Amanda Jennings: Write First, Worry Later

In this captivating conversation with bestselling author Amanda Jennings, we explore the unexpected path that led her from struggling architecture student to successful novelist. Amanda shares the pivotal moment when, as a young mother at 23, she found herself feeling creatively unfulfilled and turned to writing during her baby's naps, a decision that would ultimately launch her career.

Now seven books into her career, Amanda discusses her latest novel "Beautiful People"  a dark, glamorous exploration of obsession set in dual timelines between university days and the present. She reflects on how her writing has evolved while remaining true to her love of exploring darkness, even when attempting romance ("I killed the heroine by page seven").

Whether you're an aspiring author seeking motivation to continue through rejection, a published writer navigating the industry's emotional landscape, or simply fascinated by creative journeys, this conversation offers wisdom, practical advice, and heartfelt encouragement. 

Beautiful People

When Victoria escapes her broken home for university in London, she is determined to reinvent herself and make a fresh start. She falls in love with Nick, who welcomes her into his privileged circle of friends, opening her eyes to a world she only ever dreamt of.

Then life takes a darker turn.

Twenty-five years later, the circle is reunited alongside a host of glittering guests to celebrate the wedding of Hollywood darling Ingrid Olsson to ruthlessly well-connected Julian Draper. Victoria has spent years trying to forget Nick and put the horror of what happened behind her. Now she has to face the past she tried so hard to bury.

As the champagne flows and painful memories resurface, Victoria can’t shake the feeling that some people seem to get away with everything.

But maybe not this time.

Maybe this time, someone will pay the ultimate price.

Follow Amanda Jennings 

Chapters

• 0:00 The Journey from Architect to Writer
• 12:46 Finding Writing While Raising a Child
• 29:51 The Reality of Rejection and Persistence
• 44:12 The Pantser vs Planner Writing Process
• 53:15 Managing Envy and Success in Publishing
• 1:00:04 Beautiful People: Glittering Darkness

Transcript

Speaker 1: 0:00

It's interesting that you mentioned midlist, because I call I'm a midlist author and I think, or at least that's how I would describe myself. I have said that to other people, funny enough, and they've said you're not a midlist. But I think it's all relative, isn't it?

Speaker 2: 0:12

Hello and welcome to this week's episode of the Conversation with your host, nadine Maffison. As always, I hope that you're well and I hope that you've had a good week. Last week, you would have noticed that I dropped a brand new episode of a new part of the Conversation podcast called Coffee Break, and the first author to join me for a coffee break was Helen Monks-Takar and we were talking about her new book, the Marriage Rule. And this was just a sample coffee break, because coffee break will officially launch in season four of the podcast and season four will start in September. However, I did want to let you know, because I had such a great response to the coffee break episode you all really enjoyed it that I have another six scheduled for you. So I will be dropping these six Coffee Break episodes throughout the remainder of season three, so you won't have to wait until September to hear them, and you will hear from one of the authors who's actually the inspiration for the Coffee Break segment of the podcast. So I'm really looking forward to dropping those episodes and hearing your response.

Speaker 2: 1:28

Now, as I like to say, let's get on with the show. This week I'm in conversation with bestselling author Amanda Jennings and her new novel, beautiful People, is out now, and in our conversation, amanda Jennings and I talk about how she went from aspiring architect to passionate writer, turning rejection into motivation, and how those nighttime inspirations make it into the final book. Now, as always, sit back or go for a walk and enjoy the conversation. Amanda Jennings, welcome to the Conversation. Thank you so much for having me. You're welcome, right. My first question, amanda, is how would you describe your publishing and writing journey?

Speaker 1: 2:16

Oh, it's hard, isn't it? Because it's, I mean, how would I describe it? So I mean, I started, I didn't start. I didn't ever have sort of aspirations to be a writer. I was one of those children, those gen x children, that had all their essays come back with loads of red marks. You don't know anything about grammar and you can't spell these hundreds of spelling mistakes, please. You know I used to always have to do spellings written out underneath essays and stuff. They came back with great ideas and wonderful imagination, but you really need to learn how to use a semicolon or whatever it was.

Speaker 1: 2:47

So, um, I ended up doing A-levels that were sort of less writing oriented, so geography and art and French maths, and I went to university to do architecture and then basically was a dreadful architect, like really bad, very uninspired or very unspiring buildings, and all my contemporaries had these incredible buildings with sweeping roofs and you know, incredible things. I always say mine had four windows and a door and a chimney with some things. So I wasn't a very gifted architect. So I basically just moved. We were, I was at Cambridge where you could just switch courses quite straight. You know it was a straightforward process between, um, you know modules and I basically swapped to history of art and there I had to start writing and I just I loved writing. So, um, that was what got me into writing, I guess, sort of realizing and also I'm a terrible, you know, I am a terrible procrastinator, I leave everything to the last minute um, so I wrote a 15 or 20,000 word dissertation with about a week to go, you know, coke everything, chocolate all the way through the night just to stay up, um, but I did so. I did very badly in my actual degree, but I got a first in my dissertation and that's when I really sort of realized that maybe I did like, I did like writing, so and then we jumped forward to me having a baby when I was.

Speaker 1: 4:11

I got pregnant when I was 23, unplanned, and I loved being a mum, I adored it, but I wasn't very enthusiastic, shall we say, on the things that went with being a mum. So I was dreadful at laundry, dreadful at tidying. My husband had sort of gone off to well, my boyfriend at the time had gone off to start his career and all my friends had left university and they were all doing these incredible things and I was sort of sat with this beloved child, who I didn't want to leave, um, but also feeling very I mean joking aside feeling very, um, unfulfilled and a little bit like I had become stuck in a life I hadn't really planned. So that's when I started writing to keep myself going and I sort of had this bizarre conversation where it sounds very unfeminist, and you know, back in, back in that day, I sort of felt like I had to justify myself, but I sort of said to, to to Chris. You know, would that be okay if I wrote rather than go slowly mad at home?

Speaker 1: 5:10

So every time my baby fell asleep, I started writing and ended up writing a book, um, which wasn't ever intended to be published.

Speaker 1: 5:20

It was literally something to keep my head level and give me something else to think about while I was with my baby. So, um, I, yeah, so I went off and then, and we ended up going to America for a year, when, when, um, she was about three years old and I wrote another book out there, I said this is what I'm going to do and that was the one that I, that I sent off to agents back in the day, when you did it with elastic bands crossed around, yeah, going off to Boston, to a post, to a, to, you know, to a post office in Boston, and with these three, because I could only afford to send you know, couldn't afford to send all of them off, um, and and sent them off to agents, and that's where it started. I don't actually know why or where I got the idea that I would try and get these published. I think I was probably just slightly assumed that I'd written the book and that's what you did.

