Latest / The Book Deal / Paramedic and writer Sally Gould shares her experiences of writing and editing memoir; how to use feedback and giving yourself time to make your work the best version of itself

Transcript

Paramedic and writer Sally Gould shares her experiences of writing and editing memoir; how to use feedback and giving yourself time to make your work the best version of itself · The Book Deal

• 0:09
  Natasha Rai: This is the Book Deal Podcast, monthly takeover by your host, Natasha Rai.
• 0:14
  Natasha Rai: I'll be bringing you even more debut and season authors as they talk about their path to publication.
• 0:26
  Madeleine Cleary: The Book Deal Podcast acknowledges the traditional owners of the land and waters, which it's recorded on and pays respect to their elders past, present, and emerging.
• 0:39
  Natasha Rai: sally Gould has been a paramedic for 14 years and counting and still finds joy in her self-proclaimed dream job.
• 0:47
  Natasha Rai: The professional and personal growth she experienced on the frontline and the journals she kept during her early years in the field were the inspiration for her memoir Frog.
• 0:56
  Natasha Rai: Her draft manuscript won the narrative nonfiction category in the 2023 A SA ca Award mentorship program.
• 1:06
  Natasha Rai: When she's not in uniform, Sally can be found tutoring, paramedic students, or immersed in her writing.
• 1:12
  Natasha Rai: She spends the rest of her days off nurturing herself through running bush, walking, baking, attending the theater, and spending time with family and friends.
• 1:21
  Natasha Rai: Sally lives in Sydney with her husband and their two children.
• 1:28
  Natasha Rai: Hello, Sally Gould.
• 1:30
  Natasha Rai: Welcome to the Book Deal podcast.
• 1:31
  Natasha Rai: Good morning, Natasha.
• 1:33
  Natasha Rai: How are you?
• 1:34
  Natasha Rai: Yeah, I'm well, thanks.
• 1:34
  Natasha Rai: How are you?
• 1:35
  Natasha Rai: Oh, I'm fine, thank you.
• 1:37
  Natasha Rai: Um, thanks for joining me today.
• 1:39
  Natasha Rai: Uh, just wanted to talk to you about your memoir, frog.
• 1:44
  Natasha Rai: Yes.
• 1:44
  Natasha Rai: And maybe some publication journey stuff and, you know, just a bunch of other things that I think are very interesting.
• 1:51
  Natasha Rai: Mm-hmm.
• 1:51
  Natasha Rai: Sounds good.
• 1:52
  Natasha Rai: So how do you feel about, uh, giving me your elevator pitch for Frog?
• 1:56
  Natasha Rai: It's
• 1:56
  Sally Gould: not my favorite thing to do.
• 1:58
  Sally Gould: Um, I should have been prepared for this one, but I'm not.
• 2:01
  Sally Gould: Um, frog is my story from when I started as a university ride-along paramedic student up until when I become an intensive care paramedic.
• 2:11
  Sally Gould: So I think it's told through the lens of all the patients that I see, well, a bunch of the patients that I see over that time period, but it's much more about my growth as a clinician and as a person throughout that time period.
• 2:25
  Natasha Rai: That was
• 2:25
  Sally Gould: pretty good.
• 2:26
  Sally Gould: Yes.
• 2:26
  Sally Gould: Nailed it.
• 2:27
  Sally Gould: We're off to a good start.
• 2:29
  Natasha Rai: Um, look, I've read it and I absolutely loved it as you know,'cause I was messaging you the whole time I was reading it.
• 2:35
  Natasha Rai: Um, I just think it's amazing because it helped me really get an insight into what a typical shift might look like or even a non-typical shift and just the pressures that you are under when you're working in that very high stress situation.
• 2:49
  Natasha Rai: So.
• 2:50
  Natasha Rai: I loved reading it to just get that insight.
• 2:54
  Natasha Rai: Parts of it were really hard to read, I'll be honest, um, because of the case studies that you include.
• 2:59
  Natasha Rai: But again, it's all that unique kind of perspective into your world, I guess, your working world.
• 3:05
  Sally Gould: Yeah, I think that was one of the goals when writing the book is I've really enjoyed opening the doors, so to speak, on the ambulance and showing people my version of what it's really like.
• 3:14
  Sally Gould: Yeah.
• 3:15
  Sally Gould: Not the glossy TV version, but you know, really put the reader inside my head.
• 3:19
  Natasha Rai: And you did.
• 3:20
  Natasha Rai: So thank you for that.
• 3:22
  Natasha Rai: Now, I've heard you speak about your book, and I know that you, it came out of a diary that you kept for many years.
• 3:28
  Natasha Rai: Is diary the right word?
• 3:30
  Sally Gould: Yeah, when?
• 3:31
  Sally Gould: When I started as a university student, we had to keep a clinical log of all the patients that we saw just to tick off that component of the place.
• 3:39
  Sally Gould: But I felt like that was so objective and it wasn't covering near enough of the experience, and I wanted to capture everything.
• 3:46
  Sally Gould: Maybe that's the writer in me.
• 3:48
  Sally Gould: I wanted to capture the way the paramedics walked and the how they carried their gear and what they spoke about between jobs and the way they joked and their dark humor.
• 3:57
  Sally Gould: And so I kept my own journal or diary, um, of my time in that initial placement.
• 4:03
  Sally Gould: Um, just trying to capture all the weird and wonderful things I was seeing.
• 4:06
  Natasha Rai: Mm-hmm.
• 4:08
  Natasha Rai: At what point did you start to look at your, kind of, your entries and reflect on it and feel that maybe you would like to have them published?
• 4:21
  Sally Gould: Uh, it took a long time.
• 4:22
  Sally Gould: Mm-hmm.
• 4:22
  Sally Gould: It was certainly never the intention with the original journal.
• 4:25
  Sally Gould: Um, and nor was it with over the following years, I wasn't intending to turn it into a book.
• 4:30
  Sally Gould: It was purely for my own reflection, I guess, to capture that time, to capture my growth, to be able to reflect on it, um, to learn from it.
• 4:39
  Sally Gould: But yeah, it took years until I started to sort of see a story emerging from what I'd been through to think, ah, maybe someone else might be interested in this.
• 4:48
  Sally Gould: But it certainly wasn't the intention from the start.
• 4:52
  Natasha Rai: And that, that time when you started to think about someone else might be interested, were you kind of thinking about like other paramedics or people generally?
• 5:00
  Sally Gould: I was certainly, it was limited.
• 5:02
  Sally Gould: I thought my colleagues would probably really like this'cause I thought they could relate to it.
• 5:06
  Sally Gould: They'd see themselves in it.
• 5:08
  Sally Gould: And that's kind of where my imagination stopped at that point, just thinking, oh, my colleagues would probably enjoy this.
• 5:13
  Sally Gould: And then I allowed myself to dream a bit and I thought, oh, maybe like other emergency services and frontline workers.
• 5:18
  Sally Gould: And I thought, oh, well maybe their friends and family might enjoy, um, the insight.
• 5:23
  Sally Gould: And it wasn't until I sort of got in contact with people within the industry that they said, oh no, no, there's a much bigger audience for this that I really allowed myself to realize that.
• 5:32
  Natasha Rai: Yeah.
• 5:33
  Natasha Rai: Oh wow.
• 5:34
  Natasha Rai: So then what was your kind of next steps from that, those kind of conversations?
• 5:39
  Natasha Rai: How did you begin to go into that publishing journey?
• 5:44
  Sally Gould: I think from the start I just wanted to turn the book into a fully fleshed out book, and that was just a dream I had for myself and just a goal I set for myself.
• 5:54
  Sally Gould: It certainly wasn't, um, a publication dream from the start.
• 5:58
  Sally Gould: It was just, I've got all these.
• 6:00
  Sally Gould: Anecdotes, these stories, these memories that I've captured.
• 6:02
  Sally Gould: I wanna write about it, I wanna flesh it out.
• 6:05
  Sally Gould: I wanna turn it into some sort of, um, whole story with narrative arc and character development.
• 6:10
  Sally Gould: And I am the character and I just enjoyed setting myself that challenge.
• 6:15
  Sally Gould: And so it wasn't, I'm gonna get this published.
• 6:18
  Sally Gould: It was mm-hmm.
• 6:19
  Sally Gould: I'd just like to see.
• 6:20
  Sally Gould: A hobby space where fleshing all of this out and learning the craft of writing a bit as I go, um, where that gets me, that was the very start, was just this strange dream that all my friends thought I was a bit crazy for thinking I was just gonna write a book.
• 6:35
  Sally Gould: They're like, why, why would you write a book?
• 6:37
  Sally Gould: I was like, well, why not learn something new?
• 6:40
  Natasha Rai: So how did you figure out how to do all of that?
• 6:43
  Natasha Rai: Like, you know, the character arcs the narrative arc.
• 6:46
  Sally Gould: Uh, I did a lot of just self-directed learning.
• 6:49
  Sally Gould: So like deep dives, online courses, reading, I mean the internet's as long as you can filter correctly as a whole host of good information.
