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What I've Learnt - Kathryn Heyman · WHAT I'VE LEARNT

• 0:08
  SPEAKER_00: I did not tell my sister that our other sister was dying.
• 0:12
  SPEAKER_00: Silas was the right choice, yet murky and painful.
• 0:16
  SPEAKER_00: In family estrangement, the mud and dirt gets everywhere, says author Catherine Heyman.
• 0:22
  SPEAKER_00: And it is very hard to undo what has been done, she writes.
• 0:26
  SPEAKER_00: She's the author of six previous novels and the acclaimed memoir Fury.
• 0:31
  SPEAKER_00: She's won numerous awards, in fact, almost too many to mention.
• 0:35
  SPEAKER_00: In her new book, Book of Wonders, Ronnie is running out of time.
• 0:40
  SPEAKER_00: As Cancer claims her body, she begins a book of wonders, capturing the small, luminous moments she once overlooked.
• 0:48
  SPEAKER_00: It's a final gift to the people she loves, and completing it means reckoning with both the flawed life she's lived and the fractured family she's about to leave behind.
• 0:57
  SPEAKER_00: Over one charged lunar month, the women closest to her gather Belle, her daughter fresh from rehab, and trying to stay upright.
• 1:06
  SPEAKER_00: Anna, her brilliant sister returning from London with all her old certainties cracking, and Sylvie, her estranged mother, approaching her own death across the mountain ridge.
• 1:17
  SPEAKER_00: Each woman arrives wanting to protect Ronnie, but their clashing visions of what she needs threaten to tear them apart at the moment they should be closest.
• 1:27
  SPEAKER_00: Circle of Wonders is a novel about facing death while rediscovering life, and about the messy grace that emerges when people who've hurt one another choose to love anyway.
• 1:39
  SPEAKER_00: Well, Catherine, welcome to the What I've Learned podcast.
• 1:42
  SPEAKER_00: So thrilled to have you join us.
• 1:44
  SPEAKER_00: And I'm so thrilled to be here, Deb.
• 1:46
  SPEAKER_00: Thank you.
• 1:48
  SPEAKER_00: Well, it's a powerful tale.
• 1:50
  SPEAKER_00: Tell us a little bit about where you started and how I know you've written many novels, but tell me a little bit about where this gem began to grow.
• 2:02
  SPEAKER_01: I mean, it's it's funny because of course, every novel, you know, generally it's very hard to retrace the seed the first moment.
• 2:10
  SPEAKER_01: But with this one, I can see the seed, I know exactly the moment, really.
• 2:16
  SPEAKER_01: So in 2020, in that little pause between lockdowns, my mother and my sister both died within a few weeks of each other.
• 2:27
  SPEAKER_01: This one intense month on opposite sides of the same city, which was Newcastle up the coast from Sydney.
• 2:36
  SPEAKER_01: And of course, it was this is something to do with both of them dying at the same time.
• 2:41
  SPEAKER_01: There were many circumstances around it, particularly around my sister's death, a group of women who sort of came together to protect her from an ex-partner.
• 2:50
  SPEAKER_01: It was all incredibly intense.
• 2:53
  SPEAKER_01: But a time that could have been incredibly sort of chaotic and distressing and overwhelming was in fact really it was intense.
• 3:06
  SPEAKER_01: And of course it was distressing, but it was also kind of radiant and unifying.
• 3:12
  SPEAKER_00: Did it bring?
• 3:12
  SPEAKER_00: It sort of it somehow it brought this circle as you refer to.
• 3:18
  SPEAKER_01: A circle of, yeah, absolutely, a circle of people coming together.
• 3:22
  SPEAKER_01: But it really what it did was in this kind of intense month, it everything was sharpened.
• 3:28
  SPEAKER_01: And when I I drove back, I'd I'd sort of spent the months caring for these two women who I lost.
• 3:34
  SPEAKER_01: Extraordinary difficult women, difficult women.
• 3:37
  SPEAKER_01: Um, yeah, and as I drive back, I kind of thought, oh, there the way that this period has taught me so much about how to live, how to forgive, how to speak and when not to speak.
• 3:53
  SPEAKER_01: I just felt I know that I need to write about this.
• 3:57
  SPEAKER_01: I didn't know that it would be a novel, but I knew that I wanted to write about those things.
• 4:03
  SPEAKER_01: I guess what I've learned.
• 4:04
  SPEAKER_01: Um, but that wouldn't automatically be a novel.
• 4:08
  SPEAKER_01: But I also knew that I wanted to kind of capture this thing that happens around time in those intense periods of life, at the end of life or in labor at the start of life, there are these moments where time, which is of course an invented construct, you know, we we've made time up.
• 4:28
  SPEAKER_01: And in those periods, time disappears.
