The Conversation with Nadine Matheson
Welcome to The Conversation with Nadine Matheson, where best-selling author of the 'Detective Inspector Anjelica Henley' series Nadine Matheson sits down with fellow authors for insightful, honest, and entertaining conversations. Each episode dives deep into the world of writing, from the publishing journey to overcoming challenges, the experiences that shape their work, and anything else that comes up when great minds come together. Whether you're a fan of gripping stories or curious about the life behind the books, 'The Conversation' promises thought-provoking chats and moments of inspiration.
If you'd like to be a guest or have a message or question, reach out to us at theconversation@nadinematheson.com.
Finalist -Independent Podcast Awards 2024
*music: the coffee jam ©stereo_jam
The Conversation with Nadine Matheson
Sarah Handyside: The Debut’s Handbook
Debut author, Sarah Handyside, has a handbook for you. Joins us as Sarah chronicles her path to publishing her novel, "Instructions for Heartbreak." From a childhood love of storytelling to a career in communications and policy, Sarah's experiences have shaped her narrative and provided invaluable insights into the writing process.
Publishing a book is a complex journey, full of unexpected twists and turns. We explore the multifaceted roles of agents, editors, and marketers in shaping a book's path to the shelves. Sarah and I discuss embracing the identity of a writer amidst self-doubt and share personal anecdotes about the transformative friendships and cultural influences that have shaped our narratives.
Through themes of heartbreak, camaraderie, and personal growth, we aim to inspire those on the brink of their creative journeys to embrace both the highs and lows of bringing a story to life.
What if heartbreak came with a manual?
It starts with a late-night knock on the door. Dee, Liv and Rosa share a flat in south London, while Katie lives close by with her boyfriend. But, when Katie’s nine-year relationship ends – suddenly and brutally – she turns up on their doorstep with no idea what to do next, or how to do anything after spending so long with her life entwined with someone else’s.
Out comes the martini shaker (an old, well-washed gherkin jar) and, with an unused sketchbook, an idea. They’ll make Katie the handbook that she needs to process her heartbreak and start rebuilding her life. There are notes on tears, hangovers and roast chicken, scribblings about music, new bedding and pure, white-hot rage.
But Katie is not the only one nursing a broken heart. Rosa is a hopeless romantic, despite still reeling from her ex’s infidelity. Scarred by her ex’s parting words, Dee is committed to being commitment-free. And while Liv knows that breaking up with her girlfriend was what she wanted, she can’t help but wonder if she did the right thing.
Tested by big life changes, even the closest friendsh
"Enjoying 'The Conversation'? Support the podcast by buying me a cup of coffee ☕️! Every contribution helps keep the show going.
https://ko-fi.com/nadinematheson
Don't forget to subscribe, download and review.
You can purchase books by the authors featured in our conversations through my affiliate shop on Bookshop.org. By using this link, you’ll be supporting independent bookstores, and I may earn a small commission at no additional cost to you.
Follow Me:
www.nadinematheson.com
BlueSky: @nadinematheson.com Substack: @nadinematheson Instagram: @queennads
Threads: @nadinematheson Facebook: nadinemathesonbooks
TikTok: @writer_nadinematheson
The publishing world moves slowly, right, you know I haven't written this sort of hugely complex series or a kind of massively detailed, multi-thread literary novel or anything like that. But even say the process of just, you know, editing it and then submitting it and then signing with the publisher and then editing it again and all of the sort of build-up has been years.
Speaker 2:Hello and welcome to this week's episode of the Conversation with Nadine Matheson. As always, I hope that you're well and I hope that you've had a good week. My week has been well. It feels a bit like Groundhog Day at the moment because this is my routine I get up, I get dressed, I do my morning walk, and it's still pitch black at the moment. So I do my morning walk. If I'm lucky, by the time I get home, I see a little bit a tiny, tiny little bit of daylight start to crack through the sky. I return home, I do my workout and have breakfast, and then I set up my desk and I work, and then I repeat the same thing the following day.
Speaker 2:And being a writer is very strange because in my other job, as a lawyer, I spent all my time with people, and it's one thing. It's very odd. It's one thing you don't realize when you're at law school that your job is so completely, 100%, people orientated because you're just focused on learning the law. When you're at law school, you've learned the law, you learned procedure, you learn well, you practice your advocacy and your interviewing and advising skills, but you don't realise that you spend all your time, all your time with people, whether it's engaging with your clients, or you're in court and I'm doing jury speeches or making applications to the judge, or I'm engaging with the opposition so the prosecution or I'm engaging with police officers it's just people all the time. And then you become a writer it's just people all the time. And then you become a writer, and it's just you. It's just you, and you spend so much time on your own working on your book. You may interact with your agent and your editor, but you're not talking to them every single day. And then, all of a sudden, your book's out there, it's released, and then you have to go out and promote it. And then you're thrown into this world of people all around you and then you engage in that, you go to festivals, and then it's all over and then you're back at your desk on your own.
Speaker 2:I don't know why I'm telling you all this, but I just think it just sums up the life of a writer. But one of the things I love about this podcast is not only talking to writers but especially talking to debuts. Everyone's journey is different. Everyone's journey into publishing and being a writer is different, but I often find that all debuts have the same experience, the same expectations experience, the same surprises, and it's just lovely listening to them be excited about embarking on this new journey and also think it's good for any other debut authors out there who are listening to know that they're not alone, because, as I said, we spend so much time on our own as writers that it's really comforting to know that there is someone out there who shares our experiences and understands where we're coming from, which is why I'm very happy to introduce you to my guest today, who is Sarah Handyside, and her debut novel, instructions for Heartbreak, is out now, and in our conversation, sarah and I talk about the point where you become aware that the book that you've written isn't just yours, how your characters can surprise you even though you're the one who created them, and how coming from a small community can influence how you view your own characters.
Speaker 2:Now, as always, sit back. We'll go for a walk and enjoy the conversation. Sarah Handyside, welcome to the Conversation. Thanks, so conversation. Sarah Handeside, welcome to the conversation.
Speaker 1:Thanks so much for having me really excited to be here.
Speaker 2:You're welcome. Well, we were talking about your book in a good way before we started recording officially, but I want you to tell me how would you describe so, how would you describe your writing journey now that you're here at debut?
Speaker 1:stage, long and meandering, I think. Yeah, I always loved writing. I was definitely one of those kids who spent a lot of time writing made-up stories, all that caper, but then I didn't really go into a kind of writing-based career, at least initially I'd go into journalism, um, or anything like that, which I feel is maybe sort of quite classic for people who want to be writers. Um, I worked in communications for a while, um, and then I went back to uni to do a master's and a PhD, um, and now I work in in policy, um, around kind of data ethics and things like that, um, but I guess writing was always like my big hobby, the big thing in the background that I was that I was doing um kind of in in whatever spare time I had, um, much more so than anything um, sporty or anything like that, uh, sadly, and um, I'd written.
Speaker 1:I'd had a go at writing, writing a novel before this which got long listed in a competition and I actually sent out on submission a little bit but ultimately didn't go anywhere.
Speaker 1:And so this, I guess, is my second attempt at writing a novel which has gone a bit further, a novel which has gone a bit further, and I entered the first 10,000 words of it in the Curtis Brown First Novel Award, which has since become Discoveries and I think is one of the most kind of exciting prizes competitions for emerging writers and I got long listed in that and the way they set it up was that sort of different agents from Curtis Brown had, I guess, made a case for different novels to appear on that long list and Lucy Morris, who's incredible was the one who had made the case for Instructions for Heartbreak to be on that long list and she contacted me afterwards and said you know, it'd be great to read any more writing that you've done on that project.
Speaker 1:At the time I did just have that first 10,000 words and I think I had this sort of dream that, oh yeah, she's going to call me up and she's going to sign me on the basis of 10,000 words and it's going to be really exciting. Spoiler, she didn't, but it was obviously very galvanising to have have her um sort of telling me and how much she'd like those first words, um, and then when I did eventually write uh, the rest of the novel, um, I sent it to her and she was she was, uh, yeah, excited to represent me, which was fun.