• 6:58
  Sally Gould: And I just really, um, focused on one element at a time.
• 7:01
  Sally Gould: 'cause I found it so overwhelming trying to learn something new.
• 7:04
  Sally Gould: I was very expert as a paramedic and incredibly novice as a writer and I still feel that way.
• 7:10
  Sally Gould: Um, but.
• 7:11
  Sally Gould: I just did one thing at a time, so perhaps my focus might be on, um, dialogue.
• 7:16
  Sally Gould: And so, you know, for a number of weeks I do this deep dive on how to write dialogue and how to capture people's voices and how much is too much and where it needs to go and what the purpose of it is.
• 7:26
  Sally Gould: And then I'd do a full edit of the manuscript just based on that lesson I'd learned, and then I'd go on to the next one.
• 7:32
  Natasha Rai: Oh wow.
• 7:33
  Natasha Rai: I mean, that sounds both thorough and sort of painful.
• 7:36
  Sally Gould: Oh yes.
• 7:37
  Sally Gould: Oh yes.
• 7:37
  Sally Gould: I don't think I did it the easy way.
• 7:39
  Sally Gould: I think I just.
• 7:41
  Sally Gould: In and then was like, oh, I probably need to actually learn some technique to this.
• 7:45
  Sally Gould: And then was sort of trying to back lay all of the learning I was doing onto the manuscript that I had.
• 7:50
  Sally Gould: So it wasn't easy.
• 7:51
  Sally Gould: And it wasn't smooth and it took maybe longer than it should have.
• 7:55
  Sally Gould: But I enjoyed the process, I enjoyed the challenge.
• 7:58
  Sally Gould: Um, and I also enjoyed being able to see the manuscript get better.
• 8:02
  Sally Gould: Mm-hmm.
• 8:03
  Sally Gould: Uh, every time I made these changes and.
• 8:06
  Sally Gould: I guess that was the start of it, starting to be transformed into something that was accessible for a reader, not just something that I was doing for myself.
• 8:14
  Natasha Rai: Yeah.
• 8:15
  Natasha Rai: And all the kind of research that you did and the learning, are there any courses or um, websites that you remember that were particularly helpful that you wanted to share?
• 8:26
  Natasha Rai: Now you don't have to.
• 8:27
  Natasha Rai: That's a putting you on the spot question.
• 8:30
  Sally Gould: No, that's all right.
• 8:31
  Sally Gould: I found this lady, um, Wendy, who did a course on me, memoir writing, uh, for geniuses.
• 8:37
  Sally Gould: I found a few of her resources quite useful.
• 8:40
  Sally Gould: Um, I also lent on the Australian Society of Authors.
• 8:44
  Sally Gould: Um, I signed up to all of that and did a deep dive of all their stuff, which was super helpful.
• 8:48
  Sally Gould: And the Australian Writers Center as well had some courses, so just like local, um, accessible, some free, some paid.
• 8:57
  Sally Gould: Um.
• 8:58
  Sally Gould: But yeah, quite accessible from my lounge at home where I was doing my hobby writing.
• 9:02
  Sally Gould: Nice.
• 9:04
  Sally Gould: And so
• 9:05
  Natasha Rai: do you remember like kind of what length of time you took to do this kind of, kind of element by element?
• 9:12
  Natasha Rai: Um, manuscript, structural rewrite edit?
• 9:16
  Sally Gould: Um, I'd say probably the most part of a year.
• 9:20
  Sally Gould: So I spent a year, the problem was I hadn't learned that you're supposed to sort of, well they say get it all out and then do an edit.
• 9:27
  Sally Gould: I was doing a whole lot of editing as I went because the perfectionist in me is like, you can't leave something messy.
• 9:33
  Sally Gould: So I hated moving on to something until I'd tidied.
• 9:36
  Sally Gould: Um, if I did it all again, I'd probably do a bit more of a dump and then fine tune from there.
• 9:42
  Natasha Rai: Mm-hmm.
• 9:42
  Sally Gould: So I was doing a bit of an edit as I wrote, and so that's why it probably took me over a year to write the initial manuscript and then another year to do all of this fine tuning before I felt.
• 9:52
  Sally Gould: I was ready to let anyone else sort of see it.
• 9:54
  Sally Gould: Yeah.
• 9:54
  Natasha Rai: Yeah.
• 9:55
  Natasha Rai: And that also is a very much kind of emerging writer, debut writer process as well.
• 10:01
  Natasha Rai: Like especially'cause so many of us write in the dark or in secret.
• 10:05
  Natasha Rai: Yes.
• 10:06
  Natasha Rai: Or we treat it like a hobby and we don't think it's can be anything serious.
• 10:09
  Natasha Rai: So we do, we are very like take great pains to make sure it's perfect, whatever that is for us.
• 10:17
  Natasha Rai: Right?
• 10:17
  Natasha Rai: Mm-hmm.
• 10:18
  Natasha Rai: Correct.
• 10:18
  Natasha Rai: Yeah.
• 10:19
  Natasha Rai: Yeah.
• 10:20
  Natasha Rai: So at the end of the two years, um, what did you have in terms of your manuscript?
• 10:27
  Sally Gould: I had a full manuscript, uh, full length complete manuscript that had only been looked over by me.
• 10:37
  Sally Gould: So it was very much full length and fully fleshed out.
• 10:42
  Sally Gould: And as far as I could get it personally, yeah.
• 10:45
  Sally Gould: Um, I'd like trolled over it.
• 10:47
  Sally Gould: Multiple edits, multiple read throughs.
• 10:49
  Sally Gould: Tried to do some more learning, tweaking, and I just was at the point I, I had it, it was full, but I couldn't see it anymore.
• 10:56
  Sally Gould: If that makes sense.
• 10:57
  Sally Gould: Yeah, it does
• 10:57
  Natasha Rai: make total sense.
• 10:59
  Natasha Rai: And, you know, um, I talked to other writers about this idea of the character arc, and I know you just said earlier that you were the character, so to speak.
• 11:07
  Natasha Rai: So with your arc, without giving too much away, there is a strong mental health component and a sense of, um, I don't know what the right word is, like a sense of.
• 11:17
  Natasha Rai: Coming into yourself and your identity as a paramedic.
• 11:21
  Natasha Rai: Like, I'm not saying that happened.
• 11:23
  Natasha Rai: I'm trying not to give anything away.
• 11:25
  Natasha Rai: I'm saying that there was the definite search for that.
• 11:28
  Natasha Rai: Were you consciously aware of that type of, um, arc for this for, for yourself as you were looking at your case histories?
• 11:35
  Natasha Rai: Or did that emerge kind of in the process?
• 11:40
  Sally Gould: Interesting question'cause I started writing the book a lot earlier than the recent go I had at it.
• 11:46
  Sally Gould: So maybe 10 years ago now.
• 11:48
  Sally Gould: I started writing and this, the stuff that happened in the book hadn't really happened yet.
• 11:54
  Sally Gould: Um, and so it would've been a very different book.
• 11:56
  Sally Gould: I ended up losing 20,000 words, um,'cause I didn't save it.
• 12:01
  Sally Gould: Oh my gosh.
• 12:02
  Sally Gould: And the computer just died and took that.
• 12:04
  Sally Gould: Um, so I had a bit of a break and I think in that time.
• 12:07
  Sally Gould: Like a little bit more life happened.
• 12:09
  Sally Gould: Mm-hmm.
• 12:09
  Sally Gould: And that's where, yeah, I, I toyed with the ending,'cause I wrote the book chronologically.
• 12:15
  Sally Gould: 'cause that's how I had the diaries and journals that I was turning into this story.
• 12:20
  Sally Gould: And I almost, I toyed with the idea of, of just not including that as an element for a while.
• 12:25
  Sally Gould: Mm-hmm.
• 12:25
  Sally Gould: Just thinking.
• 12:26
  Sally Gould: Is it too much or was it too close to the end?
• 12:29
  Sally Gould: And all these sorts of things.
• 12:30
  Sally Gould: And then I had a look down sort of hero's journey and all that type stuff and thought, oh, this is just made for this.
• 12:36
  Sally Gould: So yeah, it, it kind of fell into place itself.
• 12:39
  Sally Gould: It wasn't forced, um, it wasn't, the timeline wasn't played with, it was just what, the way I cropped the end of the book, um, made it sit in the structure that it currently is at.
• 12:51
  Sally Gould: Yeah.
• 12:52
  Natasha Rai: Okay.
• 12:52
  Natasha Rai: So very much time and.
• 12:55
  Natasha Rai: Life have shaped it in a lot of ways, just like you would if you're running fiction, if you left it alone for a few years and you come back to it with fresh eyes.
• 13:04
  Natasha Rai: So I, I'm trying to make a tip out of something that you've said, which is if you give something time, you can really see the potential of growth in it or changes, right?
• 13:15
  Natasha Rai: Yeah.
• 13:15
  Natasha Rai: Yeah.
• 13:15
  Sally Gould: And I think if, if I noticed a lot of times I was trying to push something or trying to make something fit.
• 13:21
  Sally Gould: And it didn't.
