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What I've Learnt - Maggie Alderson · WHAT I'VE LEARNT

• 0:08
  SPEAKER_00: Well, at last we found her, the female Seinfeld.
• 0:12
  SPEAKER_00: Warm, witty, wise, and well dressed.
• 0:14
  SPEAKER_00: Maggie Alderson is the haute couture of humour.
• 0:18
  SPEAKER_00: Well, that was Kathy Lett, talking about author journalist Maggie Alderson.
• 0:23
  SPEAKER_00: She's the author of ten novels, four collections of her columns from Good Weekend magazine as well.
• 0:28
  SPEAKER_00: Her children's book, Evangeline The Witchkeeper's Helper, was shortlisted for the Prime Minister's Literary Award.
• 0:33
  SPEAKER_00: Before becoming a full-time author, she worked as a journalist and columnist in the UK and Australia, editing several magazines, including Mode and British Bell.
• 0:42
  SPEAKER_00: Would you rather?
• 0:43
  SPEAKER_00: Her new novel is a heartwarming story about second chances and starting over.
• 0:49
  SPEAKER_00: And it's certainly a great summer read.
• 0:51
  SPEAKER_00: It starts with food stylist Sophie Cromlin, who has a beautiful life.
• 0:54
  SPEAKER_00: Now that their two boys are grown up, she and her husband Matt, an acclaimed artist, are leaving London for a new start on England's fashionably boho south coast.
• 1:04
  SPEAKER_00: But the day after the house is sold, a series of shocks leave Sophie reeling, and suddenly she's heading off to Hastings on her own.
• 1:18
  SPEAKER_00: Well, I'm thrilled to have the wonderful Maggie Alderson all the way from the UK talking about not only her latest book but also her incredible life story and work as an author, an editor, uh, and a journalist.
• 1:36
  SPEAKER_00: Let's welcome Maggie.
• 1:38
  SPEAKER_00: How are you, Maggie?
• 1:39
  SPEAKER_00: I hear it's a bit stormy over there in the UK.
• 1:42
  SPEAKER_00: It's been wild.
• 1:43
  SPEAKER_01: We've got storm bird.
• 1:45
  SPEAKER_01: So it's lovely be speaking to you, Deborah, and thinking of you in Sydney and the jackaranda trees being in blue.
• 1:53
  SPEAKER_01: Yes, well, I have every November.
• 1:57
  SPEAKER_00: I'm like, oh I want to see the jackarandas, but you do have a little bit of a love affair with Australia.
• 2:04
  SPEAKER_00: Tell us a little bit about how you um you landed and ended up in Australia because you had quite a pivotal role here.
• 2:12
  SPEAKER_01: It was kind of accidental.
• 2:13
  SPEAKER_01: I'd been going through just you know, one of those periods in your life where just a lot of things happened at once.
• 2:20
  SPEAKER_01: I'd split up from my partner, and I my job had gone weird, and it's all everything, and I'd been very ill.
• 2:28
  SPEAKER_01: I had I had um you know pre-cancerous true tumour, and I had some really unpleasant um operations and radiotherapy, and it just all happened at once.
• 2:39
  SPEAKER_01: And I got sent out to Australia by uh U Magazine, which is a uh a colour supplement with a newspaper in the UK, and they sent me out to Australia to do a couple of stories, and it just was so glorious and just seemed so optimistic.
• 2:59
  SPEAKER_01: And it's not not just sunshine and blue skies.
• 3:02
  SPEAKER_01: That was in the early 90s, and London was not like London is now.
• 3:07
  SPEAKER_01: In the early 90s, London was really, really down.
• 3:11
  SPEAKER_01: A lot of businesses were shuttering, interest rates have gone super high, no one could pay their mortgage, no one could go out for dinner, so all the good restaurants were closing.
• 3:22
  SPEAKER_01: It was, I don't know whether it was a full-on must have been a recession.
• 3:25
  SPEAKER_01: It was really grim.
• 3:27
  SPEAKER_00: Was that about 1996?
• 3:29
  SPEAKER_00: What year are we talking about?
• 3:30
  SPEAKER_00: In the early 90s or like mid-90s.
• 3:33
  SPEAKER_00: Yeah, 92.
• 3:33
  SPEAKER_01: Yeah, I remember, yeah.
• 3:35
  SPEAKER_01: It was grim in London, really was low at that point, and um, everyone was losing their houses, losing their jobs, losing their businesses.
• 3:45
  SPEAKER_01: It was awful.
• 3:46
  SPEAKER_01: Well, I got to Sydney and in the early 90s, Sydney was blooming, and I just thought London's like a kind of sad old bloke, and Sydney was like some 20-year-old guy, spunk like a spunk.
• 4:02
  SPEAKER_01: I like this.
• 4:03
  SPEAKER_01: And I met and I met some great people.
• 4:07
  SPEAKER_01: Um, my wonderful friend Kathy Lett um gave me some great introductions and just that Australian openness.
• 4:17
  SPEAKER_01: Just in the UK, people are very good friends.
• 4:22
  SPEAKER_01: Once you make a friend in the UK, they're super loyal.