Speaker 2:I'm just gonna say there's so many um, it's like variations of the of the story of. I've written only 3,000 words and they've asked for more, and people like, no, I do not, yeah, I do not have any more, this is all I've got. And then, exactly, did you have that sense of like panic, like oh crap, now I need to finish it.
Speaker 1:I mean yes and no, it was um, because, interestingly, something similar had happened with the sort of previous projects that ultimately didn't go anywhere and that I got long listed um, and they wanted more at that stage, so I had to rush to write.
Speaker 1:I can't remember. Now, let's say there's another 10,000 words, um, I suppose in this case you know there wasn't um, what's so great about the the discoveries prize is that they don't ask for any more than that, so you can win on the basis of just 10,000 words, which is obviously quite unusual. So really it was. It was only a good thing in that it was so encouraging and, as everyone knows, when you're trying to write around a full time job, which many of us have to do, or carrying responsibilities or whatever else, which many of us have to do, or caring responsibilities or whatever else um, it's, it's really, really nice to have something that is saying to you you know, this project may go somewhere, um, beyond, uh, being your own hobby, um, and your own interest, um, so, yeah, I think I found it very galvanizing, um, albeit, uh, yeah, there was still a little bit of flying blind and obviously there were no guarantees that I would end up with something that she liked.
Speaker 2:How did you do it? The you know working around work, because I always say it that you're always stealing time and I'd always go back to being a lawyer and sitting in the back of court and I'd use that time. You know, I always say this there comes a point when I can't take any more instructions from my client and now I'm just sitting in court waiting for my case to come on, and sometimes I could be waiting five minutes, but there have been times I'm waiting for hours and then I would just steal that time to write, even just like a paragraph, two paragraphs. How would you do it?
Speaker 1:yeah, 100%. It's um definitely still a learning process. So I wrote instructions um mostly while I was um freelancing and doing my PhD. So that was more conducive to uh finding pockets of time and sort of saying, oh I've had a productive morning, so I'll spend some time this afternoon um writing. You know creative writing um.
Speaker 1:But by the time um I signed with Lucy into the editing stage, I had um the job that I that I have now, which is which is a full-time um a full-time job um, and writing around that is is much more challenging. I mean, the pandemic helped, I suppose. Um. I certainly don't want to um give a silver lining to something that was obviously so horrendous, but that that was a sort of strange twisted silver lining in that I obviously wasn't going out um. So it was an entertaining thing to do at home, to kind of edit and and write more but um. But now that I'm trying to write my second novel around a job, it's much more exactly as you just described um trying to find pockets of time um before work or or either lunch time or afterwards um, and I'm planning to take um a week off at some point soon. That's just going to be a writing week just for myself, which will be lovely it's lovely.
Speaker 2:But then it's like I remember. I remember at one point I was like, right, I need to. I remember what I was doing work-wise. But I was probably going to court but also teaching in the evening and I had to deliver something. And I was just like I, I can't even steal time anymore because every minute is taken up with something. And I was like, no, I need to take a week off. And then there was one hand of me I was like, right, I'm gonna take this week off to write. But there was another side of me that was bitter this week off I should just be floating around doing whatever I want to do.
Speaker 1:That's so true that is so true, and obviously you know, who knows what could happen in the future in terms of, you know, balance of different jobs. Yeah, it's in some ways, I think, that it's a really you know. It enables what am I trying to say? It allows you to focus better, I think, on both things. You know, it provides a kind of nice time out from the demands of the other job, and vice versa.
Speaker 2:I think.
Speaker 1:But then yeah, if it goes too far, you're obviously using up kind of every hour of the day to work or writing.
Speaker 2:I think that's the thing, though, isn't it? I think, whether you're doing, you're always trying to strike the right balance. Whether you're I say working I say traditional nine to five job, or you do something else creative, you're always trying to find a balance between that job and then also having a life. But when you want something really badly like you want your book to be a success, you feel like you have to put every, every moment into it. Yeah, do you?
Speaker 1:think it? Um, do you think it makes you more of a planner? I keep sort of wondering about this and wondering whether, when you're writing in those, in more of those kind of fragments of time, um, if it, if it means that it's more important to have kind of a clear plan for what the novel is going to be, um, I think for me.
Speaker 2:I think naturally I am a planner like I have a. I mean, I have a, I have a friend and George always make me laugh. I think we plan in different ways because I can do it mentally like I need to do x, y and z, but she's the the post-it note person, so she would literally like you just post-it notes of, like her plan of what she needs to do for all.
Speaker 2:You know, all over the place, but I think for me, being a solicitor and being always everything's deadline orientated, and you know the courts are constantly setting deadlines and you have to meet the deadlines and and in the middle of that you have to meet clients, you have to do this, you have to do that, so you always have to plan. So I think I just naturally just translated that way of working to my writing, because otherwise I couldn't see how I would get it done, like how I would get to the end, because I didn't know what the end would be. So I needed to know what the end would be in order for me to be, yeah, to know that I could get there. What about you?
Speaker 1:Yeah, I feel similarly.
Speaker 1:Um, I'm in the process, I'm sort of half writing the second book and half planning it at the same time and definitely finding that you know, down to the level of a of a chapter plan is is, I think the way I need to go, like instructions, is because it's got this sort of structural conceit of um, these different kind of themes of how you move through heartbreak right.
Speaker 1:So there's like a chapter that's about um, like heartbreak movies, or a chapter that's about um going out drinking. And because that structural conceit came early on in my, in my thinking for the novel, that sort of already gave it a skeleton for me to work with, if that makes sense, and then it was almost a case of thinking about how the plot lines that I had in my head would sort of fit with that. So that was quite interesting. Um, and I think I think I'm doing something not dissimilar um with the second but definitely need to know where I'm ending up. The idea of just sort of writing with no idea of the end point could be very exciting, but definitely doesn't fit with the way I'm writing at the moment.
Speaker 2:I'm looking at you shaking my head. I'm like, no, I'm not having a plan, just pantsing it and just seeing where I go. I'm like, no, I just feel like I have a thing about bridges. I don't like bridges. I mean, I don't have a phobia like I can go over them, but I don't, just I don't like them. So the idea of me not having a plan is I just feel like I'll be on the car and someone just put their foot on the accelerator and I've just gone off the bridge and I'm like, no, you need to go straight, not left. So yeah, I'm yeah. No, not for me.
Speaker 2:I was talking to who was I talking to? I was talking to Don Nolan, crime writer, I think last week or two weeks ago, and we were talking about planning books. And I've always said I think, well for me with crime fiction, I always felt like I need to have a much stronger plan. But his plans are like I don't'm going to be saying, they're like maybe like 35, 40 pages, like that is the outline of his book. So when he does write the first draft, there's not much to do in terms of edits, but I'm like my plan's like a couple of pages, so there's like there's different, there's different levels of planning where it's just, yeah, post-it note or you've basically done the whole work.
Speaker 1:I love the mystique of the post-it notes. I've seen so many um yeah, writers that they're sort of like taking amazing photos of these sort of you know papers strewn all over the floor and then color coding and working out the kind of weight of all of the different lines and everything. I think, yeah, one day that could be, that could be fun, but uh, but it's very, very basic word documents at the moment it's like the lottery, it could be you exactly.
Speaker 2:I tried it. I tried it. Um, I did the whole post-it note. I did the whole whiteboard thing. I was like I didn't get on. I don't know why I didn't get on with the whiteboard. Then I thought I'll, because my door's on my right, I thought I'll do the door and I'll just stick it on the back of the door and I tried that. But then post-it just made me laugh because post-it notes would just float away so I'll be left with gaps. And I remember one day I was walking down the stairs this is like probably a few months after I finished the book picked up and I was like what's that? It's a post-it note on the stairs and it was literally like this character kills that character by doing it. And I was like, imagine if some random person just picked that up. They would have been like what the hell? Like what you're plotting away? Yeah, yeah. But you as a writer would understand oh, nadine is plotting.