Speaker 2: 6:12

Well, that is what you assume. You think that you've written the book, you spent time writing the book, you've written the end and you've got all these pages. Well, naturally, the next step is it's going to be on the shelf, so you're just going to post it off to an agent and then you'll get a publishing deal and it'll be like magic People will be buying it.

Speaker 1: 6:30

Yeah, listening to you talk like that, this is like a flashback to how it was, because you sort of you're so wet behind the ears, you haven't sort of been jaded yet by the process or by the industry, and I just remember, you know, I remember sending off and being very excited about which one of these people is going to sign me, you know which one of these people is going to give me this deal and it's going to be exciting. Which one is going to say I could not put your book down and this is everything I've been looking for. And obviously it's not what happened. I am one of those authors. I definitely wasn't an overnight success. I have a lot of rejection, know, in in the, in the back history and and. But I kept on and I think I think what, what I loved about it was, um, I went on to, I just kept right, I just kept. I just felt it was really for me, it was a very compatible way to raise my children. I wanted to be at home. I wanted to be at home with. I did try.

Speaker 1: 7:23

There was a story with my first child where she was about a year old and and I decided I wanted to have a bit of time to myself and and to do something, to try and pursue a career, because everything had come to a bit of a stop, um, and I put her into a nursery for a couple of hours and I sobbed for the entire two hours time, did you really?

Speaker 1: 7:45

And then when I went to pick her up, they had had to hover in the kitchen with someone holding her, and when she saw me she just lifted her little arms like that, and this lovely lady just looked at me and said I don't think either of you are ready for this. I said I don't think so. So I think for me, me, the writing just became something that was that allowed me to be the mother that I, the type of mother that I obviously wanted to be, or, at that time, um, and it facilitated that for me. So I was very lucky to be able to do that. You know it was a, you know it was a gift really, um, to do that.

Speaker 2: 8:22

And I'm sorry. No, I was gonna say did you ever feel like you was missing out on something, though? You know all those years when you'd gone to uni and you said writing hadn't even been on your mind at all because you'd done it's like you'd done everything else before you decided this is the thing I'm gonna do, but I always feel like there's something in you that's like something's not quite.

Speaker 1: 8:40

There's something missing yeah, I think that's such a, such a um, a really you know, uh, insightful observation, because actually, you know, I did used to wake and I I don't know again, I think it was all sort of helpful for my headspace um, and this is how I dealt with various things.

Speaker 1: 8:58

But I would wake up in the middle of the night and I would write, wake, literally, bolt upright and I would write poetry or I would do a painting, yeah, like in a sort of I mean, I wouldn't let you read the poetry, you would absolutely not.

Speaker 1: 9:15

You know, it was all that very sort of pretentious young person, 18-year-old stuff that I did, but it was that sort of. I think there was definitely something that wanted to come out of me and actually, even though you're a writer because, even though I say I didn't have dreams to be a writer, my, you know, my childhood, my home, my boxes that my mother has kept from when I was a child definitely include all those sort of books that are made from little pieces of paper stapled together in little stories. So I definitely and I know that that is, you know, in the back in the back catalogue of most of us who write. You know, we all did do that as a child. I just didn't have the confidence in my, in my technical ability to write. I think that was the um that was the thing.

Speaker 2: 9:54

Well, it's going to be hard, though, isn't it? Because you know I'm Gen X? Well, I'm thinking like the summer's any, or I just feel I'm 77 slash Gen X, but, um, like firmly in it yeah, I'm firmly in it, but I do not.

Speaker 2: 10:06

I, you know, when you're talking about being in school and you do your essays and I was talking about this with my best friend because she was like they do all their homework online, she's like there's no books, everything's online. And we were saying, you know, when we did our homework it was all in our exercise books. There was a strict criteria we had to well, I had to follow in my catholic school, you know, make sure you put the date and the title and underline the date. We had to double underline the date and title in red pen and strict criteria.

Speaker 2: 10:33

And when your work came back and it did come back with all those in and it wasn't even just like thin red pen, it'd be like a thick, like crossing out the mistakes and circling the misspelt words, and then what they gave you seven out of ten or eight out whatever and then their you know their little comment, their critique at the bottom and if you're getting your I suppose if you're getting your work back, you know, as a kid and it's covered in red, yeah, it will probably make it does lead to that insecurity where maybe I can't do this definitely, and I think I think actually that I look at that now and I think it was you know, when I've done workshops in schools, the first thing I say to the children I mean, you know, I've done sort of primary school workshops and things and you sort of go in and say the first thing I want you to know is there's no wrong answers today, nothing.

Speaker 1: 11:17

It doesn't matter how you spell, it, doesn't matter how you phrase something. For me it's all going to be just going to talk about telling stories, and I think obviously you get to a stage in secondary school where you do need to know, because you're at school and you need to know. I'm not suggesting that we throw all rules and in actual fact, I should probably just stop talking, because what I really wish is I could go back to my 16 year old self and say just learn how to use a semicolon, it's fine, just learn it.

Speaker 2: 11:42

I still don't know how to use it properly.

Speaker 1: 11:44

I just I just chuck it in there and I hope for the best um, so yeah, but I think there's an element of, certainly, I was a bit of a what you'd probably describe as a jack of all trades and I those subjects where I didn't have quite so much pushback, where I'm a bit lazy um, it's sort of the path of least resistance for me. So where I was getting, you know, as you've just said, the sort of eight, nines out of 10, rather than the sevens and eights, it was just a natural drawing to those subjects. But in a way, I am really grateful for my route into writing. I'm grateful for a lot of things, for being in in that stage in life.

Speaker 1: 12:27

I always say that had I had my child and access to social media, blogging bits and pieces, I don't think I would have written a book. I think I would have. Yeah, I think I would have been very happy to sort of get my my affirmation, because I was quite back in the glory days of Twitter, when Twitter wasn't as it is now. I would spend a lot of time sort of searching for the gag, searching for the joke, you know, trying to get that, and I think I would have found that a very attractive, because it's hard work writing a book, isn't it. You know you're sort of there and actually to be able to do that while you're bringing up children, it requires determination and grit and you have to sit down day after day and whereas doing getting that quick sort of um dopamine hit I guess um was what I was, that's what I, that's what I lost when I was um in my basement flat with my, with my child at 23, was I lost that sort of the dopamine hits I guess that I'm quite addicted to?

