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Hey, I'm Jillian. And I'm Patrick. And together we make the podcast True Crime Obsessed. If you love documentaries the way we love documentaries, you might be interested in our show because we recap all the documentaries that you're watching. We've covered just about every true crime case you can imagine. We're talking the Hatchet Wielding Hitchhiker, the Ted Bundy tapes. What else?

The Turpin 13. Yes. With the amazing sisters who basically tell the story. The girl in the picture. Yes. All the documentaries you love to talk about with your friends. We're your friends now. We're the friends you talk about that stuff with. Yeah. We're True Crime Obsessed Podcast. Stitcher us on Apple Podcasts, Spotify, or wherever you listen. Hello. I'm Elizabeth Day, author and podcaster and executive producer of How to Write a Book.

You might know me from my other podcast, How to Fail, or from reading one of my books. But this podcast isn't actually about me. It's about you. How to Write a Book is a podcast masterclass. A podclass, in fact. And over the next 12 weeks, we'll take you from developing characters to experimenting with your voice and getting your finished manuscript ready for publication. ♪

We want you to think of us as your on-hand writing community, giving you the push you need to get started on that novel, memoir or piece of non-fiction you've always dreamed of writing.

And even if you've no intention of writing anything, this is also a podcast that allows you to draw the curtain back on the world of books. Every week, you'll get an exclusive insight into how and why our most celebrated writers wrote the books they did, and what it really means to create unforgettable stories. Because we all have a story in us. But how do we get it out there?

To guide you through the process, I've brought together three amazing women. You'll hear from best-selling novelist, screenwriter and 2024 Booker Prize judge, Sarah Collins, former Agent of the Year at the British Book Awards, Nell Andrew, and you'll hear from Charmaine Lovegrove, co-founder and MD of Dialogue, an inclusive division at major publisher Hachette.

Our three hosts are absolute powerhouses. These are the voices you need to hear if you want to know anything and everything about books. They're also really good friends with each other and with me. So the idea is, yes, we might be teaching you a new skill set, but you'll also get a seat at our friendship table. We hope very much you'll stay for the conversation and the laughs along the way.

In part one of this two-part episode on idea, we chatted about where ideas come from and how we know whether they're worth pursuing. But can an idea ever be wholly original? Here's Nell answering that very question. The truth is no one can own an idea. You can only own the expression.

And I say this as an example, because I think a lot of writers do go, well, is my idea too similar to this? Or like, how similar is too similar? And I think Christopher Booker actually wrote this book that there are only seven stories in the world. I think the seven stories he said was like overcoming a monster, rags to riches, the quest, a voyage and return, a rebirth, a comedy and a tragedy.

Seven stories, that's it. And there's the tale of, I think it was Michael Crichton, someone sued him about Jurassic Park. They were like, I had this idea about Jurassic Park and I was writing it. And the judge threw it out. And it was literally the same idea, but the judge was like, you have to prove you're the only person who ever had that idea in the entire world at any point. And that no one else could ever have had this idea except for you. It is a tough one.

Because obviously, like, so when you talk about The Confessions of Franny Langton, there is a slave element to that book. It's not just about it, but there's a lot of kind of inspiration there. And I guess my question is like, when did you decide that it was different enough to be worth pursuing when it's about a subject that has been done very often? How did you make that decision where you're like, okay, there is something different enough about this idea that I can pursue it that's not going to make it reductive? Yeah.

You know what, I think that goes right back to where ideas come from because I didn't consciously want to write a story about an enslaved person. I wouldn't say I wouldn't read one or write one, obviously I did write one, but they have to be doing something different, these stories. I feel like a lot of them have just fallen into the same trap. So consciously, I didn't set out to write a story about an enslaved person and I still insist that's not what I did.