Speaker 2:A normal person out on the street would be like I need to call the other form of plotting sure when did you know because I think this is an interesting question to ask but when did you know that you could write, and not only just write, but also tell a story? Because you know, when we're in school, you're always writing and doing essays and doing whatever, even you say doing your PhD. But it's different, I think, when you recognize that you're a storyteller. So were you able to recognize that, or did someone recognize that in you?
Speaker 1:Oh, that's such a good question, um. I think I had that classic experience of I had some really good like English and writing teachers really early on. I actually, um, I went to a ridiculously tiny school so I grew up in um rural Northumberland, um, and my first school had about 25 kids in the entire school. There were five kids in my oh, in the whole school the class.
Speaker 1:Yeah, this, it only had two classes in the whole school. This is how tiny it was. It's closed down now because, you know, surprise, surprise, there are not enough children to go to it. Um, but it meant, yeah, it was a really interesting early education experience because they were sort of mixed up with kids of slightly different ages, um, and I mean, I don't know how specific this was to the school and perhaps it was just the teachers, but I had teachers who were very kind of.
Speaker 1:I just basically was given loads of time and space to oh, sarah wants to spend um an hour this afternoon writing a story? Then she can, and that's a good way of learning English. Anyway, at least that's how I remember it now. Perhaps it was all much more structured than that. Um, so I think I was pretty young when I I became aware that I suppose that was the thing that I was good at school-wise and that was I was lucky that that was kind, was the thing that I was good at school-wise and I was lucky that that was kind of nurtured as I went up through school. And, yeah, definitely by the time I was a teenager I knew that this was something I was good at.
Speaker 2:You know how you say there's 25, I'm just thinking you know how you say there's 25 people, 25 people, 25 kids in the school. Yeah, and it sounds like a really stupid question. It sounds stupid in my head saying it, but were they actual classrooms and how many kids were in the classroom? Like five in a classroom.
Speaker 1:So there were only two classrooms. So you would have the depth of the Northumbrian school system. So also, at least at that time, it was a three-tier school system. So you didn't have primary and secondary, you'd have first middle and high school. So your first school would be um up to year four. So in my school you had I think it was reception in year one would be in one classroom and then years two, three and four were in the other classroom.
Speaker 2:Oh wow. So completely different to my school.
Speaker 2:Right yeah, in a London school, minimum class sizes were 25. And even when I teach, when I teach the baby lawyers, and I always say I don't want any more than well, I need even numbers. I don't want any more than 14 in my room because it's too much and you can't give. I don't think you can give quality time to everybody when it's more than 14. And I got an email one day saying, yeah, you might, oh, we might need you to teach. I'm like, yes, fine, I'll teach a course. And I looked at the numbers, like 40. I'm like I'm sure this is a typo. I can't have 40.
Speaker 1:Yeah, that's crazy isn't it? Yeah, no, it's. It was a yeah, a really unique experience. I ended up up at a much more normal high school 11 classes in my year, or something like that so it was definitely one extreme to another, but, yeah, that was what my school was like until I was, I guess, 9 or 10.
Speaker 2:Is that a shock to a system? When you go from somewhere, so I say it's beyond small, it's so contained, it's like its own little, it's his own little, it's like his own little country, just own little thing. And then you go to somewhere big, so you go to high school, whatever, and it's just yeah, it's a continent again, totally.
Speaker 1:I mean again, the three-tier thing was quite interesting from that perspective. So you'd you'd finish first school and then you'd go to middle school for year five, six, seven and eight, um. So again, that was a small school mine had. There would be one class in each year, so I guess maybe 100, 110 kids in the whole school, which is still a small school, right, but it was sort of gradually scaling up. And then when I went to high school in year nine, um, I said, yeah, it wasn't, it didn't feel like a big sort of shock, it felt, felt like the right time to be. I'm ready to matter environment, yeah.
Speaker 2:I need to see the world. Let me go.
Speaker 1:I know. I mean, can you imagine um staying somewhere so small once you, yeah, by the time you're a teenager? I well, in my experience, it was definitely good to be surrounded by thousands of other people.
Speaker 2:I think the only thing I can compare it to is like when you're younger and you watch so much um tv and it's always American stuff. You know, I want to go to America and I want to go to New York and you have these images of what New York would look like and it's always, you know, the the steam coming out yeah and it's all that.
Speaker 2:And then I think, when I think I was 17 yeah, when I went with my brother and he was 16 and we got there and we're like, oh my god, like this is it? The skyscrapers and the steam coming out. It's real.
Speaker 1:I love that. I love that.
Speaker 1:I think I had a like, yeah, quite a similar idea of what living in in cities would be when I was younger as well. I sometimes find it quite surprising that I've ended up um in London and and I think I'll be here for a long time um, it's so far removed from how I grew up um, which isn't to say that I don't miss lots of aspects of um being in Northumberland and being in the countryside. You know there's lots about it. That's so, so special um. But yeah, I've gone from one extreme to the other, I think.
Speaker 2:Do you think, um, because I think about with characters, because you've got it's four characters yeah, it's four in in your book, instructions of Heartbreak. Do you think, when you come from a small community, that you're much more aware of how characters are created in your own book? I mean, because you know London is so vast and it's good in a way, because there are so many different people, so many different types of people that you're meeting and engaging, but when you're from a small community, you're much, I think you're much more aware of what shapes them, in a sense that that's so interesting.
Speaker 1:I've never thought about that before. Um, yeah, I'd probably have to reflect on it um more. I think that I mean, I guess one of the things that they at least one of the things that I found interesting about working with um, with Lucy um, both on instructions and on the second book is like her encouragement to think really, really carefully about character um, and one of the things that when we first started working together on instructions that she suggested I do was sort of write out a kind of um, I guess almost like a treatment for each character um, yeah, basically getting me to explicitly write down all of the stuff that I already knew about them, if that makes sense. Um, so the things about their backgrounds, um, the things about you know what's, what's their comfort food, do they have any tattoos, what kind of music do they listen to, all of this stuff that I think, possibly, before I started working with her, I might have found a little bit, maybe a little bit trite, like a little bit kind of creative writing exercise in in inverted commas that I think I could be a bit dismissive of.
Speaker 1:And, of course, because she's very wise and very experienced, it was absolutely, um, the right thing to do, because it forces you to think about either the stuff that you already know but hadn't thought about very in great detail, or tease out things that you don't know yet. Um, and some of that stuff ended up explicitly on the page and some of it didn't, but it's so important for giving kind of a richness and depth to a characters and making sure that they're distinct, and when I started planning out the second novel, um, it was one of the first things I did was was really kind of writing out sentences and then paragraphs about the characters and what I thought made them distinctive.
Speaker 2:Um, I found it so helpful yeah, I'm never really a fan of like writing exercise. It was just odd because I did a writing course, I did a creative writing masters and it's all about it's all about exercises. And I remember doing those bios for characters and I said I get bored easily. I'm like, oh, I don't know what it's about. I don't know how I manage it as a lawyer sitting in trials not even hours, days and months but I can get bored easily. So I start doing these bios and I'll do the basics, I'll do their name, I'll do their age, what their occupation is. Then it starts getting into depth. I'm like, oh god, really, so I might get to half, I might get to half a page, but you need to know who your characters are and, of course, so you do need that basic shape of them. But I find that well for me, that the more and I think, maybe because I write a series as well that with each book.
Speaker 2:Yeah, I learn more, I learn more things about my characters with each book and they surprise me with things that they want them to do and they don't do it and they do the opposite, or things they will say and I'm like I did not realize you had that in you and I actually called one of my characters yesterday. So I was doing my edits yesterday it was I could look to Henley, the main character, and I was like you, absolute. Yeah, I was like what I'm like that is not. I was like no, no, no, no, no.