Speaker 2: 13:24

I was going to say 23 is young, but my mum had me. She was pregnant with me when she was 20 well, yeah, I mean, funnily enough, it's not.

Speaker 1: 13:32

Actually, I think it was young for, as you've mentioned, you know, going to to university and I always sort of you know, I said that we were. I don't know how I would have addressed this, so it's more of a, it's more of a solution, less um, observation. But I do think that we weren't told that at some stage you might have a family, you might have a child, and that that is going. You know, how will you balance your expectations on yourself, your potential um, with, maybe, feelings that you're not necessarily expecting? No one had ever told me that I was going to have this feeling for my child at 23, this sort of yeah, I just always assumed I would work.

Speaker 1: 14:11

I come from a long line of working women. Funnily enough, I'm very, very privileged in that my great-grandmother was the first apparently legend has it, family law, has it the first qualified female optician in the country. Really, wow. My granny went to university and was an optician. My mum was set up a sort of women and architecture style collective when she was, uh, working in london in the 60s and I sort of came from this environment where, where that where women were, my granny especially was like women have to be financially independent, women have to be independent. Independent women have to be independent. They have to, we have to. You know she was. She was full of that sort of. She told me once a story about how she did, um, she was doing a physics exam at university. Now, this must have been. I can't quite work out the date. I probably should have had this before I tell the story, but it's. She was born in 1915, so let's say 30, let's say just after the war.

Speaker 1: 15:04

She must have been at university, um, and she went in to do a science exam, and all the men in the room she was the only woman all the men in the room, including the um the examiner, turned their chairs to face away from her. So she was no. They turned their back and their back on her as she walked in and sat and did the exam. They'd all just slightly angled their desks away from her. Um, so I sort of sort of grew up with this idea that that's what women did. My granny drove, for example. My granddad never drove in the car, she always jumped in the driver's seat and drove. It was that sort of. And then I was faced with this bizarre sort of situation where I sort of flipped my own world because I said to be a stay-at-home mom and I was a bit like oh, this is, how is this working with me?

Speaker 2: 15:49

so yeah, I'm probably a bit confused it's like you, but it's like you know if you've grown up. But can I think about they own? Like women in my family, very, very strong women, very independent, and the very notion that you would be reliable on someone else, or even a man, just to you know, just to get through the day, to be like what? Like no, this is not who we are, even when it came to driving, like my mum as soon as we turned 17, me and my two brothers, my mum's like you need to go and drive. You're going to learn to drive because it's just about giving you that next step of independence and not having to rely on, on anyone or anything. But then you, it's like you went from one end of the spectrum to, yeah, it's a complete other end.

Speaker 1: 16:32

But then I did. My sister had a similar experience and she did exactly what I did. Funny enough, she started, she started to sort of say, well, fine, this is how I'm feeling, but I, how can I, how can I sort of balance these two bits of our makeup, I guess. So she became a designer and trained as a garden designer so she could work also around having the children. So you know, I think I think it's interesting I mean, it's only interesting on a sort of superficial level for our family but it was interesting to me the questions and the sort of doubts I had about my feelings and whether I was feeling, whether I was doing my history and the women in my family a disservice by not sort of pursuing the careers that I'd wanted.

Speaker 2: 17:17

There's so many different ways in which we can put pressure on ourselves, and sometimes without even realising it, because you're looking at your family around you, you're looking at societal pressures, because, precisely especially in that time, you know a certain well, I say all of Gen X. You know society is saying to you well, you can do anything you want. There are no restrictions on who you can be and what you can do. And also, I think Gen X is supposed to be the, we're supposed to be the rebels as well yeah, exactly that.

Speaker 1: 17:44

I think so, exactly that, funny enough. So I had, um, a situation where I didn't want to get married because we obviously got pregnant, um, you know, unmarried. We were with him for a long time at the uni and stuff, but, um, but I didn't want to marry because I didn't want everyone to think that we were only marrying because we were pregnant. So that was my first rebellious stance, which was that and you know, I still believe that I didn't believe that our relationship was a piece of paper. I had all these arguments that went around, and then I had to get passports for the kids and the kids because of that, my daughter now, funnnily enough, doesn't agree with taking the name of someone that you end up with, or you said her children will have her name.

Speaker 1: 18:22

But I did that very traditional. You know, we were a little bit confused, weren't we? Back then it was sort of I know that I should rebel, but of course my children will have my boyfriend's name why would they not? So, and I had to go traveling with them and I was told that I would have to take a copy of my marriage certificate to prove that the children were mine, because they didn't have my name, they had his name and that if I was traveling alone with them people the, I guess I made up the suspicion would be that they were somehow not mine and I was absconding the country with my children, you know.

Speaker 1: 18:50

So that then prompted me this rebellious sort of I will not, you know, bow down to societal expectations and marry just because suddenly became a oh okay. And I changed all of that just because it, because I didn't want to be seen to be, I wanted to be their mother and have the same name as them. So we're talking about names a lot at the moment in our family because Ella is my eldest daughter is really questioning it as a. It's a sort of she's like, you know, she's sort of got into that stage where she's looking back through history. It's just an ownership thing, mom, it's just getting married and they're not thinking about it. What do I do? And I'm like oh, my precious child. Just, you know, just go with it a little bit, relax but the baby thing you know you're talking about.

Speaker 2: 19:34

You could they assume that you would be absconding with this child, this child of long child? It happened to my cousin and she was young yeah, she was young when she had a child as well and she'd gone to Florida and she would. The baby would have been I think she would have been maybe one and a half at the time one and a half, yeah, I think 18 months and she'd gone to Florida to see her parents and then I get a call at silly o'clock from immigration and she's on the phone. They're saying they don't believe that the baby's mine. So I had, and also it's the different surnames as well. Yeah, so I then had to go to her flat to find the birth certificate and then FedEx the birth certificate.

Speaker 2: 20:14

Oh my goodness over yeah, well, fedex will fax it. One of the two I did. I think I'm sure I FedExed it. Actually it was something crazy. No, maybe it was fax, but yeah, and fax it over. That's in order for them to yeah, because they would. They were not prepared to let her in.

Speaker 1: 20:28

That's why I got married all those years ago but it does.