• 4:30
  SPEAKER_01: And I wanted to try and capture that feeling.
• 4:34
  SPEAKER_01: So it needed to be a novel so that I could do that other imaginative work.
• 4:39
  SPEAKER_00: And actually, what you're referring to from what I've read and from what I'm hearing is you're actually tapping into something, the essence, the spirit, the the something beyond our chronological understanding of the world and the constructs that we live in.
• 4:57
  SPEAKER_00: And that takes courage and bravery.
• 5:00
  SPEAKER_00: In the context of what must have been extremely traumatic for you.
• 5:05
  SPEAKER_00: What, if I might ask, was what actually did your sister, she obviously died prematurely because I imagine she was younger and your mother may have been older.
• 5:16
  SPEAKER_00: Was that an interesting reflection as well?
• 5:18
  SPEAKER_00: Because what a what a surreal experience.
• 5:21
  SPEAKER_00: Like you expect somebody to get old and particular, you know, and pass and have their journey, somebody younger, but you were dealing with both at the same time.
• 5:28
  SPEAKER_00: I I can't comprehend that.
• 5:30
  SPEAKER_01: Yeah.
• 5:31
  SPEAKER_01: Yeah.
• 5:31
  SPEAKER_01: I think the two, the, the two being together.
• 5:34
  SPEAKER_01: My sister was older than me, and and you know, quite a few years older than me, but still, you know, not had not lived out her full life as we imagine it.
• 5:46
  SPEAKER_01: So, yes, it it meant that I was able to, I I mean, I saw it as being, I don't mean this to sound cheesy at all, but there was a real grace to it.
• 5:58
  SPEAKER_01: So I didn't experience it as trauma.
• 6:01
  SPEAKER_01: I felt really fortunate to be able to sit really in that place of looking at the thing that we most avoid looking at, which is the fact of our own mortality.
• 6:13
  SPEAKER_01: And being forced to do it in that way, it shifted something about how I see the world, something really profound about how I see myself, how I see life, how I see, you know, my community.
• 6:30
  SPEAKER_01: So the place to put that for me, you know, I'm a writer.
• 6:34
  SPEAKER_01: What do I do with that?
• 6:35
  SPEAKER_01: What do I do with that reckoning, that understanding, and that grappling with what that means?
• 6:39
  SPEAKER_01: Well, I put that into a story.
• 6:42
  SPEAKER_00: That's what I do.
• 6:43
  SPEAKER_00: It's what you do.
• 6:44
  SPEAKER_00: And in fact, it's, you know, as a fellow writer, I understand that it's a gift, it's sort of a burden, a blessing, and a curse, because you actually also have to tap, and on obviously you've done this, the factionalization, like taking fiction, taking fact, blurring it, trying to honor truth, but at the same time, the luxury of imagination.
• 7:09
  SPEAKER_00: How was that for you in light of the very personal reference points you were tapping?
• 7:15
  SPEAKER_01: Well, there's a couple of responses to that.
• 7:17
  SPEAKER_01: And as you were talking, I was thinking about a moment, a real moment from the real life situation where I was sitting by my sister's bedside.
• 7:25
  SPEAKER_01: And I don't know whether you've ever walked with someone to the end of life, but it's in the kind of situation where there's time, it can often be, there can often be moments of surprising humour.
• 7:37
  SPEAKER_01: And other people have spoken to me about that.
• 7:39
  SPEAKER_01: And that was certainly my experience.
• 7:41
  SPEAKER_01: But I was sitting by my sister's bedside and I was making notes, and she sort of opened one eye.
• 7:46
  SPEAKER_01: This what I think I at one stage this was in the book, but it's it's it's long since changed.
• 7:52
  SPEAKER_01: And she said, Are you planning on getting a book out of this?
• 7:56
  SPEAKER_01: And I said, Well, yeah, I'm not going to be getting anything else.
• 8:00
  SPEAKER_01: So, you know.
• 8:02
  SPEAKER_00: That's insane.
• 8:03
  SPEAKER_00: That's yeah, she really, she really, well, she knows you obviously.
• 8:07
  SPEAKER_00: Yeah, yeah.
• 8:07
  SPEAKER_00: It was and she's on to you, and she's she's she's sort of certainly not mincing words and doesn't need to because she's at that point in her life.
• 8:15
  SPEAKER_01: No, she was there was there was an understanding that it would be, you know, it would be what it what it was, it and that that it would be from love.
• 8:25
  SPEAKER_01: So that that kind of sense of, well, of course, this becomes a way of making sense of of an experience or of or of a grappling with how you see the world.
• 8:36
  SPEAKER_01: It's not always of a personal experience.
• 8:39
  SPEAKER_01: The reasons for writing, yeah, so broad, as you know.