But the whole idea of slavery has been this kind of thing that bugged me ever since I was old enough to understand that that's what happened to my ancestors. I mean, it's barking mad to me that there are children in the world who still have to find out, you know, you sort of enter the world in a state of innocence and at some point you have to find out that

that this horrible thing, you know, the genocides and the holocausts that have happened throughout history, that your ancestors were part of that. I find it truly stupefying. And so I think it was something I had to wrestle with. Someone said to me after they read the book, a good old friend of mine said, I can see that this was the thing you had to get out first, not even by choice, but you had to get it out first. And so sometimes the good idea or at least the theme or the premise is buried in your subconscious.

But for me, and it is really important to emphasize this, no book is about slavery and that book was not about slavery. An idea leads to another idea that leads to another. And that actually what a book is, is a cacophony of multitudes of ideas. That comes from an idea with confidence plus talent plus ambition.

Plus work. Yeah, plus work. Okay. So we've got an idea plus confidence, plus talent, plus ambition. But, and here's the nub of it all, when do we know an idea is ready? Back to Charmaine. It's a bit that I find the most fascinating about writers is how you're able to know that

when you're done with an idea and that you've fulfilled it, what happens when you do the work to turn that idea into reality? Because you could just be doing anything and you just start thinking about a specific topic and then it leads you down a rabbit hole. And the question for us really is like, how far down that rabbit hole do you go until you realise that you're done? Does anyone feel that way? But you must do, right? I had to have...

I mean, I still don't feel done with any piece of work I've ever finished. It's just usually I'm forced to hand it over. I think part of it is because the idea somehow becomes part of you or it is already part of you, I should say. It's this idea that maybe Nell was getting at that good ideas somehow link together.

external influences with your own subconscious and that's where the magic comes. And so if it is your own subconscious, it's kind of always with you. Who wants to let go of their own psyche in a way? Maybe I'm being too grandiose about it, but there are parts of, well, certainly parts of my psyche and everything that I write. So in a way they're always with me. And also they're always incomplete because, you know, yourself is incomplete. I do think

In writing a novel, you really have to excavate things about yourself and from yourself, but also confront yourself in ways that can be actually quite difficult. It's not an easy process at all. I agree with that. But also there's this sort of inherent perfectionism as well. And I think this is an important thing to say here because this almost stopped me writing. And I know there will be people listening who

who will feel the same about a piece of work that they're engaged in because it seems shitty. And every time you come to it, this was what I was talking about, failure, like it's built in. You're coming to that cliched shitty first draft and your perfectionist mind just...

won't let you sit with it. And that's why you feel like you're going to give up. And you just have to understand that that's part of the process. Like if that's the single thing we can do here, that's very useful to people who are trying to write a novel for the first time, that you have to live with that process of sort of excavating, mining and perfecting until that shitty first draft turns into something else.

I did, in fact, give up halfway through. I swore I was done with it. And one of the things that got me back to the table is that I googled, I can't remember the exact terminology, but something like, quote, suffering of other writers or writers complaining about writing novels.

And I remember reading these stories from the greats like Virginia Woolf, etc., etc., and how they had struggled. And I realized that what I needed was company. I needed some voice in the dark of my struggling subconscious to say, you're not the only one who has struggled at doing this. They did it. You can do it too.

And I suppose that's what I'm saying, right? It's like one of the questions around this is what gives you the confidence to see it through, you know, and of having that idea. And that's what I mean. So it's not so finite as in this is the end, but knowing I believe that this is now good enough to send to an agent. Right.

I don't know. I don't know. But you still managed to send it to an agent. And so there has to be a level of confidence in understanding that because otherwise it would just sit in the drawer. For me, I think it's really useful at that stage to get that idea judged by someone else. And for me, that someone else is Nell. So I'll say to her, what do you think? Or in fact,

actually, when you have an agent, sometimes they can be incredibly good sources of ideas as well. But you've got to filter your own ideas and decide, has this really grabbed me? Does it have the ingredients of a story in it? Because I think that's what we've really been saying in this episode is,

ideas can come from anywhere, but actually what is it that inspires that reader and what is it that inspires that writer to keep going? So I'm interested in not just what keeps you going, but also what makes you stop. It also...

is the gift to the public imagination, right? That's what we're ultimately trying to do is take an idea from somebody, guide that idea into the physical form of a book, whether it be an e-book, a physical book or an audio book.