Speaker 2: 20:31

You know, it sounds a little bit oh, it would never happen, but it can happen. It can happen because other people make assumptions. So you, when you went to America for the year and you said you wrote your book and you know you're talking about your manuscript and posting it off, do you ever watch Romance in the Stone? Yes, it's so random.

Speaker 1: 20:48

I haven't seen it for years.

Speaker 2: 20:49

Yeah, I haven't seen it for years, but you know Kathleen Turner I can't remember her character's name, my Kathleen characters Turner. She obviously she's the writer and she goes off with Michael Douglas to find her sister in Columbia. Was it in Columbia? I mean, where would they go? But I was, and I just remember this scene. When she's um, she's like she finishes the manuscript and she puts it all together and it's this big, thick manuscript and she posts it and then her editor's reading it, flicking over the pages, and they're in it. Oh my God, this is like amazing stuff. This is at the end of Romance in the Stone. So you know, sorry for the spoiler, but you should have seen it by now.

Speaker 1: 21:24

Maybe that's where it comes from, because I definitely love that film and I wonder whether that's. Maybe that's the thing that we were all thinking of when we were packaging it up, because I remember wanting to get even the elastic bands in a really okay, this is showing my OCD, probably, but in a very neat square so that it looked perfect and sort of, yeah, putting it under and then maybe even tying some with a ribbon. You know, that was that sort of. It was a very um, I mean, I quite I miss those days of of of putting, putting, uh, putting huge manuscripts into um, into envelopes, and the reason why you were obviously waiting to hear six, seven weeks to hear back, whereas now it feels like you should be hearing back immediately because email is so. But I think that's the thing.

Speaker 2: 22:05

It's like it goes off into it, goes off into the ether, whereas before you could, you in your head, you could see this, but I'll say this virtual slush pile and you could just imagine the journey of your manuscript from your desk to the postbox to someone else's desk and I just think you know that whole romance in the stone and Kathleen Turner's you know writer journey and finishing her manuscript. I think that is that is the romantic view that a lot of writers have in their head from the beginning, which is why you just assume, as soon as it's done, you will be, someone, will give you the deal, and you said, you will be the next big thing. And it doesn't happen.

Speaker 1: 22:43

It doesn't happen straight away no, and I think that is a really, that's a really. Um, you know, that's a very often felt thing. I've talked to a lot of friends about this. But so I had um, it was my third book, that was. That was that was published. I have one that will never see the light of day. I equate it to a photograph of myself in the 80s. I'm sure I looked great at the time, but no one is reading that book, so we'll just put that away. We all do, although sometimes, when I'm looking down the abyss of starting a new book, I do wonder. I was like oh, I wonder if there's anything in that first book I wrote. I wonder if a quick tidy up.

Speaker 2: 23:20

I mean, I mean my secret, I say my secret library. I do that with short stories. If I'm commissioned to write a short story and I'm like I'm not, I find them hard to do. I need to stop saying, I need to think, be more positive. But I do find short stories hard and um, and I was like god, what am I going to write about? What I'm going to? About? So literally all my assignments that I would have done on my MA, all those 1000 word assignments. I go back and I'm like that is a good story.

Speaker 1: 23:44

That's such a good idea, though, because, as they say, no word is wasted.

Speaker 1: 23:49

So, you are definitely doing that. But I definitely remember that sort of moment when my agent said are you sitting down? And I just got back from a dog walk and I was putting the dog into the boot of the car and I had my really muddy wellies on and I was like I sort of lied to her and said, no, I am sitting down, I wasn't perching on the thing, and she goes you're going to someone you know. Um, they want, they want to publish a book. And that moment I remember sitting in the car and gripping the steering wheel bearing in mind this is probably 15 years ago, um, I still remember it really viscerally, very vivid, holding the, the steering wheel of the car and just going this is it. All my dreams come true, this is this is you know.

Speaker 1: 24:31

And I saw Sunday Times bestseller and this is dating myself. Well, I saw an interview with Wogan. I just you know it was that sort of what the world is now my oyster, it's just you know. I feel like a door is going to open up into this sort of hallowed world of published authors and everywhere I go, my book will be on the shelves and I think I love that, that I had that feeling. I love that I had that feeling. It's not a feeling that happens again, particularly when you get your next day. You're like, ok, here we go, you know.

Speaker 2: 25:05

No, but I think you, I think you need that. I think every writer needs to have that feeling and to have that romantic view of it in the beginning, that you can be everything. Because I think if you are fully aware of the reality not like when you're like five books in and mid list and you're just thinking, is it, is it? You're looking at your royalty statement and it says zero, you're like, is it worth it?

Speaker 1: 25:29

I think that's it's interesting that you mentioned mid list, because I call, I'm a mid list author and I think, um or at least that's how I would describe myself um, I have said that to other people, funny enough, and they've said you're not a midlist. But I think it's all relative, isn't it? Because where you, to some authors, your success will seem larger and what they're achieving and they're all sitting, you look at the people above you and go well, no, I'm nothing, they're they're, you know. So I think it's all it's you have to sort of. That's what I have learned as I've got older. I'm now just about to start writing, hopefully book eight, um, and I have definitely. Now I appreciate that, um, although I'm, I am now much more ambitious than I perhaps was back before. I got my first book published, um. At the same time, I am very, very realistic that I know it's not just about hard work and talent, for want of a better word, or you know. I know there has to be. You know there are certain ley lines that have to cross for things to happen. So I think I just now take a very good writer friend of mine said that she now just writes to the next contract and that's where I am now. I'm sort of thinking, if I am lucky enough to be able to keep doing this and to be working with a publisher, with an editor, then then that's what I'm. You know, it's a job. At the end of the day I don't have to be on Graham Norton to validate myself or whatever that is. You know, I think it's um, you know there's a, there's certain. You know, I'm at that stage as well where I kind of am starting to think I would love to diversify a little bit. I would love to start maybe thinking about scripts, because that's kind of where I that was, that we didn't mention it back when you asked me about my publishing journey, but it was a script that sort of got me first notice, for want of a better word, and I do wonder whether that's something I might return to. So how did that happen with the script? So I was, basically I did manage to, um. So we spoke a lot about how I didn't want to leave my baby child, but I did.

Speaker 1: 27:28

Obviously, when she became a toddler I was lucky enough to find myself um writing as a researcher at the BBC and I really loved that job. It sort of worked around. You know, I did four days a week and I loved that. But while I was there I sort of became aware of something called the it was called BBC Talent at the time, I believe it's now called the writer's room and they were doing a sort of shout out for, for sitcom scripts. So I wrote a sitcom script um back, you know, between work, between my child's having naps and um, and sent it off and I got shortlisted.