Speaker 1:I say, yeah, I really, really relate to that and it's it again one of those things that I sort of read about writers describing and I again kind of did almost an internal eye roll like that can't be true, you know, when people say, oh, I discovered something about my character when I was writing about them, and then it absolutely does happen. So I stand corrected. Um, yeah, it's a really strange, surreal thing, isn't it?
Speaker 2:um, yeah, really peculiar no, it's like I think I was the same like very cynical. What do you mean? You learned things about them Like you wrote them. It's like you created them. You should know everything, but they do surprise you. Do you feel that you're prepared as a debut for what happens next?
Speaker 1:Yes, oh my gosh, um, no, like how, how could you be, in the sense, I mean, I I hear such conflicting things as well. I think in some ways this sounds quite depressing, but have tried to be braced for it. Being maybe anticlimactic isn't quite the right word, but I've heard a lot of people describing the sort of, um, you know, tension almost that builds up in the weeks and months beforehand, because obviously for most people it's, you know, a real, you know childhood dream stuff. Right, it's the culmination of a very, very exciting journey.
Speaker 1:And you know, the publishing world moves slowly, right, you know I haven't written this sort of hugely complex series or a kind of massively detailed, multi-thread literary novel or anything like that. But even say, the process of just, you know, editing it and then submitting it and then, and then signing with a publisher and then editing it again and and all of the sort of build-up has, has been, has been years, right, and yeah. So you're kind of building up this, this anticipation, anticipation, anticipation, and then I know a lot of people have said, once it was actually out there in the world, that it was almost a moment of okay, you know what next? Um, so I'm trying to be kind of braced for that, whilst at the same time, obviously just you know holding my breath and incredibly excited, because it is really exciting, it's going to be very surreal.
Speaker 2:I think it'll be a bit good. I was going to say I'm trying to find a nice way of saying it but it'd be a bit odd if you wasn't to be excited by the prospect of your book coming out. You said, and this is the thing, and I think people know this, but it's if they're not involved in, if they're not a writer or they're not involved in that industry, they may know it on some level, but really they're thinking like how much time do you just write a book, and that you know, and out it goes and it's like no, you write a book, you go around the houses trying to get an agent. You go around the houses trying to get a publisher right, and who? Not you know, who knows? I think I've spoken to people who've read. You know took them like six years to get their agent. So everyone's journey is completely different and you know you go.
Speaker 2:So if you go through so many ups and downs of your books with the edits and you know looking, talking about covers and things like that, so when you do get to that moment, yeah, it's so much hard, so much has gone into it, don't you? I don't know. There'd have to be something wrong with you if you wasn't to be I'm. I am excited that I'm going to have this moment. I'm going to. Yeah, it's like a proper stamp on it I'm a writer yeah, yeah, 100%, 100%.
Speaker 1:And it's it being this physical thing is so surreal as well. When they first sent me the proofs and again you know it feels like you're becoming part of this trope that you've seen so often of people opening this box and seeing their proofs and like then you're doing exactly the same thing. Um, yeah, I think the sort of physicality of it feels feels very exciting.
Speaker 2:Um, as well yeah, no, it doesn't, it will never get old because you, I would think, oh, you know, here's another box like I know my, I know the UPS guy. I'm going to give a shout out to Mark because we are on first name terms now. He's delivered so many boxes to me and at one point he goes to me this must be like the fourth delivery or so and he was like Nadine because I said we're on first name.
Speaker 2:It's like what is this I'm like, oh, let me show you. So I had to grab him a book and show you and he was like, oh my god, I can't be on me delivering your books to you all this time, and then he went on holiday and he bought my books and took them on holiday with him.
Speaker 2:Oh, that's amazing, so lovely. But I think my point in my story is that you think is you think you know getting another delivery? But oh, it's another delivery, but it's not. It's like oh, you're opening, like, oh, my god, I, you're like a kid, I made this, I did this, yes exactly.
Speaker 1:Yeah, there was something so strange about you know, slipping the pages and seeing these words that you're so familiar with by that point, because you've been doing it. You've seen them on like your computer screen so much, but they feel like an entirely different thing seeing them actually in in the pages of a book, for sure very strange yeah, it's weird.
Speaker 2:It's when you're looking at those words and you're like, oh I, I wrote the weird, the weird moments though I find about when you've written a book. So you know like you would have written instructions for heartbreak. I'm saying years ago, I don't, but you know I mean it's been written years ago and you're gonna be, yeah, and you'll be writing a panel.
Speaker 2:You'll be on a panel being interviewed about it, right, maybe next year, and someone will ask you a question. You're gonna have one of these moments. I was like who, what, who, what character? I don't, I don't. I was swearing blind on in my head when this person asked me a question about a character. I was like I didn't write a character called Carol. I don't know who Carol is, I don't know. Like a couple of minutes and it clicked and I was like oh yeah, oh god, yeah, I killed her. Yeah, carol.
Speaker 1:I can completely imagine it's yeah, the the amount of time that it takes these different phases that you're in as well like moving from the phase where you're real head into actually writing the thing and and sort of figuring out plot and character and motivation, all of those things, and then how different it feels to be in, yeah, the editing stage and now I guess, like the promotion phase, which is quite separate from the book itself in some ways and, yeah, having to kind of re-immerse yourself in it is is quite a peculiar thing it is.
Speaker 2:It's a weird thing. Um, is there anything so far that surprised you about the process? So going from being a writer in your room doing what you need to do to being involved with your editor and now getting to this stage where it's going to? Be, as anything that surprised you or maybe you wasn't prepared for.
Speaker 1:Yeah, it's maybe not so much surprise, but I think one of the things that I hadn't really thought about before was how it starts to feel like something that isn't just yours.
Speaker 1:Like, obviously, you're still the person at the heart of it as the writer and I should be very clear that you know my very lovely um team, um at Curtis Brown and Pam McWilliam have always made me feel definitely the person right at the heart of it.
Speaker 1:But but you start to become aware of, you know, the multiple other people who are involved in it in some way and for whom it's part of their job to, you know, figure out um, the social media campaign, or to work on the cover um, or doing the kind of international stuff, and um, I think I hadn't considered at all what that would feel like, the idea that that, whilst it was still, it is still my book and I'm still the writer, but it's, it's becoming this, this sort of product of lots of other um people as well, which I find really exciting and, um, you know, yeah, galvanizing and inspiring, and it's really cool to be kind of borrowing from all of these other people's expertise as well. But that probably feels quite different to um, you know, when people self-publish and they get to still have a really tight grip on absolutely everything and it's, you know, every, every dimension of it is theirs. So, yeah, it's, it's not. It's not been a huge surprise, but it's been a kind of interesting experience that I just haven't thought about before at all.
Speaker 2:Um yeah, no, it's even, it's only. It's. Even now, when you're talking about it and I'm just thinking that it does, it didn't even occur to me how many people, how many different people are involved in each single stage. And I mean from when? You know? When it's, my agent has it and it goes out on submission and a public, you know, an editor may say yes, but then they still have to go to the next stage, which is like okay, go to an acquisitions meeting. So it's a whole different team of people saying yes or no.
Speaker 2:And then when it is taken on and you work with your editor, then it's a different. You like you didn't. It's like going up levels. So then it's like you're on a different floor, actually in a tower block, right the next floor, and there's more people involved, and so you've got your editor, copy editor, this person, your editor's assistant, and it goes to the next level. Now we've got to deal with marketing. And then you realize marketing and pub and promotions or not promotions, yeah, and publicists, they're like two different things, they're two different entities. Yeah, completely, it's like every level there's people and it's yeah. And I don't think it's only now, yeah, talking to you, I'm like, yeah, that didn't even occur to me in the beginning.