And then for that to be available at different retailers and then for people to read those books and then for society to be more interesting and more dynamic and more cultured because of it. I feel like this pod class is that, but in this wonderful kind of collegiate form, it's something that can keep you company because I know how lonely it is and how you feel like no one cares if you're writing this book, but you still have a compulsion to write it and equally to give up on writing it.

Hopefully we've inspired you all to pursue your most compelling ideas. But if we haven't, here are a couple of listener exercises to help you get your creative juices flowing. Take it away, Nell. So one of the exercises I'm going to impart to listeners here as we wrap up is go and ingest stuff.

go to art galleries, go for a walk, get outside, go read a book. You have to ingest, go and look at the things that really either bothers you or challenges you. Alice Walker, I think, said that we either worship or we fear things that we don't understand.

And it's like, well, what do you worship? What are you afraid of? Like, Sarah, that's where Finding Lantern came from. It came from this duplified notion, like, how is this a possibility? I think a really good task for our readers is to... I say readers, but I mean writers. I'm so used to talking to everyone. The task for everybody that would like to be on this journey with us is to...

really think about what has made them follow the narrative thread on the book and also maybe think about when they've read a blurb

and the book has lived up to that blurb and think about when a book hasn't lived up to that blurb and at what point did you realize that you're reading the story on that you want to be reading or not reading the story so what keeps you in a book and have you been putting books down and when do you feel absolutely bereft when the books have finished and what was it about it that was so

was so good I've learned so much from you two I like to imagine a kind of growing audience of people who feel like maybe a door is opening to that and that we're making a tiny little difference so if we are and if you have been listening then I guess we just want to say thank you and good luck and keep going and it can all be worth it in the end even though I'm going to continue banging on about how shitty it is while you're doing it on a note of positivity what I will say is this

crib from other authors you are who you've been waiting for that's what I would say yeah oh my god that's so beautiful this is why I love you look you're such an empowering personality babes it's my Libra energy I just love to leave beautiful things behind so it's got nothing to do with you personally she sent me one of these little bon mots earlier today by whatsapp about my new novel and I replied saying Nell why are you so good at your job

Oh my God, that's a psychological deep dive that we don't have time for in this podcast. But since we've talked about our idea, I guess the next thing we're going to be talking about on our next episode is how to turn that into voice. We're going to move from

conception to execution. I know that you've heard our amazing voices, but like these ladies have got some absolutely fantastic things to talk about with regards to this subject. I am really excited to get into it. I think it's going to be great. I was just about to talk about my orgasm metaphor, but...

Well, I hope you enjoyed the first episode of How to Write a Book. It's Elizabeth Day here, and I feel that I have learned so much simply from listening to these three extraordinary women talking about their craft. And I speak as someone who's written quite a few books herself, but I'm in the schoolroom as well.

And it's a vastly entertaining schoolroom. I just could listen to them talk to each other.

for decades. I find them so funny and so interesting and also obviously experts in their field. But I also really enjoy just sitting in on their friendship dynamic. And I hope you did too. And I hope you've been able to take away some interesting triggers for thought and action. And I hope you take away a sense that we are your writing community. You can lean on us.