• 8:43
  SPEAKER_01: But I knew for this, I knew that I needed it to be a not one person's story.
• 8:53
  SPEAKER_01: Yeah.
• 8:53
  SPEAKER_01: So at one stage I thought, oh, am I going to be, is this a memoir?
• 8:57
  SPEAKER_01: Is that what I'm doing?
• 8:58
  SPEAKER_01: And then I realized that no, the thing that I was wanting to capture was this kind of circle of women, this sort of deep friendship and family and the complexity of that, the the sort of miraculous power of female friendship, all of those things.
• 9:17
  SPEAKER_01: And to do that, I had to kind of have it as like um uh almost a choral piece.
• 9:23
  SPEAKER_01: Do you know what I mean?
• 9:24
  SPEAKER_01: I had to have several different voices.
• 9:27
  SPEAKER_01: It couldn't just, and they all had to see things differently and in opposition almost, as we do.
• 9:34
  SPEAKER_01: They had to be this sort of, you know, almost conflictual.
• 9:37
  SPEAKER_01: Well, not almost, actually.
• 9:39
  SPEAKER_00: Actually, yes.
• 9:40
  SPEAKER_00: And in fact, that's the that's the hub of the essence of what you're talking about, is that because relationships are complex faced with extremities, how do people respond?
• 9:50
  SPEAKER_00: And the family relationships and the complexity that you explore, that's the tension, isn't it?
• 9:57
  SPEAKER_00: Yes.
• 9:58
  SPEAKER_01: And everyone, absolutely in any of those situations or in any kind of complex family situation, let alone when you bring in kind of friendships as well, everyone has their own position and we bed into it so tightly and so desperately.
• 10:13
  SPEAKER_01: And the more threatened we are, the more kind of bedded in we are to those stories.
• 10:19
  SPEAKER_01: And the stories are different.
• 10:20
  SPEAKER_01: I mean, it's been interesting for me.
• 10:23
  SPEAKER_01: You know, I've the book is only just out, and so I've only just really begun talking about it, but I've already had a few people saying, Oh, I'm really Team Anna, who's one of the characters in the book who is, you know, uh when someone said that to me recently, I was like, Are you kidding?
• 10:38
  SPEAKER_01: She's a nightmare.
• 10:40
  SPEAKER_01: She's probably closest to me.
• 10:42
  SPEAKER_01: Um, and you know, someone else messaged on, you know, sent a DM on Instagram saying, Oh, I really love Belle.
• 10:48
  SPEAKER_01: And I thought, really?
• 10:49
  SPEAKER_01: So it's really interesting how people are kind of bedding into one character, and these characters have really different views of the world, and therefore their views of each other's stories, you know, are all kind of, you know, everyone's pretty judgy.
• 11:07
  SPEAKER_00: It's actually true.
• 11:09
  SPEAKER_00: I mean, there's a comment in family estrangement, the mud and dirt gets everywhere that you write, and it is very hard to undo what has been done.
• 11:17
  SPEAKER_00: And then you also, there's I did not tell my sister that our other sister was dying, silence was the right choice, yet murky and painful.
• 11:23
  SPEAKER_00: These are some of the the quotes.
• 11:25
  SPEAKER_00: I'm just curious how much reality fed that.
• 11:31
  SPEAKER_00: Like, it's true.
• 11:32
  SPEAKER_00: I mean, all of I mean, both of those comments I found really interesting.
• 11:35
  SPEAKER_00: I'm like, wow, that's powerful stuff.
• 11:39
  SPEAKER_01: Yeah.
• 11:39
  SPEAKER_01: Well, I mean, in terms of the question of fiction and fact, that's a really that's such a big question because, of course, what happens in the writing of fiction, you change the facts.
• 11:54
  SPEAKER_01: So, I mean, actually, one of my sisters, I have a lot of sisters, the people in the book, so there are the the the kind of characters are the the woman Ronnie Bloom, who's an artist, a musician, a traveler who's who's dying.
• 12:08
  SPEAKER_01: She has a her daughter Belle has just come back from rehab, her sister Anna, you know, has come back from from Oxford, where she's a sort of, you know, living a charmed life.
• 12:18
  SPEAKER_01: You know, and and her dearest friend Pip, who's ridiculously loyal, everyone has their positions.
• 12:23
  SPEAKER_01: When when I I dedicated the book to one of my sisters, I have many sisters, unlike the people in the book, and this sister phoned me and said, Which one am I?
• 12:32
  SPEAKER_01: And I said, fair question.
• 12:34
  SPEAKER_01: You're not in it.
• 12:35
  SPEAKER_01: It's fiction.
• 12:36
  SPEAKER_01: You know, I'm sorry to have misled you, you know.