• 13:22
  Sally Gould: And I think the more space I gave it, it sorted itself out, you know, in a weird way.
• 13:27
  Natasha Rai: Mm-hmm.
• 13:27
  Sally Gould: Yeah.
• 13:28
  Natasha Rai: So once you couldn't see it anymore, as you say, um, who did you show it to?
• 13:34
  Sally Gould: The very first person was actually my sister.
• 13:36
  Sally Gould: And they say, uh, don't show it to people, you know,'cause they'll just say, oh, this is amazing.
• 13:40
  Sally Gould: Um, but I've got a very unique sister in that she's incredibly frank and honest, and I love her dearly for that.
• 13:46
  Sally Gould: Um, she's widely read.
• 13:47
  Sally Gould: She's not a paramedic, but she's my sister.
• 13:49
  Sally Gould: And I just said to her like, I know you'll tell me if this is absolute garbage.
• 13:54
  Sally Gould: Um, that's what I want.
• 13:55
  Sally Gould: And she knows there is no sugarcoating in my family.
• 13:58
  Sally Gould: There's no niceties, there's no softening hard messages.
• 14:01
  Sally Gould: It's just the truth.
• 14:02
  Sally Gould: Um, so I felt very comfortable showing her, knowing that she was gonna tell me the truth, uh, which she did.
• 14:07
  Sally Gould: Um, and one of her first bits of feedback was, um, you sound like a psychopath.
• 14:14
  Natasha Rai: Oh my God.
• 14:14
  Natasha Rai: Okay.
• 14:15
  Sally Gould: And in, in that, I'd taken these.
• 14:18
  Sally Gould: Journals and I'd let people into my head and I'd done nothing to ease the reader, the non paramedic reader, into this horrific world that I'd just led them into.
• 14:28
  Sally Gould: Yeah.
• 14:29
  Sally Gould: So none of the, none of the closure on the patient cases, none of the easing them into an outcome because I'm like, well, no, they died.
• 14:36
  Sally Gould: She's like, yeah, but the reader thought they had a chance.
• 14:39
  Sally Gould: You need to let them down gently here.
• 14:41
  Sally Gould: I was like, oh, okay.
• 14:42
  Sally Gould: Sorry.
• 14:42
  Sally Gould: Didn't even think of that.
• 14:44
  Sally Gould: Um, so very useful feedback.
• 14:46
  Sally Gould: Very honest feedback.
• 14:48
  Sally Gould: But also kind of gave me a bit of confidence to think, oh, okay.
• 14:50
  Sally Gould: She didn't think it was trash and I know she'd tell me if she was like, this is not worth pursuing.
• 14:55
  Sally Gould: Yeah.
• 14:55
  Sally Gould: So she was the very first person.
• 14:57
  Natasha Rai: Okay, great.
• 14:58
  Natasha Rai: So you took the arm psychopath, um, feedback and I worked with it.
• 15:03
  Natasha Rai: So you did, so you, you changed elements at that point?
• 15:06
  Sally Gould: Yeah.
• 15:06
  Sally Gould: It was still an early draft and she was still very much doing, um.
• 15:10
  Sally Gould: Like wide brush stroke feedback.
• 15:13
  Sally Gould: It wasn't anything fine tuning.
• 15:15
  Sally Gould: I just said to her the general I was after like pacing and what stories are working and what aren't and that type of thing.
• 15:21
  Sally Gould: Um, and yeah, she gave me that feedback.
• 15:24
  Natasha Rai: Mm-hmm.
• 15:24
  Natasha Rai: And
• 15:25
  Sally Gould: yeah, it gave me the confidence.
• 15:26
  Sally Gould: 'cause the next person I actually got a manuscript assessment done.
• 15:30
  Sally Gould: Um, I'm pretty sure it was through the Australian Society of Authors and that's a paid, um mm-hmm.
• 15:36
  Sally Gould: Service.
• 15:37
  Sally Gould: And they looked it.
• 15:39
  Sally Gould: Maybe it was the first chapter.
• 15:40
  Sally Gould: I just remember it being a really short piece and just being like, is that enough?
• 15:43
  Sally Gould: Is that enough for them to to know?
• 15:45
  Sally Gould: And that was the first time I'd got professional feedback and I found that very difficult.
• 15:50
  Sally Gould: Yeah.
• 15:51
  Natasha Rai: Oh, okay.
• 15:51
  Natasha Rai: What was difficult about it?
• 15:53
  Sally Gould: Um, it was difficult because I.
• 15:58
  Sally Gould: Because it's my life.
• 15:59
  Sally Gould: Like it's memoir.
• 16:00
  Sally Gould: It's not something I've made up.
• 16:01
  Sally Gould: It's not something I've dreamt of.
• 16:02
  Sally Gould: It's, it's my life.
• 16:04
  Sally Gould: And when someone criticizes that, and the way you've written about it or the way even feels like an attack on the way you responded to something in life or the way you felt about something, which is not, it's totally not, but it felt a little bit like an attack.
• 16:18
  Sally Gould: And maybe I wasn't ready for that.
• 16:19
  Sally Gould: And I, I went through this distinct process of like that denial of like, no.
• 16:26
  Sally Gould: They're wrong.
• 16:26
  Sally Gould: They don't know what they're talking about.
• 16:27
  Sally Gould: That's not the right feedback.
• 16:29
  Sally Gould: They've misunderstood where I was coming from, you know, getting very defensive about it, and then I'd sort of sit with it for a bit and then I'd come to this realization of like as I processed it, ah, okay, it makes a bit more sense.
• 16:40
  Sally Gould: Maybe they know what they're talking about.
• 16:42
  Sally Gould: Then I'd turn into like overwhelm of like, oh, I don't even know how to start changing all the things they've suggested and then overcoming that end.
• 16:51
  Sally Gould: Coming out with a better manuscript
• 16:53
  Natasha Rai: D did.
• 16:54
  Natasha Rai: Looking back and also now that you, you are kind of more accustomed, I guess, to feedback from professionals.
• 17:01
  Natasha Rai: Did, did sitting with it, giving it some time kind of help you see that maybe some of it might've been useful or, or that you could use it in some way that felt good or right for your manuscript?
• 17:13
  Sally Gould: Yes.
• 17:14
  Sally Gould: Yes.
• 17:15
  Sally Gould: I, I found my natural instinct was to just dismiss it and ignore it, because that felt safest.
• 17:20
  Sally Gould: It was protecting me from hurt and from hard work.
• 17:23
  Sally Gould: And I'd sit with it and I'd normally wrestle with it for, you know, a week, maybe two weeks, and it'd just be on my mind ticking over, you know, expanding it into different areas of the book, seeing what would change if they were actually right.
• 17:37
  Sally Gould: And every time, every time I got feedback, I'd get to the end of it and realize they were right.
• 17:43
  Sally Gould: They knew what they were talking about and the manuscript was better for it.
• 17:45
  Sally Gould: But it was, I've now learned to build in that time because I know I'm gonna have that same response every time.
• 17:52
  Sally Gould: Not as, as, oh for sure.
• 17:53
  Sally Gould: Dramatic and not as, um, difficult a wrestle.
• 17:56
  Sally Gould: 'cause I'm more open to it.
• 17:57
  Sally Gould: But now I know.
• 17:59
  Sally Gould: Give yourself the first few days to be angry at whoever gave you the feedback, to be confused, to be in denial.
• 18:04
  Sally Gould: Give yourself however long you need to wrestle with it and whether it's useful, and then trust that you'll actually come out the other end and, and it, you don't have to take on everything.
• 18:13
  Sally Gould: But more often than not, there's some absolute gems in feedback.
• 18:17
  Sally Gould: Yeah.
• 18:17
  Natasha Rai: Yeah.
• 18:18
  Natasha Rai: And I, it feels like you've kind of given lots of clues in your answer to that.
• 18:23
  Natasha Rai: But I was wondering about that, like how you take feedback on when you're writing memoir, because as you said, these are things that have happened in your life and part of your experience.
• 18:33
  Natasha Rai: Um, so, and correct me if I'm wrong, but it sounded like how you do it is you really can pull apart the elements in terms of they're, they're giving you, they're critiquing the style and the way you've positioned the story, not the story itself, right?
• 18:48
  Sally Gould: Yes.
• 18:48
  Sally Gould: Yeah.
• 18:49
  Sally Gould: And, and to distance it, it's not, they're not criticizing.
• 18:52
  Sally Gould: My life, the way I responded to things, the way I feel about things, how I process things.
• 18:57
  Sally Gould: They're criticizing the way that it, the effectiveness of that translating to the reader's understanding of it.
• 19:03
  Sally Gould: And there's a massive difference to that.
• 19:06
  Natasha Rai: Yeah.
• 19:06
  Natasha Rai: And that helps you come back to it with the kind of a different set of eyes that it's, as you said, it's not critical of you as opposed.
• 19:14
  Sally Gould: And then to say, well, if it's not coming across the correct way to the reader, thanks for flagging it because this is what I mean, and this is super important.
• 19:21
  Sally Gould: It also strengthens your belief in what you want to stay untouched in the manuscript.