Speaker 1:Yeah, I remember how long it took to do the typesetting and these sort of back and forth emails with this amazing woman who was kind of leading on the typesetting and she was fantastic and things that she spotted were extraordinary. But just yeah, the whole idea that there's this whole process of making the book that is focused just on typesetting.
Speaker 2:I kind of knew it somewhere, but really hadn't thought about what that would mean in practice. No, yeah, yeah, I think on some level you, you kind of know, but you don't really know. Because even when you know, talking about, you know, I'm not thinking why would marketing get involved with book covers? And I remember we were discussing book covers for the last. I think it was the last book. Um, yeah, I think it's for the kill list. And you know, I think marketing said you know, green covers or green font, like don't sell. You're like what? So what you gotta do with, yeah, book cover and colors, but they do, they have to interact because there's no point. You know you may, you know your cover eyes may do an amazing cover, but there's no point doing that and marketing and saying, well, it's not going to appeal to anybody, like, yeah, we have our records, it won't sell, so they have to work, yeah, yeah, yeah it's a.
Speaker 2:It's a crazy interesting thing. Um, sarah, I have a question. Have you been, have you been comfortable from day one with calling yourself a right I can't speak A writer.
Speaker 1:Or has it taken time? Oh, it's definitely taken time and it's still a work in progress, which I feel bad about because I think it's you know, instinctively, if I was talking to someone else and they were saying, oh, I'm not sort of sure about calling myself a writer, I'd still make them to shake them and say you know come on own it.
Speaker 1:It's like you are look at what you've done, um, you know, you've written the book and it's going to be published, and and you're writing another one, um, so, yeah, I don't know. I don't know how much of it is to do with the fact that I do still have, um, you know, a day job, uh, as it were. Um, so I'm used to sort of describing myself in those terms, or whether part of it almost feels, even now, um, like I'm tempting fate in some way, which is ridiculous. You know, the, the contract is signed, the book is being made, it's there, but, yeah, it still feels, um, yeah, just a little bit strange calling myself a writer. And then, as I say, I really want to shake myself because there's all sorts of dodgy dynamics there about, particularly around women, not kind of standing up and owning what they've done.
Speaker 2:Um, so I'm trying to get better, but it's very odd yeah, it's very odd, it's very strange because you can always I would say you can be so confident in whatever you do, whatever you say, whatever your other job is like, I have no qualms. If anyone would used to ask me in the past what do you do? I'm well, I'm a solicitor, you know.
Speaker 2:I didn't, I didn't have to think I mean because I thought like, and it's not like I haven't worked hard to be a writer, but I worked so hard to be a solicitor and you know the moneyain, you know law school, all that stuff, you know just surviving on pasta like a year, because you know. But there's a scene in your book early on I don't need to mention because it gave me a flashback, but um, but you know. You see, I think you can equate whatever your job is to you. I think you really recognize the path and how much work you put into the path and I think people, people understand that work, whereas when you say I'm a writer, you're like, oh, it seems a bit, I know, like a little bit self-absorbed sort of thing, like yeah, it's it's a weird thing yeah, it's rubbish.
Speaker 2:It's rubbish like you shouldn't feel that way at all, exactly I hate.
Speaker 1:I hate noticing myself doing it um, and and yes, I do, I wonder if it will change sort of post-publication um. But then I hear people uh, you know exactly as you've just said describing a continued funny relationship with it. But I'm so proud of it and it's, you know, the first thing I remember wanting to be, so it seems strange that I'm kind of struggling to step into it now?
Speaker 2:um, you're not the only one. I don't think I. I don't think. I got comfortable with it until after the second book was published and I was talking about 2022, yeah, 2022, the end of it, and then I would. It got to a point where I'd stop saying solicitor first, and like mumbling writer and then I would say yeah, no, I'm a writer.
Speaker 2:Now I will say I'm a writer because I think like, yeah, three books, well, more than that, three books in, yeah, and whatever else. Yeah, solid, yeah, it feels, but it takes a while, which is weird. No matter how confident you are in your other job, in whatever it is that you used to do or are still doing, the fact that you can still be hesitant about something which is a part of you in which you've equally worked harder.
Speaker 1:Yeah, yeah, very much so. It's a really strange, slightly frustrating thing.
Speaker 2:We'll get there. Listeners, it's time for a very short break. If you're enjoying this conversation with Nadine Matheson, I want to help keep the podcast going. Why not buy me a cup of coffee? Your support goes such a long way in keeping these conversations flowing. Just check out the link in the show notes. I'll tell you the bit that made me, that gave me a flashback to uni. In your book it was um. They were talking about how the girls they all met at uni and it it was, and it's such a little thing. It was a train spotting um poster and I was like, oh my god, because I went uni.
Speaker 2:You know I was in uni from 1995 to 1998 and I clearly remember the.
Speaker 1:Tuesday afternoon everywhere, oh my god everywhere, and I can clearly remember the Tuesday afternoon Everywhere, oh, my God, everywhere.
Speaker 2:And I can clearly remember the Tuesday afternoon. I don't know why, I don't think we had classes, but we all left uni, went to Simon's house. So you know, it's the truth. Everyone saw the students in the house. We went into the front room Train spotting poster was on the wall and we all watched train spotting and we just put it on and watched trainspotting and as soon as I saw that I thought, oh, it's such a moment and I feel like little things like that, just completely encapsulate, but not only just like an era, it's just like, also like your characters and you can. I feel like it doesn't matter where you come from, like how you grew up, like little, tiny villages or big cities. Like you can, you can resonate with those moments. I was like, oh, look at that, it's such a moment.
Speaker 1:I'm so glad that, well, that was exactly, yeah, what I was trying to do. I think there's something really special about the friendships that you form when you're living away from home for the first time, like whether you know whether it's uni or not. Um, actually, but just like those first early house shares, at sort of a stage in life where you're still kind of figuring out who you are and who you want to be, um, and you probably don't have any money, um, and you're probably going out a lot, um. There's just such a kind of unique magic, I think, to that time, but also sort of strange, um, or at least maybe in, at least in my experience like such a kind of sense of yourself as as this unique unit, kind of experiencing this magical friendship that no one else ever experienced before to this degree.
Speaker 1:Of course, going to something like the chain spotting poster is to try and underline that. Yeah, but everyone else is also feeling the same things, which is good, which is great, it's good, right.
Speaker 2:So it's all those moments it's like, oh, the wine bottles on the wine bottles on the windowsill, yeah, remember. Though it's like why are we keeping the wine bottles? Why the? Why the vodka bottle? Why for what purpose? And even like my friend's son is basically like my nephew, who's at uni, I think he's graduating this, he's finishing this year and he was over by me um last year. He's always, he's always with me from New Year's Eve, and I was like how's it going? It's like, auntie, it's like the mold, the mold. I'm like why are you living in a place with you know? And it's students like, oh yeah, but this student, what made it is? They went, they went and looked it and they said it was okay. And it's also this blind trust that you have in your units and the people that you, you know, that you've formed, I say, this family with, and it's like yeah, so and so went to look at it and they said it was all right.
Speaker 1:And I was like and you just trusted them, and this place has got mold in your room all over yeah so nothing changes like throughout the years yeah, which is a really beautiful thing, I think, and hopefully is what yeah makes, makes stories have some kind of you know, lasting, lasting message. But, um, yeah, no, I love that. The sort of power and intensity of those friendships that you form at that stage, I think are really special.
Speaker 2:Yeah you really are a little bit I was gonna say you are a bit delusional in like in your 20s and stuff, because you just you don't think straight. Yes, then you think you're your own little unit, you think you're gonna live forever.
Speaker 2:For some, you just think, yeah, you're gonna live forever, and which is absolutely the magic of it, right, yeah, yeah, and also I always say you're kind of like it's the poorest you will ever be, but you do so much like you'll find the money to go away to IB for four week and like live it up. And you know it said you've been surviving on pasta and pot, noodles and stuff, but you'll find a way to live rich even though you're not.