• 12:40
  SPEAKER_01: But so it's the facts are completely different, but that sometimes with fiction, and it is the magic of fiction, that something can become more true.
• 12:51
  SPEAKER_01: You know, you can get to the deep heart of a truthful experience, a truthful feeling.
• 12:56
  SPEAKER_01: I mean, that's what myth is is for.
• 12:59
  SPEAKER_01: That's what story has been for, you know, for entire human existence.
• 13:04
  SPEAKER_01: We use story to kind of explain something deep and true.
• 13:10
  SPEAKER_01: So I think that's where this novel sits in that place of it has become very thoroughly fiction.
• 13:17
  SPEAKER_01: And yet there are clearly true things that come from my story.
• 13:22
  SPEAKER_01: There, you know, my my sister died and my mother died.
• 13:25
  SPEAKER_01: Two, there are two deaths in this novel.
• 13:27
  SPEAKER_01: There are estrangements different from the ones in my extended family, but you know, Ronnie is is waiting and hoping for for her estranged daughter to return.
• 13:39
  SPEAKER_01: She's certain that she will, no question, you know.
• 13:41
  SPEAKER_01: But we know how hard forgiveness is to win.
• 13:45
  SPEAKER_00: I think you explore that quite interestingly too.
• 13:47
  SPEAKER_00: I mean, in a funny way, it's like you find what you're talking about is you found a safe space, as fiction often is, where you can explore things that you can't in the real world.
• 13:59
  SPEAKER_00: The mythology is like a safe space.
• 14:01
  SPEAKER_00: So I understand what you're saying, and I think it's really interesting.
• 14:04
  SPEAKER_00: And that it's a kind of a magical space.
• 14:07
  SPEAKER_01: And I mean, I coach writers as well.
• 14:09
  SPEAKER_01: And often I can see when I when a new writer, and I I mean I coach established writers too, but when a writer is kind of grappling with some a novel, but it's come from something true, and they're like, oh, they're stuck with the story, and it's because they're so attached to the true events, but they want it to be a novel.
• 14:28
  SPEAKER_01: So there's always a point where we have to have that conversation.
• 14:31
  SPEAKER_01: Listen, do you want this to be memoir?
• 14:34
  SPEAKER_01: Because it it can work, is that, or are you are you wanting to to explore something deeper and perhaps and a little different that you can do in fiction?
• 14:43
  SPEAKER_01: Because if that if it's that one, you have to change some facts because you're getting so stuck in, but this is the way it happened.
• 14:50
  SPEAKER_01: And there's always that decision and that moment where you can really allow the truth of fiction and the kind of playfulness of fiction to kind of take precedence, but you have to be willing to go, okay, I'm going to change some of the actual events.
• 15:06
  SPEAKER_01: And of course, sometimes it's not that conscious.
• 15:09
  SPEAKER_01: In the case of this novel, for me as a writer, it was, you know, it almost wasn't conscious.
• 15:15
  SPEAKER_01: It it was a, I know the sense, the feeling, and the territory I want to be in.
• 15:21
  SPEAKER_01: And it kind of began one way, and then suddenly, ah, I can see them all.
• 15:28
  SPEAKER_01: I can see these characters, I can see the structure of the book, I can see what it is, I can see, you know, everything kind of appeared.
• 15:36
  SPEAKER_01: So it had to be fiction.
• 15:38
  SPEAKER_00: It's so interesting to me because I'm listening to you and I'm thinking, uh, which is the which is the braver choice?
• 15:43
  SPEAKER_00: Because sometimes when we're writing as a journalist myself, in the fact space, it feels often brave because people are sharing their truth, right?
• 15:52
  SPEAKER_00: But there's what you're reflecting is also really interesting to me in the fiction space, because you have, in some ways, you have to be prepared to go on that journey as you reflect it just now.
• 16:04
  SPEAKER_00: And that's got a bravery in itself because it can, as you say, nuances and things can come rise to the surface, but you have to have the courage to go there, is what you're saying.
• 16:13
  SPEAKER_00: Yes.
• 16:14
  SPEAKER_00: And to read the facts in a way and get on a the fiction.
• 16:18
  SPEAKER_00: It's a really fascinating, particularly as you refer to the cross-pollination of those two things.
• 16:24
  SPEAKER_00: Yeah.
• 16:25
  SPEAKER_01: Look, I I mean, in terms of courage, it's a different kind of courage for me.
• 16:31
  SPEAKER_01: This book really asked something of me that no other book has asked.
• 16:36
  SPEAKER_01: And I have, I mean, I've written, this is my seventh novel, but I have written one memoir, Fury.
• 16:41
  SPEAKER_01: Yes, very well-known memoir that, you know, that did require courage, but it was really a different experience writing it.
• 16:50
  SPEAKER_01: This one, because it was trying to get to something so, you know, I don't want to sound sort of self-aggrandizing here.