Speaker 1: 28:04

I think there was probably, I think they said, around two and a half, two and a half thousand scripts entered and I got shortlisted down to the last eight and as a sort of um, not prize exactly, but as an acknowledgement of that um, I got to meet, uh, paul mayhew archer, who wrote vicar of dibbley, and he wrote with richard curtis and, and I went to have a meeting with him and he said you know, if you were in america now, you would probably be invited to join a writer's room.

Speaker 1: 28:31

You would now, you know, as a junior writer, um, he sort of said, well, but, but here we don't have such things, but we will make sure that if you ever wrote a script, um, it wouldn't uh hit the saucepan, it would be read. So, um, that was. That was a fantastic thing. It was an affirmation of of something and I just thought, well, now I have something to pin my yeah, my working to. I went back and I sat in my car and just went, but I've put every single one of my jokes in that half an hour for it there's no more comedy in me, I have no more ideas, um, but it did make me feel.

Speaker 1: 29:08

It did make me realize that I, that I did love writing, and it made me realize the type of writing that I wanted to do. I wanted to. You know, I'm quite um sort of a, an optimistic, jolly person, everything to me. I try and see, you know, I laugh far too much. I'd have no gravitas. I know that's about myself and it does annoy me, but I've tried to be serious and interesting and I can't be so I just I go for the cheap gags all the time. But actually I love writing, I do. I do love writing those sort of emotional, psychological thrillers. Um, I love putting people through the wringer, I love seeing how they cope in dark situations. So listeners.

Speaker 2: 29:44

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. This next question I'm going to ask you 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. This next question I'm going to ask you. I'm trying for it not to sound rude or offensive, but you know, when it came to the script, did you know what you were doing?

Speaker 1: 30:09

No, not at all, because it's not a natural.

Speaker 2: 30:11

You know, writing a story seems to be more natural than writing a script.

Speaker 1: 30:15

Yeah, so that's a really interesting thing thing. So I can't even actually remember the process that I used. I mean, I think I don't. I look back at myself when I was that age and I don't know whether it's the arrogance of youth, but I just did stuff without overthinking it. Now I would overthink even going shopping. I'm overthinking stuff, you know. You know, to god tell me, I've got people over for dinner on Saturday and I can start thinking about what I'd need to cook for them about a week before.

Speaker 1: 30:39

And I do, I have you know, whereas then I think I just sort of said yeah sure, you just write a script. Right, you know you write. This is what someone says, this is what someone says. So I don't, I think I just I just went for it because it wasn't there, definitely wasn't any of the script writing tools that you would now have downloaded, tools that you would now have, because I think they're all downloaded. So I think I probably, I imagine they probably gave me instructions and said you know, write dialogue like this, or I managed to look it up somewhere. No, I don't actually know the answer to that. I definitely did not know what I was doing. No, I mean, I'd done a little bit at school and university, a little bit of writing skits and plays and directing that.

Speaker 2: 31:19

So it wasn't that, I was a total you know out of the dark to it. Yeah, because I'm even more gone and it probably is the arrogance of youth you just assume think you can do anything, you think you're going to live forever and you think you can do everything and anything. And I remember being at uni when I went through my I'm going to be a script writer, I'm going to make films phase and I was writing my, my film scripts. But I didn't. I didn't know what I was doing. I was just I was just writing a script. Yeah, I didn't. And the only reference point I could remember looking at is um, I remember Reservoir Dogs. You could buy the screenplay. Yes, yeah, I think Faber published them and I still got it down. It says like so I bought Reservoir Dogs and I bought a couple of others, but yeah, I was just reading it. I wasn't.

Speaker 1: 32:04

I didn't have to to like teach myself no, I think that's a very I think what I think it's. Um, I mean, I think, oh, I mean going back to your question about how I did it, I must I probably had plays that I had rehearsed at university. I probably had the books. And your question about how I did it, I must I probably had plays that I had rehearsed at university. I probably had the books and the scripts, the plays I was probably quite used to because I did a lot of drama.

Speaker 1: 32:24

If I had an opportunity to play and not work, I would do that. So I think I probably just understood the structure of dialogue, probably more. And also, I think for me the thought then of writing 90,000 words, 100,000 words book, would be that's, that's not in your capability, but writing 30 pages of dialogue probably was a little bit more accessible. Yeah, so I think, um, and it was only when I sort of sat down and said, no, I'm going to use this. Every time a child falls asleep, I'm going to write, and so I need a project. That was that had that longevity, I guess.

Speaker 2: 33:02

Um, yeah, I guess you know, you know you're talking about word counts and I remember when you, when you were talking about your dissertation earlier, and you know, you know, and you know, you remember, like back in uni, the thought of knowing that at the end of this you have to write a 10 to 15,000 word dissertation and it just look, it just feels like a massive mountain, like how on earth am I going to do this? And now, as a writer, you're expected to deliver these. I'm saying 90,000 words of a novel.

Speaker 1: 33:28

Yeah, I think it's. Yeah, no, I think you're right. The word count thing is and I think that's probably what stops it we. You know, as I've mentioned, I'm just about to try and start writing this, the book eight, and I'm on that, what I view as a sort of precipice.

Speaker 1: 33:46

I don't know whether it's a precipice looking down to the abyss or a precipice looking up to some unscalable man. They both feel equally daunting. Um, and I'm I've sort of, you know, I know what I want to write. I I don't write, I'm not, I'm a pantser rather than a planner. So I don't have a detailed um sort of set of a set of directions or directives for me to to write. I just kind of sit down at the first page with notebooks behind me. So I'm sort of ready to do it. But I do think it's that daunting 80, 90, 000 um word draft heading out in front of me does feel a little bit off-putting, a lot off-putting, very, very off-putting.

Speaker 2: 34:27

So yeah, it's that whole staring at a blank page, you know, because, whether you're a pencil or a planner, so you know, everyone knows now I'm very much a planner. But still staring at that blank page, whether it's a notebook on the screen, and you're thinking how am I going to fill it? Because now I need to, I need to put some kind of a story down and you may have a character and you may have a scene, but it's still a daunting prospect of, you know, expanding on it yeah, I think, I think it's.