Speaker 1:Yeah, yeah, no, it's extraordinary. Um, yeah, I, I wish that I had had those skills. Now it's almost like they've, they've been lost. I feel in some ways, yeah, like I lived a sort of more decadent life when I had the least. Um, it would be, yeah, be nice to revisit some of that it would I always say.
Speaker 2:I'm always thinking I'm sure I felt richer when I was younger and now I'm like, oh god, do you have, um, do you have a favorite character in your book out of the four?
Speaker 1:is there like one of the characters, one, I say one of the girls because it makes me like when they're like, they call themselves girls and then there's moments like women but um, is there a lucky factor who you resonate with more, or you see yourself in so I think and this very much kind of um emerged organically as well um, I think there's probably elements of Liv that I feel closest to, and I even just some of the kind of autobiographical stuff that I've described to you today about kind of growing up in the rural north and going to the school and then moving to the city later on is you know, yeah, she's very directly mirrored on that, I think.
Speaker 1:So there are elements of her that are probably directly mirrored on that, I think. So there are elements of her that are probably and this wasn't deliberate, but yes subconsciously autobiographical, but then lots of elements of her that are very different from me. So I think she's probably the character who was drawn most from me in terms of personality, although the kind of event catalyst I guess for thinking of the book and thinking of the idea of the book was was a breakup, that was that was more akin to to, to Katie's story, and so there's a reason why she's the kind of catalyst at the start of the story but yeah, I would say live um.
Speaker 1:But there are elements of all of the, the girls, the women um that are, that are, that are me, that are people I've known, that are just straight out of my head.
Speaker 2:I. I was thinking when you're finished with it when I was reading it and I'm like, yeah, I know those moments. You're like God, the world is over. I can't see past next week.
Speaker 2:It's like you'll never get over this and you do need someone and it's normally your friends to look at you and be like it's either one's going to say pull yourself together, like this will not last forever. Why are you on the floor? Get up on the floor. Exactly, it wasn't worth it. Like you're better than this. And then you get to that point and you're like what on earth was wrong with me? What was? What was I thinking?
Speaker 1:yeah, it's such a strange kind of, I think that cognitive dissonance that you can have when you're feeling the sort of real depth of despair, um, in in a heartbroken moment, where I think you can, you can know cognitively, like this is completely universal, like this happens to people every single day, um, people get over being heartbroken, um, essentially, um, and, and therefore presumably I can as well, you can, you can think that and you can, you can know that in your bones and yet, at the same time, you're thinking but I'm going to be the first person in the world who, who, whose feelings about this never changed, and I'm going to feel this miserable for the rest of my life because I am, you know, uniquely heartbroken and I think you can feel both of those things at once.
Speaker 2:Yeah, um, I always used to say how I like great expectations and I would say I'm not going to be Miss Hatterstrom just sitting in a wedding dress forever, like never getting over it.
Speaker 1:She's not so great at the moving on for sure.
Speaker 2:I love guys. Sit and watch it with my mum. You're just waiting for that moment, I'm. The dress is caught on fire and the wedding cake isn't it?
Speaker 1:yeah, it's so incredibly gothic. Just yeah, this woman limping around in her one shoe in her wedding dress.
Speaker 2:It's, uh, yeah, incredible visuals isn't it great you can, isn't it great that we can move, get. We can move from a time of mishap with havisham seeming like wedding dress for decades rotting away, and we can move forward to now with your debut instructions for heartbreak and it's like, yes, you are having this thing now, but you will get through it. This is how we get through it, and then there will be another side as opposed to no never.
Speaker 1:I love that thread. I definitely did not expect us to be drawing lines from Great Expectations. I did not expect it either. I love it.
Speaker 2:I feel like I should. I feel like I should have got a better grade for my A level English now, because I'm like if they'd asked me that question I would have done so much better, like I surprised myself yeah, that's incredible.
Speaker 1:Lines from Miss Abisham, to contemporary, contemporary rom-coms.
Speaker 2:Yeah, love it it's got to be an essay question. Guarantee you someone's a level exam. Give it like five years, it will be there. So, sarah, do you want to tell the listeners about instructions for heartbreak what it's about, because we've been talking about it throughout?
Speaker 1:absolutely um.
Speaker 1:So Instructions for Heartbreak is a story about four uh girls slash women um in their late 20s um, and they are all, uh, I think, navigating heartbreak in different ways.
Speaker 1:But the catalyst to the story is that one of them, katie, who's been living in kind of domestic bliss with her boyfriend for quite a few years they break up right at the very beginning of the story and essentially instructions follows her through her heartbreak and her friends supporting her through her heartbreak and her friends supporting her um through her heartbreak, by creating what they call um the heartbreak handbook, and this is where they write down um all of the things that they've learned about their own experiences of being heartbroken um, and it's their advice for you know when or whether you should get your really dramatic haircut um.
Speaker 1:What's the best kind of comfort food um that you should eat um in the midst um of your heartbreak? Um. What happens when you go out drinking um and drink too much? So each chapter kind of ends with these little kind of vignettes or reflections um on on how best um to heal your own heartbreak um. But yeah, it's in. In that sense it's, yeah, a contemporary story of four women in their late 20s um whose friendship is the kind of scaffolding that carries them through.
Speaker 2:I'm gonna ask you a question, another to do with four women and friendships and things, but I just got to tell you about my flashback memory, not on my heartbreak, my cousin's heartbreak, you know. He's talking about what's, yeah, what's your comfort food wasn't even a comfort food. He comes over. No, he calls me on a saturday night and I'm home. He goes, he goes, you home. I'm like, yeah, he goes, I'm coming over. I'm like, okay, so he comes over.
Speaker 2:I'm like what's wrong? This is all very much out of the blue. I'm like what's wrong? He's broken up with his girlfriend. I'm like, okay, no, he says first he said what have you got to drink? And I went. I went vodka, because I drink vodka. I'm like vodka because that, yeah, we're drinking vodka. I'm like, well, what's happened? I've broken up with my girlfriend. I was like, oh god, so we drink a bottle of vodka. Well, I think we had half a bottle of vodka, so we drank a half bottle of vodka, and so now you're the person consoling that person who's heartbroken. And then we finished the vodka. What else have you got? And I'm like tequila.
Speaker 2:I left to my own heart oh well, sarah, I had this bottle because I'd just come back from holidays. I had a bottle of tequila gold and then we got tequila. For some reason we didn't even make it out of the living room we made no, we didn't make it out the kitchen, we ended up on the kitchen floor. It's not my heartbreak, it's his heartbreak. We drank a bottle of tequila.
Speaker 2:I have never been so sick in my life. I was like I should not be suffering because of your suffering. I'm just supposed to be the nice cousin you know supporting you. Why am I the one who's so sick she can't even lift their head? I know I couldn't. For years I couldn't even look at tequila on the tv. Who's so sick she can't even lift her head? It's coming along. I know I couldn't. For years I couldn't even look at tequila on the TV. It took me years to start drinking tequila again, so it just came. That needs to be in the handbook, but you got there. You got there. Yeah, you got there. That needs to be in the handbook.
Speaker 1:How your friends can like self-care for your friends when they're comforting you through your heartbreak. Yeah, yeah, and and get jived into the messier bits of it with you.
Speaker 2:Right, as friends should be. That's what you do. But I just had this image. I was like, oh my god, I'll never forget. I mean, you know, when some, whenever you know a conversation starts with what have you got to drink, it's like, yeah, this is not going to end well, yeah, it's a good starting point.
Speaker 1:It's a good start for a novel, I think do you have a favorite?
Speaker 2:whether it's a film or book about female friendships or just groups?
Speaker 1:or film worlds gosh. That's a very good question and.
Speaker 2:I'm sorry I didn't plan for it.