You can come to us for advice. We are here to hold your hand along every step of the creative process because I do truly believe that every single person has a story to tell. And it's simply about finding that story, finding the right way of telling it or the way that feels most meaningful to you to tell it.

and putting it onto the page and enabling that story and that idea to connect with others. That is the process that we are engaged in. That, for me, is the essential truth of being human. But I digress, because this week we were talking all about

idea. And it's one of those slippery, difficult things to pin down. As Sarah Charmaine and Nell put it, it's technical, but it's also mystical. I thought that was such a good phrase. And

And it made me reflect on where I get my ideas from. And it's one of those questions that is often asked of authors at literary festivals. And it's a great question because it really does go to the root of what we do. And as ever, with something that is a profound question, it can be really difficult to answer with brevity and clarity. Yeah.

But for me, I think I've now written five novels. Is that right? Have I written five or six? I think I've written five. And the idea process changes with each novel. With the first novel I wrote, Sister's Paper Stone, I had this vision of what would happen in an unhappy marriage, which was pretending to be happy to the outside world.

where one of them ended up in an accident and in a coma. And the thing that intrigued me about that was that people would have different versions of events depending on what narrative they wanted to portray and pursue about that marriage or that family unit. And that intrigued me. That felt like there was a tension already in the setup.

What might the husband have done in this case, because it was a marriage between a man and a woman? What might the husband have done that the outside world doesn't know about? How might that have affected the wife? And what impact would that have had on the daughter? And now that they're gathered by his bedside, and he's no longer an active part in proceedings because he's lost his voice.

How might we be telling each other stories that might or might not be truthful about who he was, is, and who we are in combination with him? And that, for me, got to the heart of what a family is, because a family ultimately is also the story the family tells itself about itself. Anyway, I was very excited by this idea, and I told my partner at the time, and he said, yeah, um...

I think that's already a movie starring Richard Gere. And it is, and I forgot the movie's name, but I Googled it. I was like, it is, that is totally the movie's premise. But then I remembered what Nell said, which is that actually there are so vanishingly few totally original ideas that

that actually no one can own a single idea. You can only own the expression. And I think that is a really, really key piece of advice because...

Your uniqueness doesn't have to come from the idea itself. Your uniqueness can come from the way that you convey it, the way that you tell the story. Your uniqueness comes from you. You are the only person in this big, wide universe who has exactly the set of experiences, of thoughts, of emotions, of

You're the only one. So you're the only one that can bring all of that to bear on the prose that you are about to write. So I wrote the book and I took the kernel of that idea and I actually started writing rather than planning. And that's just something that I prefer to do. And

Along the course of this How to Write a Book podcast, you will discover what you prefer to do, what your preferred methodology is. My preference is to start writing without really knowing where I'm going because it's important for me to write into the headspace and the voice of a character. And then the character informs what happens next.

But there are other ways that I've got ideas that are slightly different from that one. So with my third novel, Paradise City, it was at the time that there was a lot of news stories around the former head of the IMF, the International Monetary Foundation. Did I get that right? I hope so. Listen, I'm a novelist. I'm not a financier. Unless by financier, you're thinking of the cake. I'm very happy to be the cake.

Anyway, it was around the time that there were all of these news stories about Dominique Strauss-Kahn. And there was in particular a very, very troubling news story about how he had allegedly sexually assaulted a hotel chambermaid.

And I was reading all of these stories. And actually, at the time, I was a Sunday newspaper journalist. And I was sent to cover Dominique Strauss-Kahn's later trial for a completely different offence, for the offence of, get this, aggravated pimping, which is actually a legal thing in France. So I was immersed in this story. And it struck me that whilst we heard a lot from Dominique Strauss-Kahn...

the chambermaid's voice was almost entirely silent and absent. And clearly, one of my preoccupations I now see is looking into silences and absences and trying to bring them to the fore. So I thought, actually, I want to hear her story. I want to hear her version of events. What if I wrote a book where we hear two versions of events together?

of a sexual assault where one person is in a position of power and the other person isn't. But what if the survivor of that sexual assault actually turns out to be a strong-minded woman who ends up being the conqueror of the situation?

and I'm talking in deliberately vague terms because I hope some of you might go and read it, but what if actually then we follow the perpetrator of that assault and we discover what has made him into this entitled, abusive, toxic individual? And what if I could play the ultimate trick of saying,

trying to show what it is that makes these flawed individuals human and thereby trying to connect with the reader and trying to elicit your empathy, that even though someone might act in a terrible way, you might end up having a degree of understanding.

