is that yeah, you've got to put in the work.

Tom:

It's not just bums on seats, but putting in the work.

Tom:

And with periods of time where you may feel uninspired and you might

Tom:

have doubts about the writing, it's still writing a thousand words,

Tom:

because first draft, just get it down, it can always be pruned later?

Tom:

Or have there been more involved in uninspired moments?

Tom:

So literally you haven't got an idea in your head.

Tom:

Has that happened and how have you dealt with that?

Tom:

If it has?

Emma:

Yeah.

Emma:

So there have been two periods of my life where I've been unable to write.

Emma:

The first, this is once I started to write seriously.

Emma:

I guess three, three main weapons, no three periods in my life, but

Emma:

the first period I discount because that was before I actually made a

Emma:

commitment to take writing seriously.

Emma:

So once I had made that commitment to myself, the first period

Emma:

was when my best friend died.

Emma:

Very suddenly at the age of 41.

Emma:

And I had just finished Planetfall.

Emma:

It was out on submission.

Emma:

I needed to write the next thing I was going to write and I couldn't.

Emma:

There was nothing, there was nothing in me.

Emma:

There was just a void.

Emma:

It felt like half of my face had fallen off.

Emma:

She was my closest bestest friend and it was agony.

Emma:

And it was a very frightening time because I genuinely believed that I'd never be

Emma:

able to write again because the Split Worlds novels were the ones I, I'd written

Emma:

those and read them to her every time I used to go and visit her because she lived

Emma:

in London and I lived in the Southwest.

Emma:

I used to go and stay with her for the weekend and read to her

Emma:

for hours and hours and hours.

Emma:

She loved being read to.

Emma:

And I just finished reading book three to her.

Emma:

And I only had a contract for three books at the time.

Emma:

And I embraced her in a hallway and she said, "You can't die

Emma:

until you finish the story.

Emma:

This series, okay.

Emma:

You can't die."

Emma:

And I was like, "I I promise I won't die.

Emma:

I promise I will finish book five before I die.

Emma:

Just for you, darling.

Emma:

I'll do that."

Emma:

But she died after book three.

Emma:

And I wrote Planetfall.

Emma:

I hadn't had the chance to read it to her because she had been very

Emma:

ill and I hadn't been able to go and visit her to read it to her.

Emma:

And I was desperate to, and I couldn't.

Emma:

And it was very frightening.

Emma:

It was a very frightening time because underneath all of the grief, and it was

Emma:

a profound grief, I thought it had gone.

Emma:

I, that fear never left me of "this is it.

Emma:

And what can I do?"

Emma:

And then I moved to publishers and I had a contract to finish the Split World series.

Emma:

I could write the last two books and I had to do it without her.

Emma:

And that was really hard, very, very hard.

Emma:

And then of course, when Planetfall was published, there were elements in that

Emma:

story where people thought, because I say, I mentioned her in the acknowledgements.

Emma:

Wow.

Emma:

You drew a lot upon that personal experience of grief.

Emma:

And it was like, no, I just imagined that bit.

Emma:

I just imagined it really well because I'd experienced other kinds of grief.

Emma:

And I carried over that authenticity.

Emma:

So, yeah, that was actually one of the hardest moments I've ever had as a

Emma:

narrator, because I narrated the audio book version and it talks about her in

Emma:

the acknowledgements and we must have done 20, 30 takes and I'm a very clean reader.

Emma:

I make very few errors and I just kept breaking down and the director and the

Emma:

sound engineer were just absolutely lovely and were so kind, but that was one

Emma:

of the hardest things I've had to read.

Emma:

So yeah, that was the, that was the one time.

Emma:

And then the other time was last year.

Emma:

And the year before, more of the year before.

Emma:

Last year I wrote a couple of short stories, I think,

Emma:

at the beginning of the year.

Emma:

And that was when my marriage ended and it was just, hell.

Emma:

It was hell.

Emma:

And again, I thought this is it.

Emma:

I'm never going to be able to write again.

Emma:

I finished Atlas Alone in the first two to three months

Emma:

after the, after we'd split up.

Emma:

And I look back now and I think, I don't know how I did that.

Emma:

I genuinely don't know how I got through that time.

Emma:

And I finished Atlas Alone.

Emma:

I got through that.

Emma:

I edited it.

Emma:

And then.

Emma:

There was nothing for months and months and months.

Emma:

And then I started writing a few short stories and I have a Patreon, and I

Emma:

was writing short stories for that and for my newsletter subscribers

Emma:

when I could, but then there was a point when I just couldn't anymore.

Emma:

I had a breakdown last year.

Emma:

That was a combination of lots and lots of stress.

Emma:

Both from the separation, things leading up to it, the fallout from it.

Emma:

And yeah.

Emma:

And life changing so radically as well.

Emma:

So I, again, this most recent time, I was thinking, okay you've just got

Emma:

to come up with a different job then.

Emma:

You're going to have to go and write copy for terrible

Emma:

multinational companies again.

Emma:

And you're going to have to suck it up because you can't write no more.

Emma:

And, audio book narration is wonderful, but it is really, you never know

Emma:

when you're going to get a gig.

Emma:

It's there can be very big periods between getting books.

Emma:

And yeah, thankfully it came back and that was scary.