• 4:26
  SPEAKER_01: But it's bloody hard to make a friend.
• 4:28
  SPEAKER_00: You know, it's that's interesting.
• 4:30
  SPEAKER_00: Yeah, it's a different culture.
• 4:32
  SPEAKER_00: I mean, it's interesting you say that.
• 4:33
  SPEAKER_00: Actually, I have to quote your friend Kathy Lett, who I've also got coming on the podcast.
• 4:38
  SPEAKER_00: She comments about you.
• 4:40
  SPEAKER_00: At last we found her.
• 4:41
  SPEAKER_00: The female Seinfeld, warm, witty, wise, and well dressed, Alderson is the hortkature of humour.
• 4:48
  SPEAKER_00: I thought that was a quite a beautiful quote.
• 4:50
  SPEAKER_00: And it was also a reflection of obviously your friendship, but also her understanding of your writing style and what you've contributed.
• 4:58
  SPEAKER_00: But for you, Australia sort of became a base.
• 5:02
  SPEAKER_00: Talk to us about how that shaped, I suppose, that part of your life.
• 5:06
  SPEAKER_01: Um, well, you know, I split up with someone who I'd been with for 12 years, so I was, you know, weirdly, suddenly single, um, had left my job, had been unwell.
• 5:16
  SPEAKER_01: So it was the perfect time for me to have a completely new start.
• 5:20
  SPEAKER_01: And and Sydney in 1993, I moved there in May 1993 because I came over to do the freelance jobs, and while I was there, Lisa Wilkinson got in touch with me and asked me to come in to see her at Cleo and asked me if I would be interested in being acting editor for a year while she did her first maternity leave.
• 5:43
  SPEAKER_01: So I thought about it for about five seconds and said, yes, I would have to do that.
• 5:49
  SPEAKER_01: So my introduction to Sydney was acting editor of Cleo, which, you know, what a hilarious introduction in Australia.
• 5:59
  SPEAKER_01: It was brilliant.
• 6:00
  SPEAKER_01: And I remember my first week at Clio, because I did, I think I did three months with Lisa to get you know to understand how it all worked, or two or three before she actually went off maternity leave.
• 6:13
  SPEAKER_01: And the first week I was there, it was the David Jones fashion show.
• 6:17
  SPEAKER_01: So this is in May.
• 6:18
  SPEAKER_01: I don't know if they still do that, yeah.
• 6:21
  SPEAKER_01: But work of you know, I could you know meet people and oh my lord.
• 6:28
  SPEAKER_01: So we had the fashion show, and that was fun, and then it just turned into a massive disco and party, and I met so many brilliant people that night.
• 6:37
  SPEAKER_01: I thought, okay, this is fun.
• 6:40
  SPEAKER_01: This is fun.
• 6:40
  SPEAKER_00: Well, absolutely that was you know, journalism in the 90s.
• 6:44
  SPEAKER_00: I mean, I also was a journalist at that time, and it was, you know, it was a fabulous time to be in the media.
• 6:50
  SPEAKER_00: Um, just out of interest, Clio Centifold of the you know became like a whole thing.
• 6:56
  SPEAKER_00: Um, you know, the centerfold that that featured in the Clio magazine.
• 7:00
  SPEAKER_00: Do you recall that very well and the involvement of I'd already gone by the time I got there?
• 7:05
  SPEAKER_00: Oh, shame, shame.
• 7:06
  SPEAKER_00: It needed to come back.
• 7:08
  SPEAKER_01: Okay, so you didn't get to do the bachelor's issue every year.
• 7:14
  SPEAKER_00: Oh, that would have been fun.
• 7:15
  SPEAKER_00: That's right.
• 7:15
  SPEAKER_00: The Clio Bachelor of the Year.
• 7:17
  SPEAKER_00: Oh my goodness.
• 7:18
  SPEAKER_00: Oh my god, that was so funny.
• 7:22
  SPEAKER_00: You think about the things that that we did and what went on then, and now it's all very, very cautionary, isn't it?
• 7:28
  SPEAKER_00: It's a totally different world.
• 7:30
  SPEAKER_00: But coming back to your your life in Australia, you continued, and then you also were editor of L UK, is that right?
• 7:37
  SPEAKER_01: Yeah, I was editor of L UK, and then you know, when I got so sick, you know, that that job didn't work out because you know you can't really have an editor who's you know half bald and you know can hardly stand up.
• 7:50
  SPEAKER_01: So um, so I'd done that, and I don't I'd edited another magazine in the UK called ES, which no longer exists, which was the first colour supplement with a newspaper in the UK, apart from the Sunday supplements of Sunday Times and Observer.
• 8:06
  SPEAKER_01: So that was a that was a really groundbreaking magazine that I was very lucky to edit.
• 8:11
  SPEAKER_01: I was the second editor of that, and then I was the second editor of L.
• 8:15
  SPEAKER_01: So you know, but which were both amazing jobs.
• 8:18
  SPEAKER_00: Well, they're both, I suppose the one thing about journalism and editing is that you get to meet so many people, and you get to it.
• 8:24
  SPEAKER_00: Life is never dull, is there?