Speaker 1:Lots and lots and lots. So actually, funnily enough, there was some early dialogue or reflection in instructions that I cut. That was about I can't even remember which of the characters now, but growing up on a diet of sex in the city and assuming, completely erroneously, that their life in their 20s and 30s would look like that, ie that they'd have a lot more money and a far more glamorous life than they actually ended up having. But yeah, I grew up on a diet of things like sex in the city and friends back in I guess, late 90s, early 2000s, which I think were very subconsciously influential. Of course, dolly Alderton has become a kind of doyen of female friendship over recent years and does it incredibly well, both in fiction and non-fiction, I think.
Speaker 1:Writing about writing about friendship. What else have I read more recently? I'm reading Cleopatra and Frankenstein at the moment, but I'm not sure that that's really a friendship focus book. Yeah, I'm enjoying it a great deal and she needs what she's doing. Um, coco Meadows um, but yeah, I think it's. You know it's clearly having its moment right. Um, in the last few years I feel like everyone's talking about female friendship. Um, but the complexity of it and not just the oh, you know, friendship is a really important thing. It's, it's your chosen family, it's what holds you together through your sort of 20s and 30s. I think people are talking more and more about the kind of tensions and jealousies and sort of pushes and pulls that exist in female friendship as well, which I'm very interested in.
Speaker 2:I think that's a difference I'm seeing as well is that it's not just the superficial side of it, it's the more in-depth nature behind friendships and how I think it must have been an article I was reading. You know how you know when you have breakups, it's not just the romantic breakups that you can have. You can have those breakups in friendships and they are just as bad, you know. They hurt just as much as whether it was something you broke up with your boyfriend or girlfriend.
Speaker 1:Hugely. Yeah, you know they hurt just as much as whether it was something you broke up with your boyfriend or girlfriend. Hugely, yeah, and it can you know. I feel very fortunate I've never sort of gone through um a friendship breakup like that, but I can imagine that in some ways it would be sort of, you know, possibly even more painful because there's such a kind of established cultural narrative, I think, um around the idea that, you know, not all romantic relationships last that breakups are a big part of how our culture works and that, yeah, sometimes romantic relationships don't work out or you grow apart, and that's okay there's there's a cultural narrative not just about that being part of how we live but also about how you move through that.
Speaker 1:But I think it's much less, um, kind of embedded in the culture. The idea that that friendships can end and that they can end kind of with emotional violence even, um, and the the difficulty of of navigating that and the pain of navigating that um I think is is probably sort of underexplored and, I imagine, therefore even harder potentially to to deal with if it happens to you, because there isn't that kind of the breadth of cultural material to draw on perhaps. But yeah, it would definitely be an interesting thing to to explore in the future.
Speaker 2:Yeah, no, I think, cause you're right, though, cause I think that you kind of in a horrible way, there's always an expectation of this relationship may not work. You know you go out on your dates and it could work or just be in person. You know you want, you're gonna swipe mentally, you're like no, I've met you in person, let me swipe left and move on to the next one. But it's not even like an expectation, it's just. It's just like it's kind of feels, like it's set in stone that if you become friends with someone, then that is your friend and it will not break and there's nothing that will break. It may have your ups and downs, but it won't break because it's not that sort of relationship.
Speaker 1:But you know, you can.
Speaker 2:I've got friends. I've been, you know people have been friends since I was like three, so we have grown up with each other through every single up and down stage. And there's people, yeah, and there's friends I've literally met and become really good friends with in the last couple of years and you just feel like it should be tight forever. But you know we're human Totally and there's ups and downs and friendships can break just as easily as romantic friendships can.
Speaker 1:And I think there can be like a physical intimacy to, to friendship as well, that that isn't always sort of remarked upon, um, enough, you know, these are people that you can, that you can be sharing your bed with um.
Speaker 1:These are people who can, who can, you can see you naked. These are people who, yeah, you can, you can, you can share just as much physical intimacy with them as you know the person that you're actually having sex with, um. And there's a scene in instructions that I wrote early on that I'm really glad that we sort of kept um where one of they are sharing a bed, because this is post-breakup, so so Katie, the one who's had the break-up at the beginning of the novel, is staying with her friends, um, and she comes on her period while she's staying there, um, and so gets blood all over her friend's bed and they wash it out together, um, and that's, yeah, an experience that I've had with close female friends and it's so and I, you know I'm sure it's been written about, but I haven't. I haven't read um a scene like that. I haven't and I wanted to.
Speaker 2:I really yeah, it was been written about, but I haven't.
Speaker 1:I haven't read a scene like that. I haven't, and I wanted to. I really yeah, it was important to me to write scenes like that into the book because that's the kind of level of physical intimacy that you can have in female friendship.
Speaker 2:Yeah, and you don't. You don't have that. And I was just thinking, like the amount of times I've gone on holiday with my friends and automatically like we're booking rooms in like I don't know whatever, whatever reason, they're like double rooms aren't available and you're just like, oh, it's a double bed, oh, we'll just take it, we'll just share yeah and and it's like it's nothing.
Speaker 2:You said those level of intimacies. When you are being sick and they're sitting on the bed, they're sitting on the bathroom floor and I'm the one being sick exactly classic holding your hair back thing. Right, we've all done that all right, so so I'm going to get to your last set of questions. So are you an introvert or extrovert, or a hybrid of the two?
Speaker 1:it sounds like a cop-out answer, but I think definitely a hybrid. I don't think it's a cop-out at all. Um, I think I read somewhere that the um, like the classic way of defining introversion and extroversion is to do with, like, where you get your energy from. So it's not that introverts, you know, don't like socialising or don't like talking to people, it's that you know, after doing that for a while, they really need to kind of recharge, whereas extroverts, you know, get their energy and get their recharge by being in those social scenarios. At least that's what I've read and I really feel like I kind of oscillate, um, between those two things. Um, I'm really happy in my own company and I think it's often very important for me to be able to go for a walk, go and have a drink on my own, spend some time by myself read a book, um, but also very, very important to yeah, be in, be in social scenarios.
Speaker 1:So I think hybrid.
Speaker 2:I think the pandemic if people wasn't weren't aware of what they were, I think the pandemic definitely showed them you're either an introvert or extrovert, or a hybrid. Because I found that I'm good on my own, but then after what, I'll get cabin fever. So I will never describe myself as an introvert. But I think people would say I. So I will never describe myself as an introvert. But I think people would just say I'm an extrovert just because of how I am around people. But I would yeah, I'm fine on my own, but then I'd be like I've got cabin fever, I need to get out, I just need I feel it's that thing. Maybe I need the energy of other people.
Speaker 1:But then I'm good to be all right, I've had you bye. Yeah, go back into myself. Yeah, I think I recharge in both, in both formats, as it were. Yeah, for sure that makes sense.
Speaker 2:So, what challenge or experience and I always say now it could be a good or bad one, because when I think people say, yeah, challenge or experience a lot, oh my god, they want trauma. No, it's need to be trauma. But what challenge or experience in your life shaped you the most?
Speaker 1:um.
Speaker 1:So probably I thought about this a lot and I think it probably is the breakup that catalyzed the writing of the novel, which is a strange thing to say because it sort of almost makes, um, this person from my past, a kind of more significant part of things now than I think they actually are. But that was the breakup that gave me the idea, um for um, instructions for heartbreak, um, that set me on the road to meeting the person I'm now with, um, living where I now live, doing all the things that I'm now doing not all the things I'm now doing, but but certainly I, my life, wouldn't look the way it does now. Um, without that um and yeah it was, it was certainly a creative catalyst, um, for the first, uh, the first novel that I've written which feels in terms of a throwback to, yeah, childhood dreams, um, probably a pretty significant thing it's good, though, that you can like here in 2024, where we are now recording, that, you can look back at that moment and say, okay, I can see what it was hell at the time.
Speaker 2:It was shit at the time and I wouldn't wish it on anybody, because you always have those moments. You're like I wouldn't wish this on my worst enemy, but it's good that you can look now, look back on it and be, yeah, actually you created a nice pivot in my life. For me, there was a catalyst, and you allowed it, allowed me to expand in different ways.