Tom:

Did the offer to work in the shared universe kickstart it for

Tom:

you, or had you started writing by the time that offer came through?

Emma:

No, the the offer came through several months into the drought

Emma:

and it was the first thing that actually made that bit of my brain

Emma:

excited, when I got the pitch for it.

Emma:

And I accepted and I was very enthusiastic about it.

Emma:

And then I had to sell the old family home.

Emma:

I had to move house.

Emma:

I was a single parent.

Emma:

The house move was horrendous.

Emma:

I actually, my son and I actually, we ended up having to share my best

Emma:

friend's tiny two bedroom house.

Emma:

My best friend slept on their sofa for three months because

Emma:

the sale was so horrendous.

Emma:

It was such a stressful time.

Emma:

And then finally got into the house, got the most urgent demolition building

Emma:

works done and then the pandemic hit and then I had a breakdown.

Emma:

And so nearly a year went by, since I had signed the contract, and I had to

Emma:

get in touch with the the editor and say, "look, I'm really sorry, but I'm not

Emma:

going to be able to deliver this on time."

Emma:

It's an editor I've worked with previously and he was a very sterling bloke and he

Emma:

was like, "I am totally fine with this.

Emma:

There's a pandemic.

Emma:

And that would've been bad enough without all of the other

Emma:

stuff you've been through.

Emma:

That is totally fine.

Emma:

When do you need until?"

Emma:

Which I was very grateful for.

Emma:

Um, and then in recent months,

Tom:

Well timed breakdown, you know, if you're going to have

Tom:

it, have it in a pandemic.

Emma:

You know, I think you are entirely right.

Emma:

Because I was supposed to go to Europe to be at a convention.

Emma:

I had other events lined up.

Emma:

And the ones I was doing months before in the previous October,

Emma:

I was frayed at the edges.

Emma:

I was really struggling to get through a day at that point.

Emma:

And I had to expend an absurd amount of energy to survive them.

Emma:

And I just think I would have had a breakdown in another country if I'd

Emma:

carried on and that would have been worse.

Emma:

So in many ways, the pandemic has been horrendous and has affected so many

Emma:

people's lives in so many different ways and so few of them in good ways.

Emma:

But for me, there was a profound relief in not having to leave the house.

Emma:

There was a profound relief and not being expected to turn up physically

Emma:

to a location and be my best self because I was literally incapable of it.

Emma:

And, yeah it, I still now, even though I'm much, much better than I was and

Emma:

I'm writing again, thank goodness.

Emma:

The thought of having to do a convention or a public event really

Emma:

fills me with a lot of anxiety.

Emma:

Because it's like, can I still do that?

Emma:

I feel like in some ways I'm a very different person to the last

Emma:

time I was at an event as an author and it does make me feel nervous.

Emma:

It's always been the part of my job that I found the hardest.

Emma:

Um, and it seems a very strange thing that you have a group of people who

Emma:

self-select to be alone for many hours of a day with imaginary people.

Emma:

And then you say to them, great, here's your book contract.

Emma:

Now, please go and spend time in this room with hundreds of people

Emma:

and be on stage in front of them.

Emma:

It's like, this is not the group I self-selected into.

Emma:

I'm w-one of those really hermity people who just stays in the

Emma:

background and doesn't talk to people.

Emma:

So yeah, it's a very challenging part of the job.

Emma:

And I am nervous about going back to it, I must admit.

Tom:

Yeah.

Tom:

I'll come onto that in a moment because I do want to talk about how

Tom:

to promote as a writer, but focusing on this amazing understanding

Tom:

editor and having a delay of a year.

Tom:

Was there a moment through all this trauma, all of this, you

Tom:

know, dark time that, that kind of kick-started the writing of, okay.

Tom:

I'm going to, I'm going to try today.

Tom:

Was there something that ignited in you?

Tom:

To actually go, let's start on this.

Emma:

I'm just trying to think, because the only thing I could write

Emma:

for a long time were short stories.

Emma:

And I'm just trying to think if there was a particular time when I started to

Emma:

write again, or if there was like this light bulb moment, and I don't think there

Emma:

was, I think if I'm going to be brutally honest, it was financial pressure.

Emma:

It was looking down the barrel of can I survive another year

Emma:

where I'm not earning any money?

Emma:

No, I can't.

Emma:

So I need to sort this out.

Emma:

I can't write a novel.

Emma:

I can't even hold the energy of a sustained narrative in my head, but

Emma:

I think I can manage a short story.

Emma:

And I think I just started to write one, one day.

Emma:

In all honesty, I can't remember very well.

Emma:

I can't remember that very well because I was probably still very ill at the time.

Emma:

I remember the sense of profound relief that I was writing short stories again.

Emma:

And it was very reassuring because I've had a short story collection

Emma:

published before anything else.

Emma:

And I've always enjoyed short form fiction.

Emma:

And it felt like I was almost going back to the start of my career and

Emma:

rediscovering the love of that particular form and being able then to commit

Emma:

to writing one every month for my patrons, which were my only source of

Emma:

income for the entirety of this time.

Emma:

It it gave me a bit more confidence when I started to be

Emma:

able to write one every month.

Emma:

So that was all I was capable of.