• 19:27
  Sally Gould: I think that's also another thing.
• 19:28
  Sally Gould: There's, I learned as I went that I can take some feedback and some of it I can say no and have a reason for saying no to and'cause I want it to stay true to however I wrote it or whatever happened or whatever it may be.
• 19:41
  Sally Gould: But.
• 19:42
  Sally Gould: I became a bit more decisive about what feedback was useful to me and what wasn't.
• 19:47
  Natasha Rai: Yeah.
• 19:47
  Natasha Rai: Which is a tough lesson because, you know, especially, um, new or debut writers, you don't, you don't really know like what you can push back on or what you can, whether you have the strength or the courage to go No, because, are you gonna like, make someone angry or, yeah, it's a hard, it's a hard one.
• 20:03
  Sally Gould: It is.
• 20:03
  Sally Gould: I had a delightful editor, Meredith Rose, who I worked with through, um, Simon and Schuster.
• 20:08
  Sally Gould: And she is an absolute gun.
• 20:11
  Sally Gould: Um, I've never met anyone that works so efficiently and quickly and accurately.
• 20:17
  Sally Gould: Um, very, very clever woman and also doesn't sugarcoat things.
• 20:21
  Sally Gould: So that worked well for me because she'd just come at me with it.
• 20:24
  Sally Gould: But she made it very clear.
• 20:26
  Sally Gould: She said, you, you can say no.
• 20:28
  Sally Gould: Do any of these suggestions.
• 20:30
  Sally Gould: They are my suggestions.
• 20:31
  Sally Gould: Um, they're coming from me, and you are the author and you know the true story and you don't have to justify it, which.
• 20:36
  Sally Gould: It was so empowering because I'm so glad she said that.
• 20:39
  Sally Gould: 'cause otherwise I would've thought, oh, working with my editor, my editor says what happens?
• 20:44
  Sally Gould: And I agree, and they make it a better book.
• 20:46
  Sally Gould: And that's the end of story.
• 20:47
  Sally Gould: But through working with her, I learned, oh no, she's, she's okay.
• 20:51
  Sally Gould: She's not gonna get offended if I say no, it's staying this way.
• 20:54
  Sally Gould: And I, she said, you don't even need to justify just that's the way you want it.
• 20:58
  Sally Gould: You are the author.
• 20:59
  Sally Gould: And unless it's something like grammatically incorrect, she's not, she's gonna be okay with it.
• 21:04
  Sally Gould: Yeah.
• 21:05
  Natasha Rai: Which is so amazing because, you know, not all editors are that clear
• 21:10
  Sally Gould: in terms
• 21:10
  Natasha Rai: of what they expect and what they can do for, for, for a writer.
• 21:13
  Natasha Rai: So that's really good.
• 21:14
  Sally Gould: Mm.
• 21:15
  Sally Gould: So I feel like I really worked with the editor.
• 21:17
  Sally Gould: I thought that was gonna be more like a one-sided thing, but it was very much a could this work?
• 21:21
  Sally Gould: Could that work?
• 21:22
  Sally Gould: Are you happy with this?
• 21:23
  Sally Gould: Like a back and forth, which was really good.
• 21:25
  Natasha Rai: Yeah.
• 21:26
  Natasha Rai: Collaborative, right?
• 21:27
  Sally Gould: Yeah.
• 21:27
  Sally Gould: Yeah.
• 21:28
  Natasha Rai: So at which point Sally did you feel that you were ready to start submitting?
• 21:34
  Natasha Rai: Or, or was there, I don't know.
• 21:36
  Natasha Rai: Was there even a thought before that, as in, should I submit or do I wanna do this?
• 21:41
  Sally Gould: So since I'd put in all the hard work to learn all the things and write this whole manuscript, and my husband had looked at me pouring hours of my life into it, I think we all kind of expected that I was gonna do something with it at this point.
• 21:52
  Sally Gould: And when I.
• 21:53
  Sally Gould: Started to realize, okay, it's not absolute garbage.
• 21:56
  Sally Gould: Um, I'm still feeling passionate about it.
• 21:59
  Sally Gould: I still feel like it's something I want out in the world.
• 22:01
  Sally Gould: I started looking at all the paths thinking, okay, am I gonna self-publish this?
• 22:06
  Sally Gould: Am I gonna look for traditional publishing?
• 22:08
  Sally Gould: Like, how does that even work again, like all sorts of deep dives on the internet to try and figure out like how to publish book in Australia.
• 22:16
  Sally Gould: Mm-hmm.
• 22:16
  Sally Gould: You know, like I was at that level of having yes.
• 22:18
  Sally Gould: No friends that were writers.
• 22:20
  Sally Gould: No one I knew had published a book.
• 22:21
  Sally Gould: I knew no one in the industry, not even related, like all my contacts are medicine based, which is not helpful when you're publishing a book.
• 22:29
  Sally Gould: Um, but then I thought, uh, because I like to set myself a challenge, I was like, well, let's reach for the stars.
• 22:35
  Sally Gould: Let's go for a traditional publishing deal.
• 22:37
  Sally Gould: Um, and then I can always come up with a plan B if I don't get any traction there.
• 22:43
  Sally Gould: And then there was the whole.
• 22:44
  Sally Gould: Do I get an agent?
• 22:45
  Sally Gould: Do I go to publishing houses again, just I felt so blind trying to navigate that industry and that world, not knowing I didn't wanna take a wrong step, that would mean I couldn't progress.
• 22:57
  Sally Gould: You know, as they say, if you approach too many agents and get knocked back, then the publishing houses don't wanna look at you.
• 23:02
  Sally Gould: So there's all these sort of little things you hear along the way and you read online.
• 23:05
  Sally Gould: You think, well, I don't wanna shoot myself in the foot and not be able to.
• 23:09
  Sally Gould: To sort of getting traction with it.
• 23:11
  Natasha Rai: And just on that point at that, the, in those times or the, those moments, it really does feel like end of the road stuff.
• 23:17
  Natasha Rai: Like, if you do this, you'll ruin your chances forever.
• 23:21
  Sally Gould: Yes,
• 23:21
  Natasha Rai: yes.
• 23:22
  Natasha Rai: And it's not always true.
• 23:24
  Sally Gould: No, but
• 23:25
  Natasha Rai: I know the feeling.
• 23:25
  Natasha Rai: Yeah.
• 23:26
  Sally Gould: It, it felt very like, well, don't stuff this up because one, one place I read said, you know, if three agents have said no, no one else is gonna ever wanna look at you.
• 23:34
  Sally Gould: Oh.
• 23:35
  Sally Gould: Which is so
• 23:35
  Natasha Rai: not true.
• 23:36
  Sally Gould: So I've got three shots and I've never done this before.
• 23:39
  Sally Gould: And that you're out and then that's it.
• 23:39
  Sally Gould: Yeah.
• 23:40
  Sally Gould: So it felt very, um, big at the time and looking back now and knowing a bit more about the industry and as you would know, it's not as black and white as that at all.
• 23:49
  Sally Gould: No.
• 23:50
  Sally Gould: Um, but I'd made the decision to, um, and just some competitions before I leapt into submitting.
• 23:59
  Sally Gould: 'cause the submitting part just felt a little bit scary.
• 24:02
  Sally Gould: Yeah.
• 24:02
  Sally Gould: Since I'd hardly had any.
• 24:04
  Sally Gould: Industry experts look over the manuscript.
• 24:07
  Sally Gould: So this was kind of a non-confrontational way for me to sort of exactly edge in and just get some feelers.
• 24:13
  Sally Gould: And I, I really targeted the competitions that offered feedback, like, if you didn't win, you got a bit of feedback as to why.
• 24:21
  Sally Gould: And I was just like, great, like almost free feedback.
• 24:24
  Sally Gould: I get eyes on the manuscript and they'll tell me something, um, that I can do better.
• 24:30
  Sally Gould: So I entered three competitions at the same time, and two of them I didn't.
• 24:35
  Sally Gould: Do you remember what
• 24:35
  Natasha Rai: they were?
• 24:36
  Sally Gould: Are one was the A-S-A-C-A-E mentorship prize, and I don't actually remember the other two.
• 24:43
  Sally Gould: They're Australian based competition, maybe Orka.
• 24:47
  Sally Gould: Mm-hmm.
• 24:48
  Sally Gould: And I can't remember the third one.
• 24:50
  Sally Gould: So.
• 24:50
  Sally Gould: So from memory, there weren't
• 24:51
  Natasha Rai: memoir specific, right?
• 24:52
  Natasha Rai: There were a kind of adult manuscripts,
• 24:55
  Sally Gould: correct.
• 24:55
  Sally Gould: Yeah,
• 24:56
  Natasha Rai: yeah,
• 24:56
  Sally Gould: yeah.
• 24:57
  Sally Gould: And that's the other thing, just trying to, um.
• 24:59
  Sally Gould: I'm very meticulous at reading all the instructions, but there's so many, and they really want you to follow those guidelines about what you submit and whether you're eligible and you've done all the components.