Speaker 1: 34:57

I think it's interesting. You said be a planner or a pants. Planner or a pantser depending on who you are. So I don't know about you, but the more I've spoken about this at you know, in interviews and events and stuff, it's sort of back in the day I would have said absolutely a pantser, I sit down, I haven't got any idea. I have some stepping stones and I just write until the end. And actually now I think that I'm actually wondering now whether I'm actually an Uber planner and my plan takes the form of an 80,000 word draft zero because I rewrite so many times. So I, because I think you rewrite a bit, don't you?

Speaker 2: 35:34

Yeah, my agent won't see mine. No one will see that. First they probably.

Speaker 1: 35:39

I reckon they see about version four before they Okay version three probably, or version two, if we count draft zero as one.

Speaker 1: 35:49

Yeah, maybe third yeah, I'll show my husband probably draft two, I think, sort of just tidy it up a little bit, yeah, and says this is amazing, off it goes. He's never going to say that, yeah, you've got some work to do, which is the worst thing he can say. Or, you know, hopefully you're going to add in some magic. That's the second worst thing you can say. Um, but I do now wonder whether that my plan just looks like a book, because I will then go through with my red pen or shift around and I'll take scenes out and I'll big scenes up and I'll. So I do now wonder whether actually this planning, slash, planting thing is all a bit of a myth and that we all just have the same, uh, a different way to get to the same point yeah just readable first draft.

Speaker 2: 36:39

I feel like I'm learning a lot. I'm learning new things this week on my podcast. Yeah, because, um, I was talking to an author yesterday and I don't even know how we came on. We're talking about, yeah, we're talking about being an extra and introvert, and I don't know I think I I don't know whether I asked her, whether she said it that she can recognize whether her characters are extroverts or introverts, and I thought I'd know. I know, see, look at your face. That's exactly the same face I had yesterday.

Speaker 2: 37:06

I've never thought of my characters whether, because I always ask the question in the podcast, but I've never thought that of my characters when I'm creating them, and it was literally like a little light bulb went off in my head and it's given me like a different way of thinking of them and thinking how they interact with other characters and my whole. I think my whole point is that, no matter how many books you've written, whether you are, you know, book one, book four, book 25 you are. It is a continuous journey of learning, which I think is good for new writers to know. They don't feel like, oh, my god, there's only one way of doing it definitely not only one way.

Speaker 1: 37:44

I think there's as many authors that there are existing on the planet. There are ways to do this. I think there's no set set way at all. I think you're right, we all, and actually, as you've just said, my methods have changed a little bit as well. So, yeah, depending on my situation and I, you know, I have no children at home now, so you know, I structure my day in a very more, in a much more fluid way now but I think the um.

Speaker 1: 38:07

I love the fact that about the characters being introverts or extroverts, and actually I now know that I don't have to start my book today because I can now go through all my books that I've written and work out which characters are extroverts and which aren't.

Speaker 2: 38:19

I've given you a different way to procrastinate?

Speaker 2: 38:23

Absolutely no, but isn't it really interesting? I just think it's really interesting. I mean, maybe other people have done that, but I've just never. I mean, I always say I have my characters and I always like. My intention is always for them to be fully formed, for them not to look flat on the page and for you to feel that you know, when you meet them on the page you could easily imagine yourself sitting in a pub you know it's always a pub sitting in a pub with them. But the idea of them being an extrovert or introvert or a hybrid, it's just yeah, it just kind of like flipped the script on me a little bit and I like it. I like learning new things.

Speaker 1: 38:55

Yeah, I definitely like that, and I love the extrovert introvert question as well. So, yeah, we'll find out my opinion on that.

Speaker 2: 39:01

I'll wait till so, amanda, how do you keep yourself going? I mean, it's a question I like to ask now, especially knowing those early days when we think we're going to be superstars as soon as it lands on the agents um slush pile, I should say, when they're in box and it doesn't happen. So you're having to deal with, you know, you're having to deal with rejection, and there's some people who they they never go through with. They've never experienced rejection at all until they get to that point. So how no? But I think I I must have been, I must have spoke to someone on this podcast and they were like no, like they'd had no rejection until they decided to embark on this journey and it was such a shock to them they'd never developed the tools to manage it. So it's like, yeah, how do you keep? How do you keep going when you know back in the day, your manuscript was coming back?

Speaker 1: 39:54

Yeah. So in terms of publishing for me, which I was very optimistic then, I knew I wasn't scared. I think a good thing about my character is I'm not scared of hard work and I'm not scared of I like a bit of hard. You know, I do genuinely like it. I've had a very charmed life, but I've definitely always been told that you work hard whatever you do. It doesn't matter how privileged you are. You work hard in everything. So I think the hard work didn't scare me. Um, and actually, when I had a little bit of rejection at the beginning because I didn't want to be furrowing, I didn't want to I had this real idea that if I wasn't any good at it, I wanted to know, like I wanted someone to tell me this is not for you, go and try something else. So you know I was 20, you know I was in my late 20s, I was still felt quite young and and I sent my, my um manuscript off to one of those um independent editors for a, for a um, oh, you know, uh, for them to tell me what they thought of it and to give me advice. And she wrote back and and she had lots of things to say and I would. I can definitely. It was all very, very helpful. Um, there was a single sentence at the end which said you know, having a book published requires um hard work, a little bit hard work, talent and a little bit hard work, talent and a little bit of luck. And I remember printing that out on a sheet of A4 and putting it above where I wrote, because for me that was like. And she said she basically yes, sorry, the sort of punchline of that was you've got the first two, you just have to hope for the third now. And I thought actually that was very inspiring for me because it sort of meant she had given me a bit of a pat on the head about being having the ability to write and I had proven that I could. I had the sort of, I suppose, determination and um doggedness, I guess, to sit down and write and I just needed to to wait for that manuscript to hit the right desk. And actually it was. It was borne out by the fact that I had to.

Speaker 1: 41:58

On my second book that I tried to put out, I had two letters come back within five days of each other. One said so the basic story is that this family have lost, um, uh, their 16 year old daughter in an accident. She's, she's been killed, um, and they they said, um, I absolutely bought into the father's grief, but I didn't identify with a mother at all. And the next letter came back and said I thought you wrote the mother's grief really effectively, but I didn't believe in the father's grief and I just at that point it was almost like the the universe had sent me proof that this was not something, that that I just had to wait for the manuscript, for the right editor at the right time, who saw what I was trying to do, and then we would work on it.