Emma:

And for the last few months, the last three or four months or so, I've been

Emma:

writing the novels I've been working on alongside the monthly fiction, but

Emma:

I've just made the decision just this last couple of weeks to pause the

Emma:

short stories for a while, because I really need to focus on the novel.

Emma:

And I had a chat with my patrons about it and said, "look, is this okay?

Emma:

Because I feel you're supporting me and I feel I need to write a

Emma:

short story every month for you."

Emma:

And they all wrote back and said, "no, you muffin.

Emma:

We're writing, we're supporting you on Patreon cause we want more books.

Emma:

We want whatever you want to make.

Emma:

Just please go and make whatever you feel like you need to make.

Emma:

And we're here.

Emma:

We just want you to be able to do what you want to do because we like your work and

Emma:

we're in a late stage capitalist dystopian hellscape so we're here for you buddy."

Emma:

And that was a really, really amazing realization actually, was that I

Emma:

could take my foot off the pedal, in terms of the short stories, and

Emma:

put all of the water drawn from the writing well into these books.

Emma:

Because it means now I can focus on getting the, my own novel to a point where

Emma:

I can send a decent chunk to my agent.

Emma:

She can have a read with it.

Emma:

She can say, "We need the whole book before I send it out on submission,"

Emma:

or "No, I think this is enough."

Emma:

And she'll start that process off.

Emma:

And then I can go back to the commissioned book.

Emma:

It means I can do that.

Emma:

And the sooner that can happen, the sooner I can escape financial terror.

Emma:

Yay.

Tom:

So you had the break, you then started rediscovering your love of

Tom:

writing through short stories for your Patreon and then through those

Tom:

short stories and getting a positive response from your patrons, you're

Tom:

like I've got this commission work, I really need to get a start on that.

Tom:

And you've started that.

Tom:

And then this other idea just popped in at some stage around then.

Tom:

So had you started work on the commission book and then this little

Tom:

goblin just grabbed a hold of your leg and went, "well, wait a second.

Tom:

wait a second.

Tom:

Personal project."

Emma:

Yeah, I was like literally 22,000 words into the commission book and I

Emma:

was just coming to the end of act one and then it happened and I thought, I've

Emma:

never stopped writing one book to go and write another because that can often be

Emma:

a way to procrastinate on writing a book.

Emma:

That can be one of the shiny jewels that magpie brains go for.

Emma:

And I'm, I'm very aware of the failings of my brain.

Emma:

And I was thinking, are you just scared of writing this book, Em?

Emma:

You know, are you just trying to avoid this commission?

Emma:

But when I sat down and really thought about it, I thought, no, actually

Emma:

I know exactly what I'm doing.

Emma:

I'm very comfortable with that project.

Emma:

It's something I've never written before, but it's not anything that

Emma:

I'm finding technically difficult.

Emma:

I've done a huge chunk of research for it already.

Emma:

I've got to the end of act one, this is a viable point to pause and write this

Emma:

other thing so that you can get it out to your agent because that's the thing

Emma:

when you're, it's like the contract management side of being an author is the

Emma:

management of the feast and famine cycle.

Emma:

And my cycle has been blown to hell over the last kind of three years, because I

Emma:

didn't write after I finished Atlas Alone.

Emma:

If my life had not blown up, I would have gone straight from writing

Emma:

Atlas Alone to my next project, probably the following week.

Emma:

And I don't know what it would have been, but because I wasn't hugely distraught, I

Emma:

would have known what it was going to be.

Emma:

And I would have just rolled into that.

Emma:

And then as the editing and publishing process worked its way through over that

Emma:

year to get Atlas Alone published, I would have had another book ready to go.

Emma:

And so by the point that Atlas Alone was reaching the shops.

Emma:

I should have, hopefully if everything had gone and things hadn't gone

Emma:

horrifically wrong in my life, I would have had another contract signed already.

Emma:

But because my life did blow up, I didn't, and I lost that rolling

Emma:

contract flow that you survive off.

Emma:

So I'm hoping that because I've had this other idea and I know I

Emma:

can write it faster than the other one that I was working on and

Emma:

then stopped for the commission.

Emma:

Um, I know that I will be able to write a sizable chunk of this fast

Emma:

enough to be able to start that process off so that hopefully that

Emma:

contract will be in the works.

Emma:

There's no guarantee it will sell.

Emma:

It took eight months for Planetfall to find a home, you know.

Emma:

It could be a year or two before I have any kind of contract stability.

Emma:

So I wanted to get that off, as soon as possible.

Emma:

So yeah, that's the side of writing, which sucks.

Emma:

But, I say it sucks.

Emma:

Oh, I'm so sad.

Emma:

I have to write books for a living.

Emma:

How ridiculous.

Emma:

I am incredibly privileged to be in the position that I am.

Emma:

And I'm very lucky to have these kinds of worries.

Emma:

I'm very lucky that I have other, you know, skills that I can use to bring

Emma:

in money whilst I'm in this horrible situation in terms of, long-term

Emma:

well, mid term financial security.

Emma:

I'm lucky I can narrate audio books and I can make things and I can do other things.

Emma:

And I have wonderful patrons and I can make YouTube videos and blah, blah, blah.

Emma:

But it's a slog.

Emma:

It is still work.

Emma:

Yeah.