• 25:09
  Sally Gould: And I think that's a really important, important part that you can easily make sure you're doing the right steps when you're submitting, because there are some really tight guidelines on some of them.
• 25:21
  Sally Gould: Um, so yeah, I submitted to the three.
• 25:23
  Sally Gould: Um.
• 25:24
  Sally Gould: Around a similar time.
• 25:25
  Sally Gould: Uh, I'd also checked that you could be submitted to each of them while being submitted to others.
• 25:29
  Sally Gould: 'cause that's another trick for young players.
• 25:32
  Sally Gould: Yes.
• 25:32
  Sally Gould: Some of them say you can't be submitted to anyone else while you're in this competition.
• 25:36
  Sally Gould: Um, and other things.
• 25:37
  Sally Gould: So I got some feedback, which again, I went through my same process of being like, oh, they dunno what they're talking about.
• 25:44
  Sally Gould: They've only read the first five pages or, you know, whatever.
• 25:48
  Sally Gould: But I ended up actually winning the um.
• 25:52
  Sally Gould: Narrative nonfiction component of the A-S-A-C-A mentorship award prize.
• 25:58
  Natasha Rai: Amazing.
• 25:58
  Sally Gould: Um, which was exactly what I needed.
• 26:02
  Sally Gould: I didn't know it at the time, but it meant a 12 month mentorship, um, with like a person in the industry.
• 26:08
  Sally Gould: So I worked with a publisher, um, and there was no guarantee for any deals at the end.
• 26:15
  Sally Gould: Mm-hmm.
• 26:15
  Sally Gould: And my particular publisher was from.
• 26:18
  Sally Gould: Um, a publishing house that wouldn't publish my book anyway.
• 26:22
  Sally Gould: Um, but she was sort of, uh, memoir specific.
• 26:26
  Sally Gould: Mm-hmm.
• 26:26
  Sally Gould: And we worked, we didn't even need the whole 12 months.
• 26:29
  Sally Gould: Um, she said my manuscript was, um, super tidy when she first got it, which I was like, yes, all the hard workers paid off and all those ridiculous amounts of edits and rereads and whatnot.
• 26:40
  Sally Gould: So she was really impressed with how tidy it was.
• 26:43
  Sally Gould: She did some really important work with me around, um, the passing of time and anchoring things in time, which is just another lesson I needed to learn.
• 26:52
  Sally Gould: Um, and again, just that accessibility for the reader.
• 26:55
  Sally Gould: We tightened a few things, clarified a few, um, bits of terminology and things just to make it super accessible for everyone.
• 27:03
  Sally Gould: And then we finished up maybe after about eight months and she's just like.
• 27:07
  Sally Gould: I really believe this should be published, that's gonna be published, um, now go kind of, kind of thing.
• 27:13
  Sally Gould: So she also incredible.
• 27:14
  Natasha Rai: Um, that must have just really lifted.
• 27:16
  Natasha Rai: You like to hear that from a professional to say, this is publishable and it should be published.
• 27:21
  Sally Gould: Yeah, I, I, yeah, I probably cried or could have cried or, you know, all those things because it was the first time I'd heard, and maybe the first time I'd believed that, okay, there's something in this.
• 27:32
  Sally Gould: And someone with industry knowledge believes in me as well.
• 27:37
  Sally Gould: So, yeah, so she was sort of like, I can introduce you, like to some agents, if that would kind of help, which was, I think beyond her scope, she was very lovely and helpful.
• 27:48
  Sally Gould: Um, but that kind of led to a few nos, um, from some agents, which I, at this point, it feels like you're burning each chance, every time you're gonna go.
• 28:00
  Sally Gould: Um, but I ended up just having this sort of, uh.
• 28:04
  Sally Gould: I don't know, a gut feel about an agency, um, which is now a four literary.
• 28:09
  Sally Gould: Mm-hmm.
• 28:10
  Sally Gould: And I submitted just in their like general submissions.
• 28:13
  Sally Gould: So no introductions, no head starts, just online portal was open at the time.
• 28:19
  Sally Gould: I read all of the criteria, made sure I submitted exactly it, and then just sat in that waiting of who knows.
• 28:28
  Sally Gould: And, and a lot of them are like, oh, if you don't hear from us in six months, it's a no.
• 28:32
  Sally Gould: You literally like, well I could, I'm gonna wait five exactly six months.
• 28:38
  Sally Gould: And then it's just, and then give up the hope.
• 28:40
  Sally Gould: Yeah.
• 28:40
  Sally Gould: It's just a know if I hear nothing.
• 28:42
  Sally Gould: It's such a difficult process.
• 28:44
  Sally Gould: And when you look at, if you do that each time,'cause you're not submitting to multiple people at once, you think that could be two years, three years, gone.
• 28:53
  Sally Gould: Just submitting, waiting, hearing nothing, letting it lapse, going to the next one.
• 28:58
  Sally Gould: And so I kind of reached that point, just getting a little bit deflated, but I had a bit of hope.
• 29:02
  Sally Gould: I don't know why, but I kind of manifested it.
• 29:05
  Sally Gould: I was talking to a close friend of mine and I said, I've submitted, I've got a good feeling about this one.
• 29:09
  Sally Gould: Um, and then I heard from Tom Gilliat, my now agent, and he just emailed on, I think it was a.
• 29:18
  Sally Gould: Thursday saying, can I have the full manuscript?
• 29:21
  Sally Gould: He said, sorry for the delay.
• 29:22
  Sally Gould: And it had been two weeks.
• 29:23
  Sally Gould: I was like, that's no delay.
• 29:24
  Sally Gould: Like I was in for the long haul here, Tom.
• 29:27
  Sally Gould: So he said, sorry for the delay.
• 29:28
  Sally Gould: Sorry I haven't gotten back to you.
• 29:30
  Sally Gould: Um, I'd love to read the full manuscript.
• 29:32
  Sally Gould: And I thought, okay, this is a good sign.
• 29:34
  Sally Gould: Like it could still be a no from here.
• 29:35
  Sally Gould: But I sent it away that day.
• 29:38
  Sally Gould: Um, and he read it over the weekend and I'd sort of manifested to this friend of mine when I was chatting.
• 29:43
  Sally Gould: I said, ah.
• 29:44
  Sally Gould: Tom, this guy Tom, he's gonna love it.
• 29:46
  Sally Gould: He's gonna read it in a weekend.
• 29:47
  Sally Gould: He's gonna call me on Monday, he's gonna want agent me.
• 29:50
  Sally Gould: It's all gonna be great.
• 29:51
  Sally Gould: Just joking, but thinking, you know what, what a, how amazing if that would happen.
• 29:55
  Sally Gould: Yes.
• 29:55
  Sally Gould: Yeah.
• 29:56
  Sally Gould: So he read it over the weekend.
• 29:57
  Sally Gould: He emailed me on the Monday.
• 29:59
  Sally Gould: We had a call on the Wednesday and we moved forward into seeing agents inside him.
• 30:03
  Sally Gould: So good.
• 30:05
  Sally Gould: Yeah.
• 30:05
  Sally Gould: So good.
• 30:05
  Sally Gould: Yeah.
• 30:06
  Sally Gould: I remember when he called me, I, um, he sort of said, oh, I've just read the book.
• 30:11
  Sally Gould: Um, I love it.
• 30:13
  Sally Gould: And I was like, but, and he says like, oh, no, no, there's no, there's no but.
• 30:18
  Sally Gould: And I was like, but he's like, no, no.
• 30:20
  Sally Gould: This is a good news call.
• 30:22
  Sally Gould: I was like, oh.
• 30:23
  Sally Gould: I couldn't believe it.
• 30:24
  Sally Gould: I just, yeah.
• 30:26
  Sally Gould: To, to again hear like, this is a good book.
• 30:29
  Sally Gould: It's worth reading.
• 30:30
  Sally Gould: Um, and Tom's got so many years of experience in the publishing industry.
• 30:34
  Sally Gould: I knew that if he was taking me on, he was fairly confident that he was gonna find me.
• 30:39
  Sally Gould: A publishing deal.
• 30:45
  Emily Stewart: Hello.
• 30:46
  Emily Stewart: My name's Emily Stewart, sometimes known as Sensible, Emily and my book Sensible Money, published by A BC Books and Harper Collins came out on the 2nd of July.
• 30:57
  Emily Stewart: Sensible money is a guide to help you get better at managing your money.
• 31:01
  Emily Stewart: It's really about making the most.
• 31:03
  Emily Stewart: Of the money that you have and hopefully go from surviving to thriving when it comes to your finances.
• 31:10
  Emily Stewart: And the reason I wrote it is I'm a finance journalist with the A, B, C, and I have been for many years, and I've reported on and spoken to a lot of people who have suffered during this cost of living crisis.
• 31:21
  Emily Stewart: People are really struggling and there was a real need for a book that provided the skills and the information for people, as well as the experience with finance reporting.
• 31:31
  Emily Stewart: I've also got the education to back it up, so I've got commerce and arts degrees.
• 31:35
  Emily Stewart: I've also done a Master's of Business Administration at Melbourne Business School.