• 16:59
  SPEAKER_01: No, but it's you know, but when you're wrestling with with fiction, I guess, I wanted to get to something sort of really profoundly true.
• 17:08
  SPEAKER_01: Uh kind of deeper thing that I could then I could get to with memoir would have been here is this thing that happened to me.
• 17:17
  SPEAKER_01: And also it would have been for me less brave because it would have been me bedding into my version of that story.
• 17:25
  SPEAKER_01: And of and of all the impossible people around me who were, you know, who everyone else who's who's flawed and and and fractured and you know, judgmental and nightmarish, completely unlike me, you know, who is just saintly and you know, bordering on perfect.
• 17:45
  SPEAKER_01: I mean, it's a m it felt like a much braver choice to go.
• 17:49
  SPEAKER_01: What if, what if there's, you know, everyone here is messy and you know, fractured and also uh, you know, full of love and generosity in both things.
• 18:01
  SPEAKER_01: That for me felt I don't want to say harder because I I I don't think that doing something hard automatically means it's good.
• 18:09
  SPEAKER_00: True.
• 18:10
  SPEAKER_00: Uh yeah, I would agree with that.
• 18:11
  SPEAKER_01: Yeah.
• 18:12
  SPEAKER_01: It it it felt I had to grapple with something very deep.
• 18:17
  SPEAKER_01: Visceral and yeah, visceral and deep.
• 18:19
  SPEAKER_01: And it so the grappling was was the writing of it felt unlike anything else I'd written.
• 18:26
  SPEAKER_00: What was that?
• 18:26
  SPEAKER_00: So, what was that that you grappled with in this?
• 18:29
  SPEAKER_00: I mean, I have my own opinion, but it's not about that.
• 18:32
  SPEAKER_00: What is your version of what you grappled with here?
• 18:36
  SPEAKER_00: Well, there were a few things.
• 18:38
  SPEAKER_01: One of the what and it they they all kind of begin with what I wanted to capture.
• 18:44
  SPEAKER_01: And what I wanted to capture was this sense that I'd received, that I'd experienced in this intense period of being right by death.
• 18:53
  SPEAKER_01: You know, really squaring up to mortality, which we can only do glancingly, you know, we can only do briefly, we can only bear that, bear it like that, but we have to be aware of it.
• 19:03
  SPEAKER_01: So I wanted to capture this sense of, I know this word's been used a lot about this novel, and I'm wary of overusing it, but I did want to capture this sense of luminosity, this kind of radiant intensity.
• 19:18
  SPEAKER_01: And I could actually only, you know, like looking at the sun, I could only look at it glancingly, you know.
• 19:25
  SPEAKER_01: So I had to find a different way of writing from my usual approach.
• 19:30
  SPEAKER_01: So that was one thing, really wanting to capture that and wanting to capture, because it's kind of about mortality, I wanted this to be a real praise song to being human, you know, a celebration of our.
• 19:45
  SPEAKER_01: I mean, we are disasters, we are such messes, and also we are so miraculous.
• 19:53
  SPEAKER_01: Look at us, you know.
• 19:55
  SPEAKER_01: So I really wanted to capture this sense of expansive celebration.
• 20:01
  SPEAKER_01: So again, that just I I I had to sort of there was a lot of circling.
• 20:07
  SPEAKER_00: I was about to say ironically, I can't help but think of circle.
• 20:11
  SPEAKER_00: I can, I'm thinking life cycle, you know, there's a lot of well, all the absolutely, and of course, that's built into the structure.
• 20:18
  SPEAKER_01: The whole novel is written as a circle.
• 20:23
  SPEAKER_01: So, yeah, everything about it felt like a really different process, just trying to, you know, grab these little moments of of wonder and awe.
• 20:36
  SPEAKER_01: You know, someone described it as the a sort of fiction version of Julia Baird's phosphorescence, that kind of sense of love that book.
• 20:45
  SPEAKER_01: Yeah, everything's pretty dark and also magnificent.
• 20:52
  SPEAKER_01: So, yeah, I could only sit in that space for kind of I had to write in quite short.
• 21:00
  SPEAKER_00: I was gonna ask you that.
• 21:02
  SPEAKER_00: Yeah, is that so just on that, talking about the writing of this book and your technique in general, obviously that is interesting.
• 21:10
  SPEAKER_00: So you wrote you wrote in small abouts.
• 21:13
  SPEAKER_00: Was that yeah, is that normally what you would do, or was it different this time?
• 21:18
  SPEAKER_01: No, I normally, you know, I'll often kind of sit and and you know, I'll I'll have a few thousand words.
• 21:24
  SPEAKER_01: Certainly a kind of two thousand-word spurt in a kind of block of writing is not not unusual for me.