Tom:

It does sound like you have the most incredible understanding commissioning

Tom:

editor for that shared universe, but you can say, I need a year off.

Tom:

Pandemic, completely understand.

Tom:

Personal life.

Tom:

I completely understand.

Tom:

Yeah.

Tom:

I've got another idea for another book and I'm going to pause your

Tom:

book that I've already paused for a year to start writing this other one.

Emma:

Well I haven't actually broken it to him yet.

Tom:

Okay.

Tom:

There it is!

Emma:

Fundamentally, I have a deadline for the book.

Tom:

And the deadline is before this podcast goes out.

Emma:

I would not be talking about this so openly.

Emma:

Now I have a fair few months.

Emma:

I know that I can meet that deadline very comfortably.

Emma:

Now that I'm writing again.

Emma:

And that's, that is the good thing about having recovered from this breakdown

Emma:

is because I've written so many books now, like I'm writing my 11th and

Emma:

12th books in terms of well, I mean, I actually have two other books that I've

Emma:

written that weren't even published.

Emma:

So these are strictly speaking my 13th and 14th full length novels

Emma:

that I'm writing at the moment.

Emma:

So I know how fast I can write.

Emma:

I know that I can get a book written.

Emma:

I know I can meet a deadline when my world hasn't ended.

Emma:

And when there isn't a global pandemic, so I know what my deadline is.

Emma:

It's not till next year.

Emma:

I feel fine about that because I know that the beginning of September, I'm going to

Emma:

go back to that book and I know how long it will take me to write the next act.

Emma:

You know, I can look at it in terms of the diary.

Emma:

As long as a meteor doesn't land on my house or other awfulness,

Emma:

I know that it will be okay.

Tom:

So with your personal project and your personal novel that has you

Tom:

know, as a brand new universe yet to find a buyer, do you have beta readers

Tom:

currently that you go to once that's finished for feedback, or does it

Tom:

go straight to your agent, straight to an editor, for their feedback?

Emma:

In the house I live at the moment I share a house.

Emma:

We've bought a house together and split it into two flats effectively,

Emma:

and my best friend lives downstairs.

Emma:

And at the end of every day, I go and read what I've written that day to them.

Emma:

And so that is a part of my process that I really enjoy and I really like.

Emma:

And also they are very hungry for story.

Emma:

I seem to have best friends that love being read to, which is excellent.

Emma:

That is the only person who will consume it in any kind of form only

Emma:

by audio, whilst I'm writing it.

Emma:

Once I have written the chunk that I want to write over the rest

Emma:

of August, I will edit it once.

Emma:

I will send it to my agent.

Emma:

And that will be the next stage.

Emma:

I had beta readers for my very first novel that I wrote.

Emma:

And since then I haven't.

Emma:

I don't do that.

Emma:

I don't share my work widely.

Emma:

Um, when I was married, I would do the same with my husband, where

Emma:

I would read a chapter at a time.

Emma:

And we did that with each other's books.

Emma:

But I didn't send them out to beta readers.

Emma:

It's also dependent on what kind of agent you've got as well.

Emma:

I had an agent for 10 years.

Emma:

She then left the industry and I've got a new agent now from this year.

Emma:

But my previous agent was amazing.

Emma:

I could write my first draft, polish it, send it to her

Emma:

and she would do a full edit.

Emma:

And then it would go to my editors or go out on submission.

Emma:

So I felt I had a very good beta reader in my agent.

Emma:

Because she obviously being an agent was very, very, very well-read.

Emma:

Knew what would work, what didn't work.

Emma:

And once I had written like four books I guess I had more of a sense of what

Emma:

worked and what didn't work for me.

Emma:

Um, when I was writing my very first book, I was flailing in the dark.

Emma:

I was learning how to write a book, let alone trying to tell a story.

Emma:

I was just learning how to get through that process and developing my

Emma:

voice and all of that kind of stuff.

Emma:

Now I just send it to my agent and get it out there.

Emma:

That's not to say that I may not write a project in the future and go,

Emma:

oh, I really am not sure about this.

Emma:

I'm going to see if somebody else likes it.

Emma:

And if I decided to write a book where I was writing about something that

Emma:

I really felt that I did not have a chance in hell of writing sensitively

Emma:

or correctly, then I would seek out professional sensitivity readers.

Emma:

But I haven't had a project yet where I felt like I've needed to

Emma:

do that with the Planetfall books.

Emma:

As I was saying, a lot of it is drawn from my own wealth of

Emma:

trauma and horror in my life.

Emma:

Hooray, I had an awful life!

Emma:

It's given me lots to write about.

Emma:

So zip-a-dee-doo-dah, it's one of those things where I haven't felt

Emma:

that I've moved so far away from my own personal experience that

Emma:

I would get it so horribly wrong.

Emma:

Um, you know, that may come back to bite me at some point

Emma:

in the future, but yeah, it's...

Emma:

I guess what I'm saying is that I tend to write very closely to my

Emma:

own experience and if it's not my exact experience, the core of it is.

Tom:

Yeah.

Emma:

So I, yeah.

Emma:

I don't feel, and with the beta reader experience, I learned very quickly

Emma:

that you sometimes you don't get the feedback that your book needs.

Emma:

Sometimes you get a lot of projection from other people.