• 8:25
  SPEAKER_00: It's always something new on your desk, and you've always got yeah, and and meet the most incredible people.
• 8:32
  SPEAKER_01: What I love about magazines and newspapers, and I've I've worked on the staff of three newspapers.
• 8:38
  SPEAKER_01: Um, you get to work with such amazing people, such such clever people, and such total eccentrics and nut jobs, and um creatives, such amazing experiences.
• 8:51
  SPEAKER_01: I mean, you know, one day you'll be talking to some incredible foreign correspondent who's been in loads of different wars, and then the next minute you'll be talking to the opera reviewer, and you know, it's just so I love that variety in journalism.
• 9:08
  SPEAKER_00: And I think actually podcasting, which is a variation of that, has also got that benefit.
• 9:13
  SPEAKER_00: You get to meet people like yourself, or you know, the next day you're talking to somebody else.
• 9:17
  SPEAKER_00: It's a very broad and interesting medium, but it's interesting that you crossed the floor, so to speak, from journalism to fiction and to writing and becoming a very successful author.
• 9:29
  SPEAKER_00: How was that transformation for you?
• 9:31
  SPEAKER_00: And what did what propelled you to do this?
• 9:34
  SPEAKER_01: I have wanted to be an all an author, as I called it when I was a child, from the age of six.
• 9:41
  SPEAKER_01: That was my first ambition was to be an author and write stories.
• 9:45
  SPEAKER_01: And then that was all I ever wanted to do.
• 9:48
  SPEAKER_01: And as a child, I constantly wrote stories, and um, but then I discovered magazines and newspapers, and so at a certain point I switched from being an author to wanting to be um a journalist and a magazine editor.
• 10:04
  SPEAKER_01: But the this strong urge to be an author was still you know there, but I but I was sort of you know, I kept it secret.
• 10:13
  SPEAKER_01: I never told anybody I wanted to do that.
• 10:15
  SPEAKER_01: I was I was really scared of it, but it just it just began to sort of like you know poke me, and it's poke me more in like you know, you know, you know you want to do this, do it.
• 10:26
  SPEAKER_01: And and then I don't know what prompted me to do it, but I decided to go and do an evening class in writing fiction at Sydney Uni.
• 10:37
  SPEAKER_01: And a lot of my friends were like, I what are you doing that for?
• 10:41
  SPEAKER_01: You've been you've made your living as a writer for about 15 years by then.
• 10:46
  SPEAKER_01: You are already a writer, but I wasn't a writer, I wasn't a fiction writer.
• 10:52
  SPEAKER_01: And you know, as a journalist, you don't make it up.
• 10:56
  SPEAKER_00: No, that's right.
• 10:56
  SPEAKER_00: It's the complete antithesis, actually, because you have to tap, you know, your fictional creative mind.
• 11:02
  SPEAKER_00: And I think to be honest, most journalists want to be authors or writers in some form.
• 11:06
  SPEAKER_00: I think many um actually have a similar passion, but you're right, it's the sort of antithesis.
• 11:12
  SPEAKER_00: One is fact-finding, and the other is, I suppose, factualizing.
• 11:17
  SPEAKER_00: You can you can do faction, but you do fiction.
• 11:21
  SPEAKER_01: Well, I only ever want to do fiction, and not only is you know, that's that sort of thing is like it's kind of you kind of have to jump off a cliff to write a novel.
• 11:30
  SPEAKER_01: As a journalist, you have to very much stay, you know, on the cliff.
• 11:34
  SPEAKER_01: Um, and it you know, it's quite scary to do.
• 11:36
  SPEAKER_01: And in a in a way, I think it's it can almost be harder.
• 11:40
  SPEAKER_01: Okay, I know I knew how to put a sentence together, but you know, making it up.
• 11:45
  SPEAKER_01: And the other thing about writing books is that there are certain structures in them that you just have to have, unless you're some you know, book a prize-winning experimental author who only writes in the first verse and present tense or something.
• 12:02
  SPEAKER_01: I pick up the cup, you know, that kind of nonsense.
• 12:06
  SPEAKER_01: You have to understand the structure, and I didn't know anything about that.
• 12:10
  SPEAKER_01: I didn't study English literature at university, which was a deliberate choice because I didn't want it to become, you know, really serious homework.
• 12:19
  SPEAKER_01: And I went, and that course gave me the most brilliant set of tools and gave me the courage to actually start.
• 12:28
  SPEAKER_01: And it also gave me an amazing reading list.
• 12:32
  SPEAKER_01: And if anyone who people say to me, you know, oh, I want to write a book, what what should I do?
• 12:37
  SPEAKER_01: And I always say, read.
• 12:39
  SPEAKER_00: If you want to write absolutely reading, um definitely teaches you, you know, to structure your books or your writing in a certain way, but also to just go on the journey, which I think you also have to be able to do, which is what you do with your books.
• 12:54
  SPEAKER_00: I mean, yes, there's structure, and you have structure, but you also have to, in a way, be free thinking as well, because you can't create if you're too structured and yet you need signposts.
• 13:04
  SPEAKER_01: Well, there are certain things that that you have to decide before you start a book, and obviously, tense is one of them, and you're insane unless it's in the past tense, but you have to decide whose voice is it?