• 21:31
  SPEAKER_01: This was such a different process, and and I kept sort of fighting against the process for a while, which again is is you know, it's been a great lesson.
• 21:39
  SPEAKER_01: I have learned something new about hard work.
• 21:43
  SPEAKER_01: How to listen to the project, right?
• 21:46
  SPEAKER_01: So at first, but the more I wrestled with it, the the harder it was to.
• 21:52
  SPEAKER_01: So at some point I was like, okay, this is how it's going to be.
• 21:55
  SPEAKER_01: I kind of receive, again, not wanting to sound know too woo but it did feel like I'm sort of plugging into something here.
• 22:05
  SPEAKER_01: And it felt incredibly intense.
• 22:08
  SPEAKER_01: And I would sort of get this, you know, small section.
• 22:12
  SPEAKER_01: Almost I guess like sort of songwriting or poetry writing.
• 22:16
  SPEAKER_01: It felt like a gem.
• 22:17
  SPEAKER_01: That process.
• 22:18
  SPEAKER_01: Like a gem, exactly.
• 22:20
  SPEAKER_01: And of course some of the there are sort of moments throughout the book which are the sort of wonders that the the character Ronnie is is creating a book of wonders to leave behind for the people she's such a great concept I love it.
• 22:34
  SPEAKER_01: You know we should all do it.
• 22:35
  SPEAKER_01: Yes I was actually yeah it's a great idea this is my attempt to to do the book of wonders and exactly it is something that I'm kind of you know thinking about how do we how do we create our own book of wonders.
• 22:48
  SPEAKER_01: So it just meant going with the process letting those little jewels arrive and sort of trusting that I would know when you know when it was done and how to begin to put it together.
• 23:04
  SPEAKER_01: I mean having a sense of I always knew that it was written in a circle so I always had the beginning and the end.
• 23:12
  SPEAKER_01: I mean the downside of that the the last page has was as is as it was first written it it hasn't that not a word has changed.
• 23:22
  SPEAKER_00: Now the problem with that Deb is that there were long periods where I would you know kind of say to to my agent and to writer friends oh no it's pretty much done and then I'd think oh no it isn't it's just that I've written the beginning and the end by your bookend it's like literally except it's interesting when you talk about writing in a circle and just the circular references throughout and the book of wonders and the all of that how was it how different was it writing with that circle framework as opposed to your normal trajectory?
• 23:53
  SPEAKER_00: And did you plot that or how did you other than you explain that you have the gems drop or the jewels drop but obviously you had structure and you had elements that how did you navigate that yeah I mean when I go back and look through the various versions of the novel being realized in a very kind of gradual way you know it although I always had that beginning end I always knew so it meant that I knew what I was writing to you know I knew that okay I'm arcing to this moment.
• 24:26
  SPEAKER_01: But the kind of precise elements of the structure it happened in a series of iterations.
• 24:34
  SPEAKER_01: You know I remember going off to a a retreat in a convent which is something I do a lot and sort of just walking around in a circle and sort of moving bits of paper around you know what's the shape?
• 24:46
  SPEAKER_01: How do I do it?
• 24:47
  SPEAKER_01: And then I suddenly went oh it's the moon moon phases okay there's my first bit of the shape so then I understood okay that's my shape so that's the circle you know when we get back to so this novel begins on a new moon ends on a new moon the inference being you end on a new moon a new moon is both an ending because it's completely dark and it's also a beginning because it's completely dark.
• 25:09
  SPEAKER_01: And that sense of when someone dies it is an ending but it is also not it's also you know a a new chapter a new story a new moment for and that continues to be the case for for each of us.
• 25:25
  SPEAKER_01: So that shape became really part of the story more than again more than any other novel that I've written I I think I always do have a have I always have a sense of what the last page is that helps me write towards it.
• 25:44
  SPEAKER_01: But with this one yeah it took several I had those sort of yeah you said spiritual the kind of spiritual or the sort of the overarching the sort of natural world shape I had the moon I had the circle I had the sense of all of that the circles I had the in mind the labyrinth in Sharp Cathedral that sense of you know you have to go deeper.
• 26:08
  SPEAKER_01: So it is also shaped around that particular labyrinth where you have kind of three sections on one side and then a deeper bowl when you're really in the middle you know the depths but that's not plot.
• 26:22
  SPEAKER_01: No it's it gives you structure and a sort of it gives you some tools to navigate you talked briefly about the um going to convent retreats can you elaborate a little bit about what how that feeds your soul and why you do that yeah I have been doing that really all of my adult life there was I don't think I've actually said this publicly before there was a period in my life when I really considered being a nun um yeah I was going to ask you that I want you that I I I I don't think that I have talked about that publicly you know I was doing it was when I was doing my masters in writing and I spent a lot of time in a particular convent which was quite a left-wing sort of convent with really interesting group of women as you know nuns often are or work.