Emma:

And you get a lot of contradictory feedback.

Emma:

I mean, nowadays I know lots and lots of writers.

Emma:

I would be able to approach people who are also professional writers.

Emma:

And I have beta read for some of my professional friends.

Emma:

So it may be a different experience now, but when you're just asking your

Emma:

mate from university, who's never written a book in their life, you

Emma:

could get some really patchy feedback.

Tom:

So once it's gone through the edits you know, agent has taken it out

Tom:

and you've gone through all the proofs and it's finally out into the world.

Tom:

The question I usually ask is how comfortable are you promoting your work?

Tom:

I'm not going to ask that.

Tom:

I'm going to say, how'd you go overcome the challenge of promoting your work?

Emma:

Yes, yes.

Emma:

Yes, you're entirely right.

Emma:

I hate every moment of it.

Emma:

How do I overcome that?

Emma:

The first thing that I do is I do everything that my

Emma:

publicist tells me to do.

Emma:

So if they say that I should do something or write something

Emma:

for somewhere, then I will.

Emma:

I must admit that over...

Emma:

as my career has gone on, I've become much more fussy about how I spend

Emma:

my time with promotional stuff.

Emma:

But I think that's also a reflection of how things have developed as well.

Emma:

10 years ago, I would have been slogging away doing the whole blog tour.

Emma:

Writing 30 different articles to be featured on different sites.

Emma:

The world has changed.

Emma:

It's not worth, I feel, my time anymore to do that.

Emma:

I find probating my books, excruciatingly difficult and that's one of the

Emma:

things that I'm very grateful to conventions for, because it gives you

Emma:

a way to have a reading slot that...

Emma:

It doesn't require a huge amount of gumption to hear that there's a day

Emma:

or three day program where they have dozens of reading slots and you just

Emma:

put your name forward for consideration.

Emma:

That is very easy.

Emma:

I can do that because lots of other writers are doing that too.

Emma:

I could not even now go, dream of going, to a bookshop and saying, "Hello, can

Emma:

I do an event at your bookshop please?"

Emma:

I just, I couldn't.

Emma:

It would be, no.

Emma:

So I have to depend on other people like the publicists.

Emma:

You know, have a thousand blessings upon them to sort that

Emma:

out and to make that happen.

Emma:

But usually I will do some kind of book launch event.

Emma:

And that's usually in a, either a bookshop or a cafe.

Emma:

I will do two or three articles for very big sites online.

Emma:

If the publicist arranged for that opportunity, I will talk about

Emma:

it on Twitter and then that's it.

Emma:

But in no sense, is this the way that it should be done.

Emma:

I'm rubbish at it.

Emma:

People who are listening to this do not make notes of how to

Emma:

do it cause I'm rubbish at it.

Emma:

I should talk about it a lot more online.

Emma:

I should tweet about it more.

Emma:

I should talk about my work more in general, but I just don't.

Emma:

I think the thing is that...

Emma:

I may be incorrect in thinking this, but social media to me should be social.

Emma:

And so I find it very difficult to say to people, "Hey, I did this thing"

Emma:

more than once, because that feels to me like going into a pub and saying,

Emma:

"Hey, I brought out this book."

Emma:

And if you do that, like more than three times, people are going to

Emma:

be like, buy a beer or get out.

Emma:

And I can't let go of that viewpoint of social media.

Emma:

So I should do it more, but I just don't.

Emma:

Because it doesn't work in the same way as a pub, obviously.

Emma:

Not everybody is online at the same time, blah, blah, blah.

Emma:

There are a million reasons to promote it more and better than I do.

Emma:

I'm just very insecure.

Tom:

So I feel that there's going to be a pressure on satisfying an audience,

Tom:

but I'm interested in whether you feel in yourself, you have a greater pressure to

Tom:

build your audience or a greater pressure to satisfy your existing audience?

Tom:

Or if you feel a pressure on either of those at all?

Emma:

Yes, both.

Emma:

I feel both simultaneously.

Tom:

Are they both the same size pressure?

Emma:

It depends on how you look at it.

Emma:

I am so insanely grateful to have any readers at all.

Emma:

That I want them to be feeling very happy and satisfied whenever

Emma:

they read anything from me.

Emma:

Because I feel that the kind of the informal contract that I've entered into

Emma:

with them is that if they give me their kind attention, I will entertain them.

Emma:

Or at least traumatize them in a way that is an enjoyable experience, which

Emma:

is mostly what I aim for in my writing.

Emma:

So if I've made them cry, but they wanted to cry in that particular

Emma:

way, I'm like, this is fantastic.

Emma:

I'm deeply happy that this has happened and awesome.

Emma:

But fundamentally I am a I'm going to say I'm a mid-lister.

Emma:

I have no idea how that is even defined these days, but in my mind,

Emma:

a mid-lister is somebody who has had several books published, who

Emma:

is able to make at least a large portion of their living from writing.

Emma:

And, or, enough of an income that it supplements their lifestyle.

Emma:

Cause I know several authors who have been around much longer than me, and

Emma:

I've had many more books published who still have full-time jobs.

Emma:

And we make different choices.

Emma:

I live a very frugal life.

Emma:

I don't go on holidays.

Emma:

I don't have any things that I do that cost money.

Emma:

And that's the choice I make.