• 13:15
  SPEAKER_01: Is it I?
• 13:16
  SPEAKER_01: Is it she?
• 13:18
  SPEAKER_01: Is it different people's point of view?
• 13:21
  SPEAKER_01: Is it one person's point of view?
• 13:23
  SPEAKER_01: If it's more than one point of view, how does it change?
• 13:26
  SPEAKER_01: Is it chap one chapter is Deborah's voice, and the next chapter is Maggie's voice, or is it you know Deborah's voice and then it's Maggie's diaries, or it's their letters to each other?
• 13:38
  SPEAKER_01: And you have you have to make those decisions before you start.
• 13:42
  SPEAKER_00: What I find interesting too is that your preparedness to go and do that course, you know, um, once you've been an established journalist and editor, that takes courage too, to go back into the system to be the student.
• 13:55
  SPEAKER_00: And actually, this whole podcast is about what I've learned because actually I think we're always learning and we're always evolving.
• 14:01
  SPEAKER_00: And I've interviewed many, many authors and extremely successful writers on this podcast, but all of them have a similar theme, which is be prepared to go back and learn.
• 14:13
  SPEAKER_00: And and don't think that you're always sort of there, because it's evolution, and that's what you do.
• 14:19
  SPEAKER_00: And I think it's obviously it's paid off.
• 14:22
  SPEAKER_01: Completely honest with you, Deborah.
• 14:23
  SPEAKER_01: I didn't complete the course, and I do wish that I had the name of the brilliant woman that that took that course.
• 14:31
  SPEAKER_01: I really owe her a thank you letter.
• 14:35
  SPEAKER_01: Somewhere, maybe in the attic, I might be able to find her name.
• 14:38
  SPEAKER_01: Or one day I would love to write and thank her because she she almost she gave me a she gave me the key.
• 14:44
  SPEAKER_00: Now, your books are often themed around a whole lot of notions, you know, love, romance, fashion, but there is often a serious undertone.
• 14:52
  SPEAKER_00: Um, how effective do you think fiction and certainly your fiction has been in discussing sort of serious elements of life and choices, like obviously in that how to break your own heart, which is one of your best-selling books, you talk about, you know, this woman's challenge of being married to someone who may not want a baby.
• 15:13
  SPEAKER_00: Like, you know, you tackle some of the core issues.
• 15:16
  SPEAKER_00: How do you find fiction as a tool in that sense?
• 15:19
  SPEAKER_01: Well, I always, when I when I'm starting a book, I that's one of the things that I one of my building blocks to start it.
• 15:28
  SPEAKER_01: That there is this that's that's really my my first thing is what is the issue I want to explore with this.
• 15:35
  SPEAKER_01: And that was the specific issue of of that book.
• 15:39
  SPEAKER_01: Each of my books has at the heart of it some kind of whether it's causes a life crisis, has already caused a life crisis, like in the new one, or whether it's we see it cause the life crisis as it happens, but there's is always a serious subject at the heart of it.
• 15:57
  SPEAKER_01: And then my next step is I choose a profession for my heroine.
• 16:03
  SPEAKER_01: So to give her a context.
• 16:05
  SPEAKER_01: And then so after that, I start deciding who is she single, is she married, does she have children, where does she live?
• 16:12
  SPEAKER_01: But that issue, I'm glad that you brought that up because that issue is the place where I start.
• 16:17
  SPEAKER_00: And so this new book that you're you're bringing out in December, tell us a little bit about how that came to be.
• 16:25
  SPEAKER_00: Would you rather like the book sounds quite interesting?
• 16:29
  SPEAKER_00: Um, tell me how it came to be.
• 16:32
  SPEAKER_01: Well, the the big issue in in that, I I wanted with this one, I wanted it to be a little bit different to my others.
• 16:39
  SPEAKER_01: Because as I in as I mentioned before, in my previous ones, the issue tends to come out with the story coming out.
• 16:48
  SPEAKER_01: So we sort of enter the person's life and the story is coming out.
• 16:53
  SPEAKER_01: Whereas in this one, I wanted to open with it, bam, right at the top.
• 16:58
  SPEAKER_01: Um, and the issue is that this woman who's been married for 30 years, her husband just comes home one day and says, I'm leaving you, I've met someone else, and they've got two grown-up sons.
• 17:11
  SPEAKER_01: And so she's completely side-blinded by this.
• 17:14
  SPEAKER_01: And he goes, he said, I'm gonna let I'm gonna let it sink in and we'll talk about it more later.
• 17:19
  SPEAKER_01: Heads off on his bike because he's one of those urban cyclists.
• 17:24
  SPEAKER_01: An hour later, there's a knock on the door, and it's two police women to tell her that he's been knocked off his bike and he's dead.
• 17:31
  SPEAKER_01: So, from that, she knows that he's betrayed her and he was planning to leave her, but he's dead.
• 17:38
  SPEAKER_00: So she's gonna mourn him at the same time as being furious, exactly.