• 27:11
  SPEAKER_01: And so I I went through the kind of first stages of that process where you become a working guest and then you do a sort of pre-novitia period.
• 27:19
  SPEAKER_01: Yeah so I was I it it it's been kind of something that monastic life is very attractive to me has always been attractive and annoyingly I fell in love soon after that and I was about to say so how did that how's that monastic life going for you?
• 27:36
  SPEAKER_00: Well you seem so not monastic in your enthusiasm and your passion and your there's no judgment in that reference it's just like that you don't seem but clearly you there's some inner it's almost like it's an honoring of a meditative space.
• 27:54
  SPEAKER_01: Right exactly exactly and I always think that now you know I've returned to those spaces you know certainly several times for every book.
• 28:06
  SPEAKER_01: And I always feel that it's because the kind of attentive silence that you get in those environments is the same as the attentive silence that I seek out as an artist.
• 28:19
  SPEAKER_01: You know that it's that there's something that what those people in religious orders are doing is sort of is is akin in some way it's it's there's not many of those spaces left now to be honest.
• 28:32
  SPEAKER_01: And I lived in the UK for a long time so they there were a lot more there's only a few places now that I return to them.
• 28:39
  SPEAKER_01: Yeah and it's who but I don't for me the the places I go to are not the ones that you've got to wake up at 5 a.m that's I was about to say you're not at the you're not at the meditative retreat.
• 28:52
  SPEAKER_00: I I oddly someone has gone off her dear dear dear writer friend has gone off just yesterday to a 10 day Vipassana retreat and she'd said to me you know you might like it and I was like you've got to sit still I don't like being told what to do yeah and at the absolute hard hard you know rigorous no way am I getting up at 5 a.m not for anyone same I'm with you trust me I know I really you know I'm happy to buy a hack I'll do whatever but getting up at 5 a.m no I'm with you no I mean it's interesting so interesting to hear also just do you think you need private quiet space which sounds like a strange question in order to create because I do yeah I do but the noise is everywhere the noise is everywhere.
• 29:42
  SPEAKER_01: So for me that has become a really important part of my practice.
• 29:47
  SPEAKER_01: But of course there are periods of life where that's really difficult.
• 29:50
  SPEAKER_01: You know I have children there are periods when you know I I was always able to go away because I have a partner who values my work and understands that that there were two people involved in in the creating of the children.
• 30:03
  SPEAKER_01: So there are people involved in the graising of the children.
• 30:06
  SPEAKER_01: Yeah not that hard.
• 30:08
  SPEAKER_01: But you know there have there were definitely periods with some books where that was not possible.
• 30:14
  SPEAKER_01: And actually I did less of that with this book oddly enough so the things that I did do you know I I found ways of dropping into that place quite quickly.
• 30:24
  SPEAKER_01: So that was things like having noise cancelling headphones on with with uh you know brown noise or particular sort of soundscapes that would sort of get me into that space quite quickly and I would have a really clear little I had these little cards that I wrote for myself and I would pick up a card that would give me a little this is what you're writing.
• 30:45
  SPEAKER_01: This is your kind of the the beginning line or the image you're writing towards and I I used you can see I've got these hourglass timers.
• 30:54
  SPEAKER_01: So I used timers I'd kind of go okay it feels impossible.
• 30:59
  SPEAKER_01: So I'm just going to do 20 minutes and I'll do something.
• 31:03
  SPEAKER_01: So this book came about differently in other ways as well although I did that said I did also do about quite a lot of silent retreats but I have someone I mentored a beautiful beautiful writer Michelle Johnson who, you know, she's written three novels now all magnificent novels and she's also an emergency consultant in a large city hospital.
• 31:28
  SPEAKER_01: So she has a very busy life you know runs marathons you know I mean she she I I don't know how she does it but she does it so for her she had we've had a had these conversations where she'll say that would never work for me you know what works for me is I'm sitting at a bus stop I've got 10 minutes you know write something down.
• 31:49
  SPEAKER_01: So that's I always say you you work with what works for you.
• 31:52
  SPEAKER_01: For you it's very try and find the try and understand what it is that you might need in an ideal situation and then what are the things that might come closest to replicating that.
• 32:04
  SPEAKER_01: So I know I need silence.
• 32:06
  SPEAKER_01: I can't always get three weeks of silence which is my great longing so what can I get?
• 32:13
  SPEAKER_00: So would you advise young authors or emerging writers to find exactly what you've just outlined which is find what works for you because I think that in I mean obviously you've seen book talk and you've seen the insane and Reese's book book club I mean it is like for people who are readers like you and me and writers it is like it's incredible.