Emma:

But because I'm a mid-lister, by my own definition that I've just said.

Tom:

Yeah.

Emma:

I need to grow my audience to be able to have any sense of financial

Emma:

security, because it's getting harder and harder to earn a wage.

Emma:

Earn a living income I should say, not a wage, from creative arts.

Tom:

Yes.

Emma:

It's one of those strange things these days where in some

Emma:

ways it's easier than ever.

Emma:

We have Patreon.

Emma:

We have Ko-fi.

Emma:

I love both of them.

Emma:

I am incredibly grateful that they exist.

Emma:

Even though sometimes platforms can be problematic.

Emma:

And I'm aware that I'm very privileged to be able to have them.

Emma:

But there is still the precariousness of trying to pursue a life that

Emma:

is worth living for yourself.

Emma:

Like I said, I spent a huge, huge proportion of my life doing jobs

Emma:

that made me deeply miserable and were very bad for me.

Emma:

And now I've had my autism diagnosis I understand why.

Emma:

And, I would not have been able to continue.

Emma:

I can't do most of the jobs that people do without thinking, because

Emma:

I can't cope with those environments.

Emma:

And for many years I did try and then I would get very ill and very

Emma:

burnt out and drop out of those jobs.

Emma:

Even though I was very successful in them.

Emma:

Because my brain wasn't geared up to handle that kind of stuff.

Emma:

And I understand that now, but that puts even more pressure on carving out

Emma:

this life that I've worked so hard to achieve over the past 10 years or so.

Emma:

So I do feel the pressure to grow my audience because the bottom line is,

Emma:

if I don't earn enough money to keep doing the things that I'm doing now,

Emma:

I'm going to be in a lot of trouble.

Emma:

Because I can't just get a job and go to an office every day because

Emma:

my brain doesn't want me to do that.

Emma:

I can't do that.

Tom:

You know, I think, you know, this whole 18 month, two year period.

Tom:

I like the term, The Great Pause that has been battered around.

Tom:

As it's been a period of reflection for many people, for many reasons.

Tom:

And regardless of what the government says and does, I feel society as a whole

Tom:

has a greater appreciation of the Arts.

Tom:

That's what they've been consuming over the last 18 months to two years.

Tom:

When they've been furloughed and when they've had all this

Tom:

time, they've had to fill it.

Tom:

And the Arts has been a massive part of that.

Tom:

And I feel that as things open up and as things get to a new normality, it's

Tom:

not going back to how it was, the new normality and whatever that may be.

Tom:

There will be a greater appreciation of the Arts and I, my belief, and my hope

Tom:

is that you'll see greater engagement with audiences as they would have

Tom:

said, your books got me through this.

Tom:

I consumed your arts and it helped.

Tom:

And I want to support you because this has been a difficult time for everyone.

Tom:

I've developed far more empathy for people who struggle and people going

Tom:

through uncertainty that I want to help provide you with certainty.

Tom:

And I want to subscribe to your Kofi.

Tom:

I want to subscribe to your Patreon.

Tom:

I want to engage with you.

Tom:

And also people are changing jobs.

Tom:

You're seeing hospitality, which has treated people like shit on

Tom:

minimum wage is really struggling because people are saying, fuck off.

Tom:

I don't want to be treated like that anymore.

Tom:

I will find something else to do.

Emma:

I was actually, it was one of the things I felt strangely hopeful

Emma:

about was seeing that and going, is this the mass strike that I have been

Emma:

dreaming of for so many years now?

Emma:

Is this going to be the moment when we can actually say no, this

Emma:

really is not the way to continue.

Emma:

If anyone has ever read any of my books, they know that I am so furious

Emma:

with the way that the world is.

Emma:

That all of my books are a commentary on how toxic expectations of society

Emma:

are and the dangers of unfettered capitalism, and how it literally

Emma:

destroys people and destroy societies.

Emma:

And whether I'm telling that through a 1850s book with magic in it and,

Emma:

or a five book series with fairies or, you know, future science fiction.

Emma:

At the core of it is still this rage at how things are.

Emma:

And so many of the messages I have from my patrons were just so incredible.

Emma:

And there were several people amongst them saying, you've got me through

Emma:

and just please keep doing this.

Emma:

And I feel so heartened by it, but I also feel so broken hearted by the fact

Emma:

that the world is the way that it is.

Emma:

That we have people who dedicate their lives to easing people's suffering

Emma:

in nursing, in hospitals, in care homes and are paid a pittance.

Emma:

And we have people who are creating films, writing books that are

Emma:

saving people from suicide and are struggling to pay the bills every week.

Emma:

And then you have people who are, in the oil industry that are

Emma:

killing the rest of the planet and earning millions and millions and

Emma:

millions of dollars every year.

Emma:

And then people who run certain major consumer websites that systematically

Emma:

destroys swathes of industries so that then they can build a rocket

Emma:

to be in space for 10 minutes.

Emma:

There was something so fucking wrong with this world that is killing us.

Emma:

And you know, I feel a huge amount of guilt that I can write every day.

Emma:

But then again, you pay for that in different ways.

Emma:

And I also know now of course, as well, that I wouldn't be able

Emma:

to do a huge number of the jobs that are out there because they're

Emma:

set up for neuro-typical people.