• 31:40
  Emily Stewart: And I'm one of the truly independent money experts.
• 31:43
  Emily Stewart: There's no brand deals or advertising.
• 31:45
  Emily Stewart: It's all just about getting the best information.
• 31:48
  Emily Stewart: So I've really put everything I know about a whole lot of money topics, how to get the best deals on things, ideas for saving, how to save up for a house, and sort of that process of purchasing a house, how to sort out your super, get out of debt, all those key issues that were not taught in school.
• 32:05
  Emily Stewart: And many money books tell you exactly what to do, write down to the product that you should buy.
• 32:10
  Emily Stewart: But I really wanted mine to be different.
• 32:12
  Emily Stewart: I wanted to empower people so that they had the skills to make their own financial decisions.
• 32:19
  Emily Stewart: So it's all about giving people skills that will last them their lifetime, and it could be life changing for people.
• 32:26
  Emily Stewart: I got my book deal.
• 32:28
  Emily Stewart: Almost as my second child was being born.
• 32:30
  Emily Stewart: So I wrote it with a newborn and a and a toddler, so I understand what it's like trying to balance the family budget.
• 32:37
  Emily Stewart: So happy reading and stay sensible everyone.
• 32:44
  Natasha Rai: And so from that moment where he took you one as his client, how long did it take to get your publishing contract?
• 32:54
  Sally Gould: Not very long at all.
• 32:56
  Sally Gould: So, um, there's a little bit of time you lose, I think, with, uh, looking over contracts and things and getting that signed and sorted.
• 33:03
  Sally Gould: And that's a very uncomfortable space for me.
• 33:06
  Sally Gould: Um, it's not.
• 33:07
  Sally Gould: My area of comfort or expertise.
• 33:09
  Sally Gould: So I felt quite stressed getting all that just sorted.
• 33:12
  Sally Gould: Um, but my husband, his work industry is very into contracts, so he's like, oh, this is such an everyday thing.
• 33:19
  Sally Gould: But for me in the work I do, I'm like, seems like such a big deal and all these legal terminology and signing this stuff, it seems very big, but it was all quite smooth in the end.
• 33:28
  Sally Gould: It just takes time.
• 33:29
  Sally Gould: Um, but within a couple of weeks after that, Tom had.
• 33:33
  Sally Gould: I think I met with six publishing houses and I, he had five offers on the table.
• 33:38
  Natasha Rai: Oh, so amazing.
• 33:39
  Natasha Rai: It's like the dream, isn't it?
• 33:40
  Sally Gould: It is.
• 33:41
  Sally Gould: And Thomas was sort of just like, oh yeah, this is what I expected.
• 33:45
  Sally Gould: I was like, this is not what I expected at all.
• 33:48
  Sally Gould: This is unbelievable.
• 33:49
  Sally Gould: I cannot believe it.
• 33:52
  Sally Gould: Yeah.
• 33:52
  Natasha Rai: Um, and then once you went ahead and signed with Simon Schuster, right?
• 33:57
  Natasha Rai: Yep.
• 33:57
  Natasha Rai: Yeah.
• 33:58
  Natasha Rai: So there was an another editing round.
• 34:01
  Natasha Rai: Yep.
• 34:02
  Natasha Rai: So, so I'm really interested, Sally, because, um, and once again, I don't wanna give anything away to people who haven't read your memoir yet, but I know that there are parts of it that are challenging as a reader, so it might have been challenging for you to kind of revisit or work on them again.
• 34:22
  Natasha Rai: How did you look after yourself during those, that kind of rounds of editing where you kind of knew that you're not.
• 34:29
  Natasha Rai: Working on this to make it better like you are, but also there is, there will be now an endpoint where it will be published.
• 34:36
  Natasha Rai: Was that different for you?
• 34:38
  Sally Gould: Yes.
• 34:39
  Sally Gould: I think, uh, my mind tried to protect me in not even considering the possibility that people were going to read it.
• 34:46
  Sally Gould: I know that sounds ridiculous, but Nope,
• 34:48
  Natasha Rai: not at all.
• 34:49
  Natasha Rai: Actually,
• 34:50
  Sally Gould: I very much, um, was writing just a product that I was proud of that I wanted to be in the book.
• 34:58
  Sally Gould: And that's as far as I sort of allowed myself to think.
• 35:01
  Sally Gould: I didn't wanna go down the rabbit hole of what's this person gonna think or what's that person gonna think or what, what is anyone gonna say about it or what's everyone's opinion gonna be about it?
• 35:10
  Sally Gould: Because I just knew that was just, that's actually out of my control and all I could control was doing my best to create a product, a finished product that I was happy with that was, um, authentic and genuine.
• 35:24
  Sally Gould: And that, yeah, I'd be proud to say yes.
• 35:27
  Sally Gould: I wrote that and that's as far as I think I allowed it.
• 35:30
  Sally Gould: And it wasn't until I submitted the final manuscript after the final sort of proofread that I had this moment and I thought, people are gonna read this.
• 35:43
  Sally Gould: Uh, yeah.
• 35:44
  Sally Gould: But I think it, it helped me very much just to.
• 35:48
  Sally Gould: Think of something I wanted to be proud of putting out there and not so much about how that was gonna be responded to.
• 35:54
  Sally Gould: Yeah.
• 35:54
  Natasha Rai: Which I really like because it just reframes it into, again, the, the quality of the work and the standards that you've set yourself.
• 36:02
  Natasha Rai: Yes.
• 36:02
  Natasha Rai: As opposed to that personal type of feedback or critique.
• 36:07
  Sally Gould: Yes.
• 36:08
  Sally Gould: I think also the.
• 36:10
  Sally Gould: The thing I was most afraid of is that I wasn't a good enough writer to pull it off.
• 36:17
  Sally Gould: I trusted my skills as a paramedic and I trusted that I'd represented my journey, um, in its truest sense, and I was content with that.
• 36:26
  Sally Gould: The bit that I felt worried about was whether I was righty enough to pull it off perhaps.
• 36:33
  Natasha Rai: Is that still a worry now?
• 36:36
  Sally Gould: Uh, yeah.
• 36:37
  Sally Gould: I still feel.
• 36:40
  Sally Gould: Uh, very novice in this space.
• 36:42
  Sally Gould: Yeah, I still enjoy it and I think that it shouldn't be a barrier if you don't think you're good enough.
• 36:47
  Sally Gould: Um, because I've got a published book, right?
• 36:51
  Sally Gould: Like that's fact.
• 36:51
  Sally Gould: I can't argue with that.
• 36:52
  Sally Gould: I'm a published author.
• 36:54
  Sally Gould: Um, but I think it's hard when in my paramedic work I'm so high up in my chosen area and I hold myself to such a high standard.
• 37:07
  Sally Gould: To me that's more measurable than my writing, which is a bit more subjective perhaps.
• 37:13
  Natasha Rai: Mm-hmm.
• 37:14
  Natasha Rai: And you know, on that point as well, in terms of feedback, um, frog's been out for.
• 37:22
  Natasha Rai: In July was that we said three.
• 37:23
  Natasha Rai: Three and a bit months.
• 37:24
  Natasha Rai: Yeah, just over
• 37:25
  Sally Gould: three months.
• 37:26
  Natasha Rai: Yeah.
• 37:26
  Natasha Rai: And I know that at the beginning when it first came out, you had a lot of publicity, um, events that you did to promote the book.
• 37:34
  Natasha Rai: And um, I'm also aware that you've received some, sometimes bizarre, sometimes negative feedback.
• 37:43
  Natasha Rai: Mm.
• 37:43
  Natasha Rai: How do you look after yourself?
• 37:44
  Natasha Rai: Like, what do you do?
• 37:45
  Natasha Rai: Do you respond to them?
• 37:46
  Natasha Rai: Do you ignore them?
• 37:46
  Natasha Rai: Do you block them?
• 37:48
  Sally Gould: Yeah.
• 37:48
  Sally Gould: So.
• 37:49
  Sally Gould: In terms of people directly, directly contacting me, everything has been generally positive feedback, so people would take the time to direct message me.
• 38:00
  Sally Gould: And get in contact are normally just absolutely heartwarming, lovely stories, people connecting, people building better relationships with their relatives as a result, people having insight into their paramedic relatives lives.
• 38:13
  Sally Gould: Um, just such wonderful things.
• 38:16
  Sally Gould: Um, the, the space where it gets super toxic, um, and people.
• 38:21
  Sally Gould: I feel like they have a right to comment on you are, especially things where parts of my writing has been taken out of context, or it's just a small excerpt, or it's an excerpt within an article that's been written by someone else, or it's a, you know, attention grabbing headline that I didn't write.
• 38:39
  Sally Gould: Um.
• 38:40
  Sally Gould: And people have read the first paragraph or made up an opinion and just wanna go to town on having their say about something that they've got their knickers in or not about.
• 38:51
  Sally Gould: Um, and that happens online in, you know, Facebook comments, um, Instagram comments on things that are not, that I haven't directly posted or had control over.
• 39:03
  Sally Gould: And I think when the book first came out.