• 17:43
  SPEAKER_01: So, which is she, a grieving widow or a completely betrayed wife, and she doesn't feel she can tell her two sons that their father was a bastard, or any of his family, or anyone, so she keeps the secret, so she's seething with rage while everyone's sort of creeping around her, and of course, she does miss him because she still loved him.
• 18:08
  SPEAKER_01: So, but I wanted to start out with that with that scenario, that dilemma right at the front.
• 18:16
  SPEAKER_01: Because normally I wouldn't tell you what the big thing in the book was because it would spoil it, but it's on the first page of this one, it's like that that's that's what it's about.
• 18:26
  SPEAKER_00: So, straight away you have the trauma, the tragedy, and it's a bit the hero's journey, which we've all learnt about in fiction writing and film writing.
• 18:36
  SPEAKER_00: You know, who's the who's the hero here or who is your main?
• 18:40
  SPEAKER_00: So it's from her perspective.
• 18:42
  SPEAKER_00: And so, what brought this to light for you?
• 18:45
  SPEAKER_00: First of all, I think we've all heard stories like this in the real world of you know, people 30-year marriage, and then the husband or the wife walks out and says, I'm done, because the kids have got older.
• 18:56
  SPEAKER_00: And I mean, it's not an uncommon theme, actually, sadly enough.
• 19:00
  SPEAKER_00: But you've made it obviously a trauma with him being knocked off and the unresolved trauma, because there's no way to then talk to him about resolution or what's happened or why, or what brought this to your to the foreground for you?
• 19:14
  SPEAKER_01: It just popped into my head fully formed.
• 19:16
  SPEAKER_01: I don't know where it came from.
• 19:18
  SPEAKER_01: I just suddenly it popped into my head, and I thought, oh, yeah, that's quite interesting.
• 19:24
  SPEAKER_01: And it there are two points of view in this book.
• 19:27
  SPEAKER_01: There's the mother, Sophie, and her older son, Bo.
• 19:31
  SPEAKER_01: It's from there, it's from the dual point of view.
• 19:35
  SPEAKER_01: And it it changed, it it changes mostly a Sophie chapter and then a Bo chapter, or then a couple of Sophie chapters, but then towards the end, they might both you might hear both of their points of view in the same chapter.
• 19:50
  SPEAKER_01: I mean, she is the main heroine, but but but Bo is also very important.
• 19:56
  SPEAKER_00: And so for you, this is an example of how you use your fiction to work through or to highlight certain social or emotional issues.
• 20:05
  SPEAKER_00: Do you think um that's something that's evolved through all your books?
• 20:09
  SPEAKER_00: Like, have you, you know, or do you think you've sort of changed the way you do things?
• 20:13
  SPEAKER_00: You just said, like, for example, you've put the the story right up front in this one, whereas the others, that's a slow bird.
• 20:22
  SPEAKER_01: Because it's nice to try something a bit different and just change the energy and the pace a little bit.
• 20:27
  SPEAKER_01: But although I do always have this some kind of serious issue at the heart of my books, they're not serious books.
• 20:34
  SPEAKER_01: I want to entertain people, give them um something just to just hopefully just to be absorbed by.
• 20:41
  SPEAKER_01: I mean, I'm reading a wonderful book at the moment by one of my favourite authors, Kate Atkinson.
• 20:47
  SPEAKER_01: I think she's amazing.
• 20:48
  SPEAKER_01: And I I hope that my books could absorb people the way her books absorb me.
• 20:56
  SPEAKER_01: So although there there is a serious element, I'm not like, you know, trying to you know tell a Steve Duck story.
• 21:03
  SPEAKER_00: Yeah, yeah, yeah.
• 21:04
  SPEAKER_01: It's just a bit of I call a bit of grit in the oyster to make the pearl.
• 21:09
  SPEAKER_01: So that there's something I don't want to write, you know, a very, very light book, although I respect people who write very light books because they're, you know, those things that little cafe on the seafront, you know, those kind of romance.
• 21:23
  SPEAKER_00: In fact, I was funny you say that.
• 21:24
  SPEAKER_00: I was reading Yeah, they're hard to write, but I was reading actually yesterday, they were saying that there's been a huge uptake in that sort of fiction, in the very light um sort of romance fiction.
• 21:37
  SPEAKER_00: And there's cafes opening where people just sit and read this very light fiction.
• 21:42
  SPEAKER_00: Do you think this is something to do?
• 21:44
  SPEAKER_00: I mean it's it's really escalated.
• 21:46
  SPEAKER_00: Like it's it's fascinating if you look at the stats.
• 21:48
  SPEAKER_00: And I'm just wondering whether, you know, there was a sort of a turn away from books for a while, but it seems book sales are going up again, which is great for all of us.
• 21:56
  SPEAKER_00: But what do you put that down to?
• 21:58
  SPEAKER_00: Do you think that people are still Looking for an authentic escape because for a while there they were distracted by the influx of social media and everything was on your phone.
• 22:07
  SPEAKER_00: Whereas I think there's a sort of a slight turning back to people wanting to just immerse themselves in something a bit light because the world seems very heavy right now.
• 22:16
  SPEAKER_00: Like I think everyone's like so much weird stuff going on in the world.
• 22:21
  SPEAKER_01: I think people need a bit of escapism, and I think your other point's absolutely right too.