Emma:

And if you have sensory processing problems, screw you, it's,

Emma:

you have to find your own way.

Emma:

And when you're trying to carve out a life, which is good for you

Emma:

and do you feel guilty for it?

Emma:

It says something is very wrong with the world.

Tom:

I'm going to sound very new agey now, but one of the things that

Tom:

I, the way I perceive the world, is that there are tribal mentalities

Tom:

on various different scales.

Tom:

But when you meet someone who has a similar worldview, it's

Tom:

that they're part of your tribe.

Tom:

But in using the tribal analogy, you need storytellers.

Tom:

And storytellers are intrinsic part of the elders of a tribe.

Tom:

There have always been storytellers.

Tom:

You can see it back in cave paintings, it's been a very intrinsic

Tom:

part of the human condition.

Tom:

And as you were saying earlier you ran away from writing for a long time.

Tom:

But it's still an intrinsic part of you.

Tom:

You write.

Tom:

Yes, it's a privilege, but you write because you have to.

Tom:

And even if it wasn't a financial need to do it in a professional way,

Tom:

you'd still be creating stories.

Tom:

In some form or another it's an intrinsic part of who you are as a human being.

Tom:

And that's an intrinsic part of being a human being.

Emma:

Yeah.

Emma:

I agree.

Emma:

When you think about what do you know about the world?

Emma:

What does anybody ever know about anything happening in the world?

Emma:

It's if it's not through direct experience, it's because somebody

Emma:

else has told you a story of that.

Tom:

Yeah.

Emma:

And even your own direct experiences can be changed by the stories that

Emma:

you tell yourself about yourself.

Emma:

Story is so fundamentally important, but it's still open to abuse in the same way

Emma:

that so many aspects of our society are.

Emma:

Who decides which stories are told?

Emma:

Who decides which stories get the biggest audiences?

Emma:

Who decides who gets to earn a living from telling their stories?

Emma:

And it isn't a lie to say that for a very long time, like ever, white

Emma:

people and predominantly men for a long period of our history are

Emma:

the ones that are being allowed to tell stories to a larger audience.

Emma:

And on a societal level, the stories that we are being told by the media

Emma:

about immigration and refugees and the use of the word immigrant and

Emma:

refugee, and when we are allowed to use it or not use it in news stories.

Emma:

When you start to look at the world through that lens of who holds

Emma:

control over the stories, I do feel very despairing about it sometimes,

Emma:

but I also feel hope, because we are now in an age where you can

Emma:

have a thousand people throwing you a dollar a month saying, carry on.

Emma:

I'm aspiring to that.

Emma:

That would be really nice.

Emma:

But you know, you have people who don't know you personally, who have

Emma:

just read some of your work or watched one of the movies you've filmed on

Emma:

your own phone and enjoyed your work saying, please continue to create.

Emma:

And that it's a group of people.

Emma:

It's a large number of people, not some wealthy landowner who will only

Emma:

be a patron of an artist if they paint them in their fancy clothes, you know.

Emma:

There are bits of progress being made.

Emma:

It's, we're getting there in some respects, but in other ways we're not.

Emma:

Sorry, I I'm sorry if I've ranted, I get really angry.

Emma:

I'm always angry.

Emma:

I'm like the Hulk.

Tom:

I just, I think we're just gonna wrap up with uh, two more questions.

Tom:

But it's been such a privilege and I've really, really enjoyed our conversation.

Tom:

But what I wanted to ask and wrap up with, it's my belief that writers

Tom:

continue to grow and develop their writing with every story that they write.

Tom:

So is there something that you feel that you learned from the last area

Tom:

that you wrote that you're now applying to what you're currently writing?

Tom:

As someone who wrote a lot of short stories, it doesn't necessarily need

Tom:

to be the very last short story.

Emma:

Yeah.

Emma:

Yeah.

Emma:

It's funny enough.

Emma:

I was oscillating between, is it the last short story I wrote or is it Atlas

Emma:

Alone, which was the last published novel?

Emma:

And the last novel I completed.

Emma:

I think the only thing I've learned from those is that I need to level

Emma:

up before I can write a particular book I want to write in my future.

Tom:

By level up, what do you mean?

Tom:

Cause I felt that Planetfall was a massive level up.

Tom:

I love the Split World books, But, you know, Planetfall.

Tom:

When that came out, I felt this is important.

Tom:

The way that you're portraying mental health in this, this is a significant.

Tom:

Not just in your career, but just as a book.

Tom:

So it was really interesting to see from that, what do you need to level up to?

Emma:

That's very kind what you just said, thank you.

Emma:

I felt that Planetfall was leveling up in terms of craft.

Emma:

And in terms of having faith in my ability to go very deep into one character,

Emma:

which I had been scared of before.

Emma:

In terms of leveling up to write a book I would like to write in

Emma:

the future, I don't even know.

Emma:

I just know I need more XP.

Emma:

Everyone wants more XP.

Emma:

There are never enough points.

Emma:

But I just feel like,

Tom:

Is it a multi-strand story?

Tom:

Is it having...

Emma:

No.

Emma:

It's I can't identify a kind of aspect of craft.

Emma:

I think it's more to do with my own maturity and my own ability to

Emma:

process and assimilate some of the experiences I've had in recent years.