Speaker 1: 42:48

But it was the most remarkable and I have still have the letters to this day because it was just for me. It was like most remarkable and I have still have the letters to this day because it was just for me. It was like, and I just remember looking at them both going what can you do like? You know, this is out of my control. I've one of my. You know, one of these people has responded to one character and one of them has responded to the other and they both didn't respond to the alternative character.

Speaker 2: 43:09

So it's validation in so many different and I think you always, you always need validation. As a writer, even you can be the most confident person in the world. You know you go through your life, you know, happy as Larry, you get things done. Nothing bothers you. But when you're embarking on this journey you do need some kind of validation. But then also you do need a message from the universe.

Speaker 1: 43:28

Saying this is a lot of nonsense as well, like really yeah, and actually, because, again, I was quite young and I really wanted to do this. So actually, although I was frustrated by that, I actually said, fine, clearly my male character is responding, is causing a reaction in people and clearly. But. So actually that's two bits of positive feedback. Yeah, it works, admittedly. So it worked for me and I think, um, you know the other thing that I'd said and I say this to other people who are trying to get published as well um, or at least I used to which is at every stage, I think I worked out that the statistics were. You know, the statistics were huge. So if, in terms of being against you, you know the number of manuscripts are arriving on the number of agents and you know this was a huge number compared to the number of new clients that an agent signed, for example, and of those new clients, only a certain percentage would get a deal. So I think, for me, I tell people and told myself that every single time. So if someone rejected me, so say.

Speaker 1: 44:30

I sent out my first manuscript. I sent it out to five agents. Four of them said no on the partial, but said we'd love to read the whole manuscript. Now, I took that as a massive plus, because I was like well, someone somewhere has liked my writing enough to say they want to read the whole book. And then the next time I got asked for two full manuscript read-throughs and then someone signed me. So I think I sort of say to people every single time you get, um, a little bit of feedback that's beyond your form letter rejection, then hold on to that and you know, it's just a matter of time and hard work. Maybe that's idealistic, but it kept me going.

Speaker 2: 45:08

I don't think it's idealistic at all because I I remember mentoring a writer and she sent her manuscript off to an agent. She sent her manuscript off to an agent. I told her not to because I'm like it's not. I'm like we're still working on this, it's not ready. But I understand that feeling of you know you finished it and I said you need that kind of that first moment of I finished it, someone wants it, it's going to be big. So I of I finished it, someone wants it, it's going to be big. So I understand the energy and sending it off.

Speaker 2: 45:38

So, um, she sent it off and she got the rejection. She got like a slew of rejections but then one of them was the rejection, but it wasn't the pro forma thanks but no thanks, it was detailed feedback. But she was so focused on the rejection that she couldn't acknowledge the feedback. And I said to her the feedback is good, the feedback. They've read it and they take. They can see something in your writing. So this is not a no. What this is is take all the feedback, yeah, incorporate the feedback and then come back.

Speaker 1: 46:10

They may not directly say come back, but it is an invitation to come back yeah, and the way I would read into that, which is exactly, obviously, how you read into it, is that that writer, it's worth her pursuing her dream because something her writing or his writing has, you know, has has caught someone's attention and therefore they have the talent, presumably with, as I said, as that famous person said to me, you know, a little bit of hard work and a little bit of luck and hopefully things work out. I mean, it's obviously not that, as I said, it's not that, you know it's not that easy and straightforward, but I always do.

Speaker 2: 46:45

I think it's hard. I think you can. We can get so distracted as writers and that it's hard. I don't know, I don't know whether I am mid-list, I don't know where I am. I mean, I'm not, I'm not up on the high bit, I wouldn't even say I was mid-list. I'm just floating around somewhere. I'm just floating around, but I think you can be. You can get so distracted by all I say or by the external noise that surrounds being an author, and the external noise is the bestsellers list and the book club stickers and who got the latest deal, you know who's on the front page of the bookseller. That is all the external noise and you get so. Just, you can get so distracted by that and it can be so frustrating that it stops you from doing the thing that you originally wanted to do in the first place yeah, and I definitely have changed my attitude to that.

Speaker 1: 47:31

So I did get distracted. I sort of you know you also as a writer. If you're someone who makes writer friends, all that's important to you. It was to me and I think, um, yeah, I think I think the distract, the noise is very just, is very distracting.

Speaker 1: 47:45

But I about three books ago, I decided it was a very conscious decision and I have tried to keep to it that I would be. I called it, I joked about it with myself but I thought you know this is my zen attitude now and that I wouldn't let that stop, because we all know that, um, envy is a very district for me, envy is a very destructive force. I don't, I don't like myself envying people. I want to be the type of person that is happy for everybody and I want people to be successful. And also in publishing, dare I say it, someone else's success does not mean that you can't have success as well. There's no spots and that's so.

Speaker 1: 48:39

I sort of felt that, actually just cheering everybody on and and, and you know, I've had a couple of people who've been a couple of friends, who've been a book 11, book 12, book 13 and then suddenly had success, and yet I'm only excited for them and it gives you that hope that well, maybe, maybe that big breakout book is just around the corner and I think you have to have a little bit of hope if that's what you want. But yeah, otherwise, I'm just very grateful at the moment, at my age, to be able to sit here and do this and be paid for it and and enjoy it still. Um, I mean, I don't enjoy it today because obviously I'm looking. I'm hopefully enjoying it in the next month.

Speaker 2: 49:18

I know there are some days you're just like, mate, let me just go and do something else in my life. This is not. It was, it was, it was a nice ride, but I'm off, I'm off the train. And then there are other days when you're like, sign me up for more, like I love doing this. But I was talking to um, who was?

Speaker 2: 49:34

I talking to Maz Evans last week and I said to her I'm allowing myself like a little bit, to indulge in like 10 minutes of pettiness, like a week if I see something and it's wound me up, I'm like I'm gonna let myself be petty, just like, oh yeah, don't get me wrong, I sit there and I still get wound up and cross.

Speaker 1: 49:51

I'm still like, oh, I can't believe they've done that. And also, you know, I can be very, very judgy if I let myself go. I just remind you myself that this is not a good look, I know.

Speaker 2: 50:03

Yeah, put a timer on it 10 minutes and you're done. That's your.

Speaker 1: 50:07

That's your pittiness done for the week yeah everything, yeah and I've got one writer friend, one specific friend, who you know. If I phone her up and she or she phones me up, we know we're gonna have a good old rant. So I think I've got that to say I had another thing, I had another thing that happened, um. So I do have yeah, not a saint by any means, but just trying to control myself yeah, it is all about control and not letting the noise completely take over.