• 22:27
  SPEAKER_01: Because all yeah, all that's I've got nothing against social media.
• 22:30
  SPEAKER_01: I'm a massive fan of it, and I get impatient.
• 22:34
  SPEAKER_01: People go, oh no, social media.
• 22:38
  SPEAKER_01: People used to say that television was going to be the end of the world, or transistor radios, or moving pictures, you know, everything that comes out, you know, 78 records, it's always the end of the world.
• 22:50
  SPEAKER_01: Social media is just the one that's.
• 22:53
  SPEAKER_00: And in fact, you're right.
• 22:54
  SPEAKER_00: You're actually right.
• 22:55
  SPEAKER_00: In fact, I was actually at a DPAC Chopra thing yesterday, which was really fascinating.
• 22:58
  SPEAKER_00: He's here in Australia, and he was talking about AI as the next revolution, just like the industrial revolution, just like all of the things you're referring to, or the telephone.
• 23:08
  SPEAKER_00: He's saying, this is here.
• 23:10
  SPEAKER_00: It's it's something that we just have to realize is the next tool for us as writers, as health workers.
• 23:17
  SPEAKER_00: And it's to your point, it's a matter of, you know, I mean, you and I are probably, you know, on the upper age side compared to some of the 20-year-olds.
• 23:27
  SPEAKER_00: But the truth is, I found it so liberating and and and freeing to have social media.
• 23:32
  SPEAKER_00: My whole podcast goes out every week on it, and you're the same.
• 23:35
  SPEAKER_00: So it's great, but we can still have a good book, right?
• 23:39
  SPEAKER_00: Does it it's not neither or that to go back to your your point?
• 23:43
  SPEAKER_01: I think though I love social media, you know what it's like if you start looking at TikTok like 11 o'clock at night and then like one in the morning, we're still watching cat videos.
• 23:53
  SPEAKER_01: Um I think after a while, a sort of gorging on that.
• 23:59
  SPEAKER_01: I think certainly for me, I've really I've really gone back to reading.
• 24:04
  SPEAKER_01: I've obviously I love reading, I've always been a voracious reader, but recently I'm reading more rather than watching telly.
• 24:12
  SPEAKER_01: I I'm tending to read for that exact reason.
• 24:16
  SPEAKER_01: I want to be immersed in something and not flitting from the cat video to this fabulous granny in Yorkshire who did brilliant cooking videos or the guy that's exhaustive.
• 24:30
  SPEAKER_00: It's addictive, isn't it?
• 24:32
  SPEAKER_00: It's like, but I will say on that note, one of the things that I have noticed, and I'm sure you you resonate this, is the amount of books that are being turned into series, which we're all getting obsessed with, which is fact like the Reese Witherspoons, who take these amazing books and bring them to a much broader audience.
• 24:50
  SPEAKER_00: That is something that I think is part of this whole new dimension that is wonderful.
• 24:56
  SPEAKER_00: Well, I think what it does is it brings books to life that may otherwise not have had sort of a presence in people, in some people who don't read.
• 25:04
  SPEAKER_00: There are many people who don't read, believe it or not.
• 25:07
  SPEAKER_00: So, I mean, for example, whether it's um, you know, Big Little Lies or some of I mean some of the Liana Moray books that they've turned into series, it's made it's got a whole new audience.
• 25:17
  SPEAKER_00: Or Jane Harper, who was a journalist, who the dry, and she's done brilliantly, you know, with being brought to the screen.
• 25:25
  SPEAKER_00: Oh, how good.
• 25:26
  SPEAKER_00: She's amazing.
• 25:26
  SPEAKER_00: She's been on the podcast.
• 25:27
  SPEAKER_01: She's amazing.
• 25:28
  SPEAKER_01: Um, since rivals have has have come out, Jillie Cooper's book.
• 25:33
  SPEAKER_01: Has that been huge in Australia?
• 25:35
  SPEAKER_00: It's been massive in the UK.
• 25:37
  SPEAKER_00: Massive, yeah, and it's it's definitely massive here too.
• 25:40
  SPEAKER_01: I mean, you could not you couldn't buy a Jillie Cooper book for a while because like I I've learned, oh my lord, I've got to I've got to go and I must read it again before I watch it.
• 25:50
  SPEAKER_01: You couldn't get a copy of it.
• 25:51
  SPEAKER_00: Isn't that wonderful?
• 25:52
  SPEAKER_00: So what I'm saying is I think that authors and books, and I'm sure books like yours, um, are very um adaptable and and can be adapted to the screen.
• 26:02
  SPEAKER_00: And I do think that is that that is also a plus of the streaming services, because we actually, if they utilize and bring fiction to life, that's also a good thing.
• 26:12
  SPEAKER_00: So I think it's about being adapting, learning, and all of these things that you're reflecting.
• 26:19
  SPEAKER_00: And I think we agree it's um that's just part of the next frontier and fun to be part of.
• 26:25
  SPEAKER_01: I uh I am a little queasy about AI.
• 26:28
  SPEAKER_01: Um, I'm I'm on the list of authors whose books have been fed into the scary core of AI with no permission or payment.