• 39:07
  Sally Gould: I was struggling to look at that stuff because, just because I didn't like watching myself on tv and so I was able to sort of avoid that.
• 39:15
  Sally Gould: Just I don't need to see it.
• 39:17
  Sally Gould: I was there, I said, what?
• 39:18
  Sally Gould: I said I can't change it, and then I'll just let it exist now out in the ether.
• 39:23
  Sally Gould: But I thought at a point, oh, I'm feeling pretty strong.
• 39:26
  Sally Gould: I've got some good feedback.
• 39:27
  Sally Gould: And I decided to look at some comments about, um, an article that was posted in one of the papers and.
• 39:34
  Sally Gould: I was, uh, shocked, uh, by yeah, what people think they have a right to comment on.
• 39:41
  Sally Gould: And so I, I found that really difficult, uh, really upsetting.
• 39:46
  Sally Gould: But I think originally my main, uh, method of dealing with it was I just set a rule.
• 39:52
  Sally Gould: I'm not gonna look 100% not gonna look, so I don't look at.
• 39:57
  Sally Gould: Any reviews?
• 39:58
  Sally Gould: Any comments, any comments posted on any articles, um, excerpts, anything online?
• 40:04
  Sally Gould: Um, blanket rule?
• 40:05
  Sally Gould: I don't Look.
• 40:06
  Sally Gould: And the other thing is if I accidentally come across one of these, I created a little note on my phone of things just to remind myself of that I can go into and just reflect on because, um, it's easy to feel the hate in people's words and to let that sort of flow into what you believe about yourself.
• 40:23
  Sally Gould: But the things I wanted to remind myself were.
• 40:27
  Sally Gould: They're written by people that don't know me, that people don't do what I do, that haven't been through what I've been through.
• 40:34
  Sally Gould: Um, and they're, you know, they're not my friends and their thoughts and opinions on me do not change my value or worth as a human, and nor does it change the respect that my friends and family have for me.
• 40:47
  Sally Gould: So just really separating out that that's happening out there and that energy doesn't actually have to affect anything.
• 40:54
  Sally Gould: For me has been really important.
• 40:56
  Sally Gould: Yeah.
• 40:57
  Natasha Rai: Yeah.
• 40:57
  Natasha Rai: And you know, like I really, when you initially shared some, you didn't share the actual feedback, but you said you'd received some kind of negative feedback.
• 41:06
  Natasha Rai: I was so shocked as well, because I was thinking how like, I don't know, it's just, I.
• 41:11
  Natasha Rai: When people write memoir, and especially when you're writing not just about your vulnerability, but helping and supporting people in their most vulnerable, intense moments, it's like, how can you hate that?
• 41:23
  Natasha Rai: I just don't understand.
• 41:25
  Natasha Rai: So I really, yeah, go on.
• 41:27
  Natasha Rai: I,
• 41:27
  Sally Gould: I also thought that the feedback that was gonna upset me the most would be like writing feedback, because that's what I felt most vulnerable about.
• 41:34
  Sally Gould: Um, I haven't received any of that.
• 41:37
  Sally Gould: Like if someone came at me and said like, oh, the pacing of this chapter was.
• 41:41
  Sally Gould: Terrible, and this was poorly described or whatever.
• 41:44
  Sally Gould: Great.
• 41:44
  Sally Gould: Like I'd love to look into that because if, when I write my next book, uh, it can be better because of that feedback.
• 41:50
  Sally Gould: But none of it is, um, constructive criticism or about writing.
• 41:56
  Sally Gould: It's just like a person.
• 41:58
  Sally Gould: Yeah.
• 41:59
  Sally Gould: Me as a person is apparently offended.
• 42:00
  Sally Gould: Some people who don't even know me.
• 42:02
  Natasha Rai: Yeah.
• 42:03
  Natasha Rai: And you know, just that.
• 42:05
  Natasha Rai: I mean, I, I'm, in my head I was calling an evidence log of like all the things that mean that this feedback isn't worth your attention or your time.
• 42:14
  Natasha Rai: Um, also all the other feedback that you've received from people you dunno, who are like, I love this and I understand that this is, you know, my family members' experience and that I hope goes somewhere as well to kind of alleviating the, the hurt from the, the toxic stuff.
• 42:34
  Sally Gould: Yeah, it, it's, um, thankfully, yeah, far outweighs, um, the toxic stuff.
• 42:38
  Sally Gould: But just reminding myself that it's never gonna be worth giving those people the time of day or any, not even a second of my time to look at the comments.
• 42:46
  Sally Gould: Yeah.
• 42:46
  Sally Gould: It's just not worth it.
• 42:47
  Natasha Rai: Good advice.
• 42:48
  Natasha Rai: And I'm, I'm really sorry that that was part of your experience.
• 42:51
  Natasha Rai: 'cause it's so, it's so hard a, getting a book published b being visible like that, so yeah, it's, it sucks.
• 42:59
  Sally Gould: Yeah, it, it does.
• 43:01
  Sally Gould: But mm-hmm.
• 43:01
  Sally Gould: I think it says a lot more about them than it does about
• 43:03
  Natasha Rai: me.
• 43:03
  Natasha Rai: Oh, for sure.
• 43:04
  Natasha Rai: For sure.
• 43:04
  Natasha Rai: Yeah.
• 43:04
  Natasha Rai: But yeah.
• 43:05
  Natasha Rai: So what does your writing practice look like now?
• 43:10
  Sally Gould: So now that I originally set out just to write this one book, uh, so I've found that once I lost the focus of having this book deadline and the target of having it on a shelf was gone.
• 43:23
  Sally Gould: The structure of writing kind of flew out the window.
• 43:25
  Sally Gould: Um, I've also got two young kids and so I felt like it was time for a season where I put a bit more energy back into them and being a bit more present and not behind the laptop typing at all hours.
• 43:36
  Sally Gould: Um, that said, I'm still, I've got so many ideas ticking over, um, in my mind and for a month, um, I did just do like a daily thing and it was just a sit down for 10 minutes'cause.
• 43:49
  Sally Gould: I know if I can convince myself to sit down for 10 minutes, it will often turn into more than 10 minutes.
• 43:55
  Sally Gould: Um, and that worked quite well just to get some ideas down.
• 43:58
  Sally Gould: But I find it so hard to start writing something that I don't know where it's gonna end up.
• 44:04
  Sally Gould: And that's just part of my personality is that until I've got a fully formed idea, I find it hard to chip away at anything because it feels like there's potential.
• 44:13
  Sally Gould: It'll be lost time.
• 44:15
  Sally Gould: And I know that's super destructive to me as a writer because it doesn't.
• 44:19
  Sally Gould: Just let me foster the creative side and the art and letting you know, whatever happens happen.
• 44:24
  Sally Gould: Um, but at the moment, I think I'm just torn on a couple of ideas that I wanna write about.
• 44:29
  Sally Gould: Um, it would be nonfiction again.
• 44:32
  Sally Gould: Mm-hmm.
• 44:32
  Sally Gould: Um,
• 44:33
  Natasha Rai: so, so just on that point about writing, when you don't really know where it's going mm-hmm.
• 44:39
  Natasha Rai: Do you try and plot then, or at least have you know how you,'cause you mentioned with Frog you discovered or you worked specifically very consciously on arcs.
• 44:49
  Natasha Rai: Mm.
• 44:49
  Natasha Rai: So with your ideas now, like is that a possibility or are the ideas still too new to figure that out yet?
• 44:55
  Sally Gould: I think there's too new, so I'm in that phase of trying to play around with ideas and occasionally I'll just flesh out a scene because I feel like particularly drawn to it.
• 45:04
  Sally Gould: Um, but I'm just not sure where it's going at the moment.
• 45:09
  Sally Gould: So I don't know.
• 45:09
  Sally Gould: I'm kind of, I can't say that's
• 45:10
  Natasha Rai: making you uncomfortable.
• 45:12
  Sally Gould: It, I'm uncomfortable, but I'm trying to remain curious about it.
• 45:15
  Natasha Rai: Yeah.
• 45:16
  Natasha Rai: So this, this is a very different experience then because, you know, frog obviously came out of, um, journal entries and reflections on your clinical practice.
• 45:25
  Natasha Rai: So this, this sounds like a very different approach even from the beginning.
• 45:28
  Natasha Rai: 'cause you're phys not physically, but you.
• 45:30
  Natasha Rai: Actively sitting down to write something.
• 45:33
  Natasha Rai: Yeah.
• 45:34
  Natasha Rai: Sounds quite different.
• 45:35
  Sally Gould: Yeah.
• 45:35
  Sally Gould: With Frog, I had the fleshed out full journals from the ride along, and even for years after that, sometimes it would just be like a couple of words on a little notepad about a job.
• 45:45
  Sally Gould: But I remember the job exactly.
• 45:47
  Sally Gould: So reproducing that was not hard.
• 45:49
  Sally Gould: Whereas this is just, I don't know, so much more open.
• 45:52
  Sally Gould: It's so much more, yeah.
• 45:54
  Sally Gould: To explore and decide what I wanna put on the page.