Speaker 1:Yeah, yeah, without putting so much weight on the person, you have to kind of use the moment and not the person yeah, it was maybe my first um sort of experience of moving and, yeah, probably very like privileged existence that I tied up until then, and it was definitely the kind of first big sort of emotional trauma in my life, as it were. There's been more since then, as I think is often the case as you get older, and yeah, those things are productive ultimately, I think, or they can be, I think you need it.
Speaker 2:I mean they're not wanted. No one ever wants it. But if I even look back at myself, I think you need it because I think you need to see the person who you were and who you could become, and I don't think you can get to that next stage without having those experiencing those moments. And also, unfortunately, it allows you to see people for who they really are, because I think you build an image in your head. I always say you kind of hold on to the thing that you saw good about them, whatever you attracted you to them, that you hold on to that. You're like, no, they can go back to that because they that's what I saw and they they never, for whatever reason, like they don't, but in your head you're still holding on to that and I feel like you need to experience those moments. Yeah.
Speaker 1:I think it's good to hold, it's nice to hold positive reflections of people um in in your mind, even even after they're not part of your life anymore. Um, um, yeah, I'm glad I'm able to do that. For sure, I think it's a very good thing.
Speaker 2:I just hope I remember to say that for my next friend, whoever goes for a break, I'm supposed to just sit on the floor of them going.
Speaker 1:They're shit you don't need to. I mean, I mean I, yeah, I've been very lucky on that front. I've never been sort of treated badly. I'm sure it's, um, it's obviously an entirely different kettle of fish when relationships are bended for really kind of awful reasons or someone's behaved really badly, which in my case was absolutely not what happened. So you know, I'm sure there are scenarios where you know there isn't a bright spin to put on the person later on. But I think you know this probably sounds very much like therapy speak, but it feels to me like it's probably a good thing to be able to move through your life with a good view of the people behind you. I think so. I love it.
Speaker 2:I think you've got to find comedy in these moments in your life. I just remembered Fortunately it was with me and there was someone and we're not together and then my friend was like we need to find out what's going on. I'm just, I think I'm just a lazy person, I just can't be bothered. She's like we need to go and follow them. I'm like follow them, what for? To do what?
Speaker 1:I've never done that, just disclaimer. Never done that.
Speaker 2:I just felt like it's okay. I'm like I think it's normal to be upset and to be go for all those emotions, but literally even for me, I'm like there I draw lines me leaving my house to go.
Speaker 1:Yeah, I was like let's face it, though, in the kind of the, the the internet era it is, it is shocking the kind of wormholes that we can find ourselves in on that front right. So, yeah, maybe, maybe I shouldn't be a person in a glass house, but uh, yeah, um, just to be clear, I have never gone and followed somebody that is not Nadine, but you know.
Speaker 2:I think it's a sign of friendship. It's like you always know the friends. Like if you say to them I need to, I need help, they're like what. They don't even ask what the help is. They're like I am there, it could be help, choosing wallpaper or burying a body.
Speaker 1:Like you know the friend you need to go to yeah, you definitely need to know the friends you would call on to help you bury a body for sure okay.
Speaker 2:So if you could go back to when you were 25 years old and give yourself one piece of advice, what would it be?
Speaker 1:um, I think just write, write, write as much as you can, um write in all those sort of fragments. Well, that was my instinctive answer and it's what I've come up with now as well, because that's always the classic bit of writing advice right, that you won't get anywhere unless you're actually sitting down or standing up um and doing the writing um. But all that said, I do think that my writing now has benefited from the fact that I spent a lot of time in my 20s not writing um, and I spent a lot of time going out um and um, having these adventures, um and meeting new people and doing lots of fun things and actually, um, I think that feeds into your writing in such important ways, um, as well. So it's maybe more that I would just tell my 25-year-old self like carry on living really, really hard and do as much as you can and just kind of get the most out of everything. Because of all of those clichéd things that you begin to realise in your 30s and the sort of shape of time feeling a little bit different.
Speaker 1:I loved being 25. It was a very fun age, yet simultaneously a very discombobulating age. Um, it varies, you know. There's so much where you're kind of panicked about the future, even though the point is, you have so much of your. You hopefully have so much of your future ahead of you and uh, yeah, it's the Sylvia Plath victory, isn't it?
Speaker 2:yeah, I always think I mean I picked 25. I always. I always say that I feel at 25 you're more likely to listen, like I always say you know, you're not. You're definitely not going to listen at 16 and you're not going to listen at 18 because you're like I'm out, I'm off, I'm off to uni, whatever, I'm a grown-up, you're not going to listen. At those ages 25, you're much more likely to listen. But it's really just. It's such a strange period in your time because I think you can feel like I should be doing x, y and z, and nine times out of ten you're not where you think you should be and you are looking around, other, your friends, and maybe some are where you, they thought they were going to be and some are and then. But you want to do everything also and you feel like you can do everything at that rate it's yeah, it's a.
Speaker 2:It's a funny, it's a funny, totally so. Finally, sarah, hand aside, where can listeners of the conversation find you online, are you?
Speaker 1:online. Um, I am, um, I'm trying to get better at being online, um, because it's a bit haphazard, um, so I have an Instagram, which is just Sarah Handyside, um, and I also have, um, the inevitable sub stack, um, which I um, do you? I'm gonna find you. Yeah, do um. Well, what I should do is ask you if you would like to be in it, because, um, what my sub stack has basically morphed into is I have this thing called, uh, my heartbreak seven, where I interview um writers about their seven um things to cure a broken heart. So, your favorite heartbreak book, um, your favorite heartbreak drink, et cetera, I will come on. So, please, please, come on it. Um, because it would be lovely to have you. Um. So those are probably the two best places for people to find me online, and I will try and get better um as well before I say goodbye to you, like my little thing about a sub stack.
Speaker 2:I had my I, I, yeah signed up to sub stack, I think two years ago, and I didn't know what I was going to do with it. Like I had it and I'm like, because you've seen people with their thousands and thousands of followers and doing these essays they're not even just essays, they're like little mini newspapers, little magazines and I was like yeah, and I was like what am I, what am I gonna do with mine?
Speaker 2:and I only started doing my like. I started using my sub stack a month ago. I think I've done my fourth article, maybe a month ago, but I love it. Yeah, I think I had to. Just I had to work out what I needed it to be and I'm really like it just needs to be an extension of me because I always yeah, and I always talk about on this podcast, like I say all the time, like I always say there's pivots. It's like one of my favorite words there's always a pivot in your life where things change and you can look at it and say, yes, that's the moment.
Speaker 2:If I hadn't done that sliding doors, if I hadn't done this, then this wouldn't happen. I always say like a major pivot for me is when I took redundancy, because then that gave me room to write, so I called it the pivot and I'm like I talk about anything I said. That's me. I can go from subject to subject. So once I worked, that wallet was meant to be, I could embrace it, and now I know I love it, right in the same thing you were talking about before, about about discovering who your characters are once you learn what happens on its own.
Speaker 1:Um, yeah, I think it's a really um interesting platform, for sure. Um, I am yeah hopeful that it will grow from here, but yeah, it will heartbreak seven.
Speaker 2:I will be like. Well, that just leaves me, sarah Handyside, to say thank you so much for being part of the conversation. I really appreciate it.
Speaker 2:Nadine, thanks so much and have a great day thank you so much for listening to today's conversation with Nadine Matheson. I hope you enjoyed it as much as I did. Be sure to tune in every Tuesday for a brand new episode featuring more amazing guests. Don't forget to like, subscribe and leave a review. It really helps the podcast grow and if you'd like to support the show, you can buy me a cup of coffee or sign up on Patreon. The links are in the show notes and if you'd love to join the conversation as a guest, feel free to send an email to theconversation at nadiemaffersoncom. Thanks again for your support and I'll catch you next time.