Emma:

And to write about them in a way that is meaningful.

Tom:

Yeah.

Emma:

I'm not talking about oh, I really want to write a story about somebody

Emma:

who goes through a horrific divorce.

Emma:

No, I don't mean like that.

Emma:

I mean, in terms of understanding an emotional maturity, I suppose, is the

Emma:

only thing that I can come down to.

Emma:

I really did feel when I was writing Planetfall, that

Emma:

I was writing differently.

Emma:

The Split Worlds had a lot to say.

Emma:

It says a lot about patriarchy and it has a lot of stuff that I feel is important.

Emma:

You know, in terms of exploring feminism and the nature of power and abuse of power

Emma:

and the need to just sometimes really just wreck everything and start again for it

Emma:

to have any kind of serious social change.

Emma:

You know, those kinds of things I feel are worth saying for me.

Emma:

Um, but with Planetfall, I felt like I was going somewhere deeper.

Emma:

I was writing from a deeper place within myself.

Emma:

And perhaps what I'm feeling is that I could do that even deeper.

Emma:

That there is something else that I could tap into.

Emma:

And that it would write a more profound thing.

Emma:

I don't want that.

Emma:

That sounds really like wanky, but it's, "Hey, I'm a writer.

Emma:

What a great word to use," but you know, I'm not that full of myself to

Emma:

think I've got to write my great work and I just need to just, level up.

Emma:

I don't mean that.

Emma:

Something that is profound for me, whether the people find it is...

Tom:

I think that shows great humility.

Tom:

And I think, I have no doubt that you'll achieve it.

Tom:

And much like you said before, the good ideas don't go away.

Tom:

So it's whatever time that takes.

Tom:

I have absolute confidence that when you know, it's ready, when

Tom:

you know you're ready, then it'll start to fall into place.

Tom:

And I look forward to it.

Tom:

I have one last question.

Tom:

Is there one piece of advice that you find yourself returning to when you're writing?

Tom:

Anything that you've heard over the years that resonates, that

Tom:

applies to you specifically?

Emma:

The thing I always returned to is actually something that..

Emma:

I don't know if I absorbed something from somewhere else and incorporated it, but

Emma:

it's, it's one of the techniques from that workshop that I developed to get over

Emma:

your own fear and to be able to write.

Emma:

And the thing I always return to is saying to myself, I give myself complete

Emma:

permission to write absolute shit.

Emma:

Because it's really important to be able to release yourself from the

Emma:

pressure of perfectionism and to allow yourself to write without constantly

Emma:

thinking, is this good enough?

Emma:

Is this working?

Emma:

To let that go and to just let yourself sink into the story

Emma:

and sink into the characters.

Emma:

It can be very hard reaching that state, but I've found that whenever

Emma:

I start to feel very tense about writing, or if I'm really starting to

Emma:

get nervous about it, or, all of the fears, the old dread comes back too

Emma:

powerfully for me to overcome it easily.

Emma:

Then that is the thing that always comes back to my head is, I give myself complete

Emma:

permission to write absolute shit.

Emma:

Um, and it always works.

Emma:

And there've been times when I've really like been so seized up with I

Emma:

guess a form of performance anxiety.

Emma:

Even though no one's watching me, nobody's going to read it until I decide it, but

Emma:

you get tangled up in your own fears.

Emma:

And the times when I have said, not only do I give myself permission

Emma:

to write absolute shit, I'm going to write the worst thing I can

Emma:

possibly write, and this is it.

Emma:

Right, what's the most awful sentence?

Emma:

I start writing absolute drivel.

Emma:

You know, you get three or four sentences into this absolute dross,

Emma:

and then you forget about yourself and then you can start to write.

Emma:

And that's been quite a joyful experience at times.

Emma:

And then at the end of the session, you go back and you delete

Emma:

those three or four sentences.

Emma:

If you want to have a laugh, you read them.

Emma:

If you don't, you just delete them, but you've got over yourself long enough

Emma:

to be able to escape into the writing.

Tom:

That's great.

Tom:

And I think there's no better way to finish off an interview

Tom:

than giving yourself permission to write absolute shit.

Tom:

Emma, it's been a pleasure.

Tom:

Thank you.

Tom:

Thank you very much.

Emma:

Thank you.

Emma:

It's been lovely.

Tom:

And that was the real writing process of Emma Newman.

Tom:

If you'd like to find out more about Emma, please do check

Tom:

out her website, enewman.co.uk.

Tom:

It's very clearly laid out and has all the links to social media, so it

Tom:

makes my show notes a lot shorter.

Tom:

However, I would like to make a specific recommendation to sign it to her Patreon,

Tom:

as it's pay what you can rather than a set subscription rate, and you will get

Tom:

access to all of her subscribers only short stories, which are fantastic.

Tom:

The web address is patreon.com/emmanewman.

Tom:

So again, very straightforward to find.

Tom:

Anyway, that's all for me.

Tom:

You can probably tell because the music started.

Tom:

So until next time.

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About the Podcast

The Real Writing Process
Interviewing writers about how they work
Interviews with award winning writers as well as emerging talent on how they manage their day to day process of writing for a living. Hear how the professionals approach structure, plot and imposter syndrome, as well as what they like to drink.
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Tom Pepperdine