• 26:40
  SPEAKER_01: Yeah, and that is scary.
• 26:42
  SPEAKER_01: I watched a friend of mine who's a successful novelist.
• 26:46
  SPEAKER_01: Um, she did this amazing Instagram post.
• 26:49
  SPEAKER_01: She put into a an AI programme, I can't remember the name of it, write a novel by ChatGBT, probably.
• 26:58
  SPEAKER_01: Yeah, which I've deliberately ever looked at.
• 27:00
  SPEAKER_01: And it churned with and she filmed it as it churned out.
• 27:04
  SPEAKER_01: Scary.
• 27:05
  SPEAKER_01: And it was chilling because the title is a was a title I wouldn't not be surprised to see on one of her books.
• 27:12
  SPEAKER_01: It's terrifying.
• 27:13
  SPEAKER_01: She was actually crying by the end of it.
• 27:15
  SPEAKER_01: It was even.
• 27:15
  SPEAKER_00: No, I really understand.
• 27:16
  SPEAKER_00: It's quite scary, and it's it's something that we were talking about or that was being discussed yesterday, but it was in a health and and meditative context.
• 27:25
  SPEAKER_00: But it it is a real it's here to stay.
• 27:27
  SPEAKER_00: And it's the question is how we navigate it as writers and authors and podcasters for that matter.
• 27:33
  SPEAKER_00: It's a very interesting, and then you've got misinformation and all of those issues, which we could delve into.
• 27:38
  SPEAKER_00: But in the meantime, coming back to your mission, the need for beautifully written and and accessible fiction, which is what I would call what you do, is going through the roof.
• 27:51
  SPEAKER_00: So something, something is going well, and we have to be grateful that we can have that universal.
• 27:58
  SPEAKER_00: I think it's a very um shared universal humanity to want to get lost in a great story.
• 28:03
  SPEAKER_00: Definitely.
• 28:04
  SPEAKER_00: Definitely.
• 28:05
  SPEAKER_00: And it sounds like you've uh you've captured quite a few hearts with your, is this your what what number book is this for you?
• 28:13
  SPEAKER_00: A tenth.
• 28:14
  SPEAKER_00: That's incredible.
• 28:16
  SPEAKER_00: And so just finally, what would you say to somebody who wants to embark on the fictional journey of writing a book?
• 28:25
  SPEAKER_01: Read.
• 28:26
  SPEAKER_01: Um, so I always say to people is read, read as many different kinds of novels as you can.
• 28:33
  SPEAKER_01: Read everything, and just you know, to to find where you fit in.
• 28:40
  SPEAKER_01: And I would also say read books about writing fiction.
• 28:44
  SPEAKER_01: Like just behind me where I'm sitting, I've got this little shrine of my books about writing, such as Stephen King on writing, which is the best book ever written about writing.
• 28:56
  SPEAKER_01: And reading books about writing is very helpful once you're once you've read enough fiction, you need to read about writing fiction.
• 29:07
  SPEAKER_01: And then the the next stage of reading is um to read from I before I started my first book, I read three of my favourite books, which had given me the feeling I wanted my book to give people.
• 29:24
  SPEAKER_01: And then the books were Love and a Cold Climate by Nancy Mitford, um, I Capture the Castle by Jodie Smith, and I can't remember what the third one was now because it's over 20 years ago.
• 29:36
  SPEAKER_01: Yeah.
• 29:36
  SPEAKER_01: Um I reread those three books, and that just but that time I read them critically, I read them consciously, as you would have done at uni, where you're not just reading to be immersed in the story and be in love with all the male characters, but to analyze it, you know, how is this author making me feel like this?
• 30:00
  SPEAKER_01: What and also I looked up what were the common themes, and all three of those, I think the third one might have been flambards, yeah, it was flambards, and all three of those books had three hot men that the heroine sort of had a you know an attraction with uh uh you know, something happening, and as the reader, you were in love with all three of the men, very interesting, and you didn't know which one you wanted her to end up with.
• 30:33
  SPEAKER_01: So I just did that.
• 30:34
  SPEAKER_01: I had three men in my first book.
• 30:37
  SPEAKER_00: That's very interesting, and also the the degree of intention that you applied to that per to that process.
• 30:44
  SPEAKER_00: It really became a process for you.
• 30:47
  SPEAKER_00: I find that interesting.
• 30:48
  SPEAKER_00: It was you were very much active with purpose.
• 30:56
  SPEAKER_01: And you do have you know, you have to get um sort of professional about it and sort of consciously think what am I trying to achieve here and how am I going to do it.
• 31:06
  SPEAKER_01: But beyond choosing the like the central serious theme, choosing a bit of structure like that and deciding what my heroine is going to do for a living.
• 31:18
  SPEAKER_01: Apart from that, I don't plan my books at all.
• 31:21
  SPEAKER_01: Some authors plan the entire plot and every chapter.
• 31:25
  SPEAKER_01: I mean, I know a couple of of authors who have each chapter on an index card, what's going to happen in it, and then each morning they get the index card out and they start typing.
• 31:35
  SPEAKER_01: I couldn't do that.