• 32:36
  SPEAKER_00: It's like an avalanche of these extraordinary everybody seems to be doing a book review, a book club, you know it's it's really quite extraordinary but it can also be a lot of noise.
• 32:45
  SPEAKER_00: So I think for young writers or even new emerging writers it's an interesting space because I do think it's changed.
• 32:54
  SPEAKER_00: Like it seems as you know you don't go to the library and sit quietly or some do although there's a big turn back from what I'm hearing and seeing to the library space they're doing reading parties now where you go to the cafe, no phones and everyone just sits and reads it's really interesting.
• 33:10
  SPEAKER_01: Yeah libraries are heaving now look the thing is I'm glad you you said new or you know because often new writers are not young writers often people who are coming with their very precious hardwon time and ideas and words in my experience are often people who have you know finally after years and years working or you know raising a family struggling other people's concerns oh now I've got some space to do this thing that has been biting at me.
• 33:41
  SPEAKER_01: Yeah so I absolutely say don't confuse that noise for for for practice for for work and for purpose do you know what I mean you can be making a lot of noise and be responding to a lot of noise and not actually deepening your purpose and if your purpose you know is is in making something creative at some point you have to step away from the noise.
• 34:11
  SPEAKER_01: So all of that stuff can be profoundly helpful book clubs, book talk you know all of it.
• 34:16
  SPEAKER_01: I love it, it's great great that we are talking about books but if you want to write find some space where you can do that without the concern of the audience at some point you have to privately with your story or with your craft or with your your idea it you know you have to be intimate just you and your craft without the sort of this audience watching and waiting and oh what are they going to do what are they going to do do we like it do we like it yeah they can be expectation yeah yes very loud judgy voices that that that you can create in your own head.
• 34:58
  SPEAKER_01: So I do always say to me find some space where you can remove all of that.
• 35:02
  SPEAKER_01: And the other thing I say is yeah find what works for you but if you're finding that you've got the desire and you've got the longing but it's not working a few things I would say try something different.
• 35:14
  SPEAKER_01: Do you know what I mean?
• 35:15
  SPEAKER_01: If you're going oh you know I've been trying to do this for ages you know I've I've I sit at my study desk every day nothing happens then I would say then try something else.
• 35:23
  SPEAKER_01: Go to a cafe and don't allow yourself to write the first word until you've had the first sip of coffee.
• 35:28
  SPEAKER_01: You know strike a different deal with yourself or you know I I sit down with my laptop and I just freeze.
• 35:34
  SPEAKER_01: Okay, write longhand.
• 35:36
  SPEAKER_01: So if something you're doing isn't working try something else.
• 35:40
  SPEAKER_01: And the other thing is maybe try and find a tribe you know that there is a reason that you know I I have a kind of monthly course that that is is a kind of yearly thing.
• 35:51
  SPEAKER_01: And there's a reason that people kind of come to those things that they want to be I mean I work with people one to one as well but kind of that community of people who value the thing that you are tentatively trying to do the little space you're making in the world find a space where where it's not just the noise it's not just the book talkers but it's also the people who are just going ah I've just kind of got this quiet little idea for a woman who a story maybe this woman buys a bookshop.
• 36:23
  SPEAKER_00: I love it.
• 36:23
  SPEAKER_00: I actually think that's such an important reflection and a really important overview and lessons learned along your own journey of what what you see and what you're seeing as you write your will bring out your seventh book and on that note I'd like to thank you so much.
• 36:41
  SPEAKER_00: Is this your ninth book?
• 36:43
  SPEAKER_00: It's my ninth book seventh novel.
• 36:45
  SPEAKER_00: Seventh novel so thank you so much for sharing your words of wisdom with our listeners it's been an absolute treat the book is um well fury everybody would know or most people would have heard of I would assume but the book is really a fascinating it touches on things that some of which are taboo as you say like the death and the references are very um somewhat unsettling but there's also such as you say luminosity I think that's just one of the best words to describe this journey and I'd like to thank you for sharing with us your time and look forward to uh seeing it goes out your baby goes out into the world it's gone out into the world just gone out into the week yes so I'm very grateful.
• 37:32
  SPEAKER_01: Thank you so much Deb.
• 37:33
  SPEAKER_01: It's been a delight.
• 37:34
  SPEAKER_00: Pleasure well thank you for joining us on the What I've learned podcast.
• 37:41
  SPEAKER_00: I hope you enjoy that interview because we are so privileged to have a wonderful platform where guests come on and share lessons learned, rivers crossed mountains climbed.
• 37:51
  SPEAKER_00: We love a shared humanity and we are so grateful to have such a beautiful community.
• 37:58
  SPEAKER_00: So remember to stay curious kind and connected and we'll see you next time at the Wonderful Podcast