And I wanted to play with all of those themes. And whilst it's absolutely not based in any way on Dominic Strauss-Kahn, it did give me a really interesting starting point

for my characters of Beatrice Kisser and Howard Pink. And those two characters, once I started writing them, unlocked the rest of the book for me. And it became a multi-character book. There are actually four main characters. There's Carol, who was recently widowed living in Wandsworth. And there's Esme, who is a Sunday newspaper journalist. Yes, I did write from life. And the four of them, their stories intertwine in ways that you don't realise at the outset. And

But it's also a book about London and how London is ultimately one of those metaphors for stories. Cities ultimately are just sort of collections of stories and of people and of intersections. So that became Paradise City. And that's an example of getting an idea from a news story, but then warping it through the lens of fiction to such a degree that it bears no relation to the reality of events anymore.

And then the final thing I'd say about Idea, my latest novel, Magpie, I wrote during lockdown and...

I was really struggling with the conceit. And I remember talking to a good friend of mine who's also a writer who said to me, the only thing I can ever write about is the thing that is obsessing me right now, the thing that is preoccupying me. And for her, it was falling in love. She just got into a new relationship and she wrote something unbelievably beautiful as a result of that. And it wasn't mirroring her own experience, but it was around the theme of what it means to fall in love.

And when she told me this, it unlocked something in my mind. And I realized that the thing that I had been obsessing over and preoccupied with was fertility. I'd been engaged in a decades-long fertility battle to try and have my own babies, and I had failed. And very often, as anyone who has been through fertility will know, when you're pumping yourself full of hormones, you do end up feeling slightly unhinged and unmoored and out of control. And

That all coalesced in my head and I thought, actually, I want to write about these two women, both of whom really want to be a mother, but it's not going to be easy for them. That was the setup for Magpie, which became...

I mean, it's been described as a psychological thriller and I'm extremely complimented by that description, but I don't think it is a thriller in the conventional sense. It's more, if I can invent a word, it's more of a compelling and there's a mystery at the heart of it and there's a twist at the centre of it and you read on to find out why and what's happening. And that's an example of an idea that came from my personal preoccupations

at that time. And I also don't think it's any coincidence that, as I said, I wrote the bulk of that novel during lockdown and the bulk of that novel takes place within the four walls of one house. So that was a preoccupation too, not being able to get outside. I've learned so much from this discussion, but it did make me laugh.

When Charmaine and Nell were talking about the arrogance required as a writer to take yourself away from the world and to truly believe you have something worth saying. But that's so true.

In order to take yourself away from your day-to-day life, from your responsibilities, in order to pursue this somewhat bonkers goal of writing a book, bonkers but brilliant, you actually really do have to invest in your idea, which is why it's such a good idea to give it proper thinking time. And I often say, you know, the thing about writing is

Obviously, a lot of it is putting words on the page and sitting there slaving over your computer, but so much of it will be allowing yourself to think. And sometimes it's not even proactive thinking. Sometimes it'll just be you walking around or sitting on the bus and staring out the window and not believing that you're doing anything, but allowing thoughts and ideas to percolate and

And that's why I was so pleased that they left us on that final idea of ingesting culture, ingest it all. That is how we connect with others, we connect with the world, we make sense of the world, and that is where we get our ideas. Just ingest culture.

So on that note, I'm going to ingest some culture of my own and I can't wait to join you all again next week when our three wonderful hosts will be discussing voice. Until then, goodbye. Thank you so much for listening and please do remember to like and subscribe and share a link with everyone you know. This is a Daylight Productions and Sony Music Entertainment original podcast.