• 31:37
  SPEAKER_00: I'd be more like you, yeah, yeah.
• 31:39
  SPEAKER_00: No, I totally and also something nice about the organic process.
• 31:43
  SPEAKER_00: You need a little organic.
• 31:44
  SPEAKER_01: That's what Stephen King does.
• 31:46
  SPEAKER_01: And my first three books, I honestly thought I was cheating.
• 31:50
  SPEAKER_01: I thought I'm not doing this right, you're supposed to plan them.
• 31:53
  SPEAKER_01: That's what proper authors do.
• 31:55
  SPEAKER_01: And then I read Stephen King, and there's this bit where he says that he never plans his books, he just starts as an opening sentence, and he says, I realized, I reckon that if I don't know what's going to happen at the end, then the reader won't either.
• 32:14
  SPEAKER_01: And I just thought, Oh my god, thank you, Stephen King.
• 32:18
  SPEAKER_01: Oh, cheating.
• 32:22
  SPEAKER_00: Oh, I love that.
• 32:23
  SPEAKER_00: I actually really love that, and I think that's quite inspirational for those that are listening.
• 32:28
  SPEAKER_00: Um, there's plenty of ways to do um to write a book, and that certainly appeals to me.
• 32:34
  SPEAKER_00: I like that notion.
• 32:35
  SPEAKER_00: A little bit more free form.
• 32:38
  SPEAKER_01: Is an amazing thing, and you know, it does all kinds of stuff that we don't realize it's doing.
• 32:44
  SPEAKER_01: You know, like when you're walking on the street and you trip on a bit of a bit of paving stone that's up, but you manage to save yourself without thinking I'm saving myself.
• 32:54
  SPEAKER_01: It's you've done it, haven't you?
• 32:56
  SPEAKER_01: And when you're in the middle of a book and you think, oh, how on earth am I gonna get them in the right place?
• 33:02
  SPEAKER_01: And then your brain goes, Oh, why don't you do this?
• 33:04
  SPEAKER_01: And it just the brain does stuff on its own without us.
• 33:10
  SPEAKER_01: That's what I've come to trust.
• 33:12
  SPEAKER_01: It can be scary at times, but the brain will sort it out for you without you sort of straining.
• 33:21
  SPEAKER_01: It's quite magical what the brain can do when you're not looking at it.
• 33:25
  SPEAKER_00: Yeah, I love that.
• 33:26
  SPEAKER_00: And I think it's very much about instinct and intuition and honoring that.
• 33:30
  SPEAKER_00: And it sounds like you've done that.
• 33:32
  SPEAKER_00: And I look forward to seeing your new book, which I think actually has just arrived at my front door, which is um yeah.
• 33:39
  SPEAKER_00: So I'm looking forward to a nice week where I can have a little read or save it for my next summer break.
• 33:46
  SPEAKER_00: Thank you so much.
• 33:47
  SPEAKER_00: I really love speaking to you, and I love what you do, and I love that you're a journalist who did the pivot.
• 33:53
  SPEAKER_00: We love a pivot, and you've pivoted in a major world.
• 33:55
  SPEAKER_01: Oh, I'm still a journalist as well, Deborah.
• 33:58
  SPEAKER_01: Well, always a journalist.
• 34:01
  SPEAKER_00: Yes.
• 34:02
  SPEAKER_00: I am certainly always a journalist.
• 34:04
  SPEAKER_00: And you know, I think it's it's quite a privilege to be able to tell stories and to be able to storytell.
• 34:12
  SPEAKER_00: And I think, yeah, I I think it's one of the best occupations I would send, I would let anybody know that this is because it's timeless, you can actually just do it in so many different ways.
• 34:22
  SPEAKER_00: Um especially at the moment, especially now.
• 34:25
  SPEAKER_00: We've got all the different mediums.
• 34:28
  SPEAKER_00: Um and uh I'm very grateful for our chat.
• 34:32
  SPEAKER_00: So I hope you survive all the the uh the crazy storms over there, and um that you don't get too stuck in the house, which it sounds like everyone's been for a few days, but in the in the one thing before we go, Deborah.
• 34:47
  SPEAKER_01: Yeah, sure.
• 34:49
  SPEAKER_01: We mentioned that my book is called Would You Rather?
• 34:52
  SPEAKER_01: Yes, and it comes out on December the 2nd.
• 34:55
  SPEAKER_00: Yes, it does, and we are looking forward to it, and you can get it at all good bookstores, and I'm assuming on all of the Apple downloads.
• 35:05
  SPEAKER_00: So uh thanks, Maggie, and good luck with everything.
• 35:10
  SPEAKER_00: Lovely talking to you too.
• 35:12
  SPEAKER_00: You take care.
• 35:13
  SPEAKER_00: Thank you.
• 35:19
  SPEAKER_00: Thanks so much for listening.
• 35:21
  SPEAKER_00: I'm blessed to have so many wonderful guests coming on the show.
• 35:24
  SPEAKER_00: So check out my What I've Learned Instagram for updates.
• 35:28
  SPEAKER_00: Meanwhile, stay tuned, kind, and curious.
• 35:31
  SPEAKER_00: Love Dev.