• 45:57
  Sally Gould: Yeah.
• 45:58
  Natasha Rai: And I know this is just, uh, very newish ideas, but in, in the ideas, is there a temptation or a desire to revisit paramedicine?
• 46:11
  Sally Gould: I've had a few people contact me and say, oh, I wanted to read more of Frog.
• 46:14
  Sally Gould: Can you do a sequel?
• 46:16
  Sally Gould: And that type of thing.
• 46:17
  Sally Gould: Um, it's certainly not gonna be a sequel.
• 46:19
  Sally Gould: I don't feel like I've got enough to say that's that similar, that would flow on from Frog.
• 46:24
  Sally Gould: I think Frog is the standalone kind of piece in that sense.
• 46:28
  Sally Gould: Um, I also think that's part of the thing I'm trying to figure out is that the paramedicine is so much of my identity and plays such a role in my life that, you know, half of my days are days on at at work and half of the days at home where the other life kind of happens.
• 46:44
  Sally Gould: So how do you write about that stuff in life without the work, which makes up such a huge part of my time throughout the week.
• 46:51
  Sally Gould: Mm.
• 46:51
  Sally Gould: Um, yeah, that's another balance I guess I'm trying to find.
• 46:56
  Sally Gould: Maybe it's harder because I'm now thinking about what a reader would like to read with Frog.
• 47:02
  Sally Gould: I didn't have that thought.
• 47:03
  Sally Gould: I just had, I'm writing this for me because I want to, and now the IT.
• 47:09
  Sally Gould: Not, it's ruined it, but you get what I mean when you get Yeah.
• 47:12
  Sally Gould: You have additional
• 47:13
  Natasha Rai: things you have to consider now.
• 47:14
  Sally Gould: Yeah.
• 47:15
  Sally Gould: That makes it more complicated and puts more weight on it and just means you're thinking about more things as you go instead of just enjoying writing.
• 47:22
  Natasha Rai: Yeah, for sure.
• 47:23
  Natasha Rai: And I'm just a co we've just got time for a couple more questions.
• 47:26
  Natasha Rai: So, um, how have your colleagues and peers received frog?
• 47:33
  Sally Gould: Yeah, really, really well.
• 47:34
  Sally Gould: Um, I've had nothing but good feedback, thankfully from them.
• 47:38
  Sally Gould: Um, a lot of them, some will private message and just say, thank you so much for including the EL elements that you did.
• 47:45
  Sally Gould: 'cause they can resonate with it, but they hadn't had the courage to, to speak up about it or to label it or to get help for it.
• 47:51
  Sally Gould: And I think that's super rewarding.
• 47:53
  Sally Gould: Um, people, yeah.
• 47:55
  Sally Gould: Colleagues that have spoken to me see themselves in the book and that's, that was the purpose.
• 47:59
  Sally Gould: Not that it was my story, that it was just a paramedic story that.
• 48:03
  Sally Gould: Every paramedic has done jobs similar and can see themselves in, in that space.
• 48:07
  Sally Gould: So yeah,
• 48:08
  Natasha Rai: visibility, right?
• 48:09
  Sally Gould: Yeah.
• 48:10
  Sally Gould: And I think that's super important for them because the work we are doing is so unique and not many people understand it.
• 48:16
  Sally Gould: So they're feeling seen and validated that there's something out there that they can give to friends and family and say, Hey, this is what I do.
• 48:23
  Sally Gould: This is the way I am, the way I am.
• 48:25
  Sally Gould: This is why I'm tired and grumpy.
• 48:26
  Sally Gould: This is why my humor is so warped.
• 48:28
  Sally Gould: Um, and the other one I've received feedback from is.
• 48:31
  Sally Gould: The paramedics relatives.
• 48:33
  Sally Gould: So they've passed it on to their mom or their sister or their cousin or whoever.
• 48:36
  Sally Gould: And I've received, they've passed on all of their messages saying, oh, mom said that this should be mandatory reading for all relatives of paramedics and those types of things.
• 48:44
  Sally Gould: So that's been
• 48:46
  Natasha Rai: amazing.
• 48:46
  Natasha Rai: Yeah.
• 48:47
  Natasha Rai: Yeah.
• 48:47
  Natasha Rai: I really love, I love that.
• 48:49
  Natasha Rai: And so Sally, um, in addition to everything that you've so generously shared, do you have any tips or maybe.
• 48:58
  Natasha Rai: Things for people to think about if they are a pub, trying to pursue a traditional publishing deal or publishing or writing a memoir and or any of those.
• 49:09
  Sally Gould: I think you don't have
• 49:09
  Natasha Rai: to answer all those three things.
• 49:11
  Natasha Rai: Just, yeah, anything that comes to mind.
• 49:12
  Natasha Rai: Yeah,
• 49:13
  Sally Gould: I think the competitions is probably a big tip.
• 49:16
  Sally Gould: Um, it was just such a good starting point for me that felt non-threatening, uh, but a way that I could access feedback and start getting a little bit of traction and it felt like.
• 49:28
  Sally Gould: A good place to start.
• 49:28
  Sally Gould: So I'd say if you're in that phase and you are not for whatever reason, not quite ready to submit, want a bit more, um, advice or feedback, do those online manuscript assessments, do the competitions and just start getting that little bit of feedback and yeah.
• 49:44
  Sally Gould: And.
• 49:45
  Sally Gould: Be okay with the feedback.
• 49:47
  Natasha Rai: Yeah.
• 49:48
  Natasha Rai: I mean, you know, if you give yourself time with any type of feedback, you allow it to sink in.
• 49:51
  Natasha Rai: Mm-hmm.
• 49:52
  Natasha Rai: And especially, I think it, that really hals back to what you were saying before.
• 49:55
  Natasha Rai: If you don't know anyone in the industry and you don't have right of friends or community yet, that's a really nice way of getting, um, some feedback, right?
• 50:04
  Sally Gould: Yeah.
• 50:05
  Sally Gould: And I think in this day and age where you can Google so much, it can be overwhelming with the information, but if you rely on.
• 50:12
  Sally Gould: Those local resources that you know are reputable.
• 50:14
  Sally Gould: It's such a good place to start because places like the A SA website have so much information and courses and day events and writing spaces and there's actually so much out there that I didn't realize.
• 50:25
  Sally Gould: And that was a another good non-threatening way to start just having a look at online resources and seeing if you could apply anything that you learned to the manuscript you've got and just one step at a time.
• 50:36
  Sally Gould: Yeah.
• 50:37
  Natasha Rai: Love it.
• 50:39
  Natasha Rai: Thank you so much, Sally, for joining me today.
• 50:41
  Natasha Rai: It was a real pleasure to talk to you.
• 50:43
  Sally Gould: Thank you so much for having me.
• 50:49
  Natasha Rai: Having listened to my chat with Sally Gould, there's one theme that really struck me and that is the intention that I'm setting for listeners who are working on a project or who are thinking about getting into a project over the next month.
• 51:03
  Natasha Rai: So.
• 51:04
  Natasha Rai: Time.
• 51:05
  Natasha Rai: So Sally talked a lot about the time that she takes after she gets feedback, the time that she took to work on her manuscript.
• 51:13
  Natasha Rai: And time seems to be a theme that has come up for me personally over the last few weeks as well.
• 51:19
  Natasha Rai: So here is the intention.
• 51:22
  Natasha Rai: You can use time in any of the following ways if you are working on something.
• 51:25
  Natasha Rai: So taking a break from your manuscript.
• 51:28
  Natasha Rai: Giving it some time to prove, if you will, and then coming back to it to have a look at it.
• 51:34
  Natasha Rai: So if you have just finished something, maybe you could leave it aside and come back to it at the end of the month.
• 51:40
  Natasha Rai: If you are not working on something, maybe you could return to something old.
• 51:46
  Natasha Rai: So something that you've worked on previously.
• 51:49
  Natasha Rai: And you haven't looked at for a while.
• 51:51
  Natasha Rai: Have a look now.
• 51:53
  Natasha Rai: Maybe use the next month or the next few weeks to come at that with fresh eyes and see what comes up for you.
• 52:00
  Natasha Rai: What do you notice?
• 52:01
  Natasha Rai: What are some things that you can polish or improve or make better or what leaps out at you?
• 52:08
  Natasha Rai: And that is of course, the benefit of time.
• 52:11
  Natasha Rai: And if you are working on something and you're right in the middle of it and you don't have the capacity right now, to put it aside, how about looking at how you treat time in your manuscript?
• 52:22
  Natasha Rai: So Sally talks a little bit about one of the, um, aspects of her manuscript that was really helped by her mentorship was about anchoring her story in time.
• 52:32
  Natasha Rai: So have a look at your manuscript and see how you've anchored your story or plot in time.
• 52:39
  Natasha Rai: And um, in our next catch up, Madeline, Tina and I will be chatting about this intention and how it kind of influenced our work.
• 52:49
  Natasha Rai: Thanks.
• 52:55
  Tina Strachan: Thank you for listening to the book Deal podcast.
• 52:57
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• 53:06
  Tina Strachan: You can also find us on Instagram.