Speaker 2: 50:34

So you know, when you're doing like your workshops and stuff with writers, what is the most common question they put to you?

Speaker 1: 50:43

um, gosh, I mean I it's hard because I've done mostly children, um, and I have done some workshops, but they've been very specific. So I've done, you know my I was doing a workshop, done a lot of character workshops, a lot of location workshops. So I think, I think, mostly a blessing, I think it's, um, if you're dealing with people that are in the quagmire of trying to get their book, their work read, I think that's the most thing. Is that, what can I do? How can I get my book out there, how can I get my book read? Please tell me what I can do to get this published or get this read, or what am I doing?

Speaker 1: 51:17

And I think you know there's a lot of people I get as well. I get sort of a friend, I don't I'm sure we all get this, but you know, a friend has just written a book and you want to get it published. Um, could you tell her how to do that? I'm a bit like you know, I just can't do that. We've all, you know, with varying amounts of rejection or success, we've all just trailed, you know, traipsed the pavements and done our best. There's nothing, you know, I don't, there's no nepotism involved.

Speaker 1: 51:46

Unfortunately, you can't do that and it breaks my heart because I know how frustrating it is, um, but you know, and it's very trite if someone's desperate and someone's been rejected and they're and it's wearing them down, to just sort of say, oh, just well, just keep enjoying the writing, just keep going on, because I think that's that's. You know, it's not an easy thing to hear, is it?

Speaker 2: 52:07

no, it's not, not when it's your dream as well. Yeah, that's what you want and you feel like mostly you know it's not your intention, you don't plan to, but it feels like you're crushing on someone's dream when you're saying to them you just either just have to keep on going we might put some more work in but just keep on going and keep on writing, and it may not be nothing as well. I think it's, or not. What's the word I'm looking for? Like telling people, having people realize that it may not be this book that is going to be the one that's going to get you the contract that's going to get you the. You know you may love this book. This is the one you've poured everything into. It's possibly going to be the next one, or the third one. That's the one that's going to do it, and to encourage them to just keep on going and that's all you can do, and that's, I think, if it is your dream.

Speaker 1: 52:56

And and don't you know, there's an element where you have to sort of say as much as I as you've just said, as much as I love this book, as much as I believe in this project, it's time now to put this one under the proverbial bed or under the actual bed, and just sort of just sort of say but I'll take everything that I've learned from writing that book and I'll, and I'll start again. And it's uh, it's a tricky one, but I thought what was?

Speaker 2: 53:19

you know what we were saying earlier. Earlier, though, nothing's ever lost, not really.

Speaker 1: 53:23

All those words you've written, all those characters you've created, all those pieces of dialogue, it's not lost well, my book three was actually my book one, um, not the one that's underneath the bed, yeah, my next book. So so we, we tried to tell that I've got an agent with that one, but we couldn't find um, we couldn't find an editor for it. So she said, look, let's put that one aside, you go away and write another book. And then my book three was um, and, and the one that I went away to write got published. Then I wrote my pesky book two, as I call it um, and then my book three. I went back to that one that hadn't found that had found me, the agent, but not the editor, and I reworked that and that was actually that.

Speaker 1: 54:04

That was the one that was sort of the most successful of the three, which was because I think it had I often look at it and I think it had all that passion of a first novel, excitement and and there was no expectation on me because no one was asking for anything or waiting for something um, and then I put it back into it. I looked at it with the sort of the slightly more savvy eye of someone who published two books and who knew what they were doing a little bit. So actually I'm, you know that worked for me. So I would always say you know, put it, put it away, but be excited that you might be able to come back to it at some stage and make it great because you have that maturity, not necessarily as a person, but you have that maturity as a writer, and you do look at it with different eyes.

Speaker 2: 54:43

You look at it with a, a writer's eye, and you look at it with an editor's eye, and then, if you are thinking that far ahead, you are thinking of it with that, okay, the marketing eye. Yes, it's like that trifecta kind of comes together and you're able to do it Right. Amanda, I'm going to ask you what number book is this? I'm holding it up.

Speaker 1: 55:01

I like doing this bit oh, that's beautiful people and that is number seven. Is it seven?

Speaker 2: 55:08

yeah, number seven, I think it's well you should know because, like I was trying to work it out and I'm just gonna ask Amanda.

Speaker 1: 55:19

I know it's one of those things where I think it's number seven.

Speaker 2: 55:20

No, it's definitely would you like to tell the listeners of the conversation about Beautiful People?

Speaker 1: 55:41

So Beautiful People is set in dual timeline and it is the backstory which is set at the turn of the millennium. Time is a group of people at university We've got Vic Victoria, who gets into this very prestigious university, architecture school in London, and she becomes bedazzled. She falls in love with one of her, her classmates, her housemates, and becomes bedazzled by his group of friends. They are very confident, very glittering, very well off. They inhabit worlds which she has never thought would ever be accessible to her and she manufactures, she sort of changes herself to fit in with them, but primarily with this desperate love affair, unrequited love affair with, with her friend um. And then we shoot forward sort of 25 years and she has been she's now a portrait um artist living in Paris. And she has been. She's now a portrait artist living in Paris and she has been commissioned to do a very extravagant portrait for a Hollywood movie star who is marrying a rather well-connected man who happens to be one of the circle of privileged people that she met when she was at her university. Something dark had happened in those days and she decides to go to the wedding. She's invited as the artist of the painting and she goes back to confront the horrors and relationships. First, love, that she had back in the day and it all goes a little bit wrong that she had back in the day and it all goes a little bit wrong.

Speaker 1: 57:11

So I had basically the really quickly. I had decided that I because all my books at the moment the last four books have been set in Cornwall they've been very, um, emotional and um sort of quite heavy going, I guess, in terms of emotions and subject matter and bits and pieces, and I had just watched White Lotus and I had decided that is what I want to write. So that's, you know, when we're talking about maybe thinking about projects, I was like white, that's what I want to be writing. I was excited by it. I love the mix of glam and and dark humor and darkness. I've never I've never, ever, um, been under any illusions that I could write anything that doesn't have darkness in it.

Speaker 1: 57:46

I once told my agent the fact that I wanted to write romance and she said because I'd had enough of making people cry or making people feel uncomfortable, and she was like oh yeah, go on then. And I wrote to her. About eight days later I went just to let you know I'm on page seven and I've just killed the heroine and I'm much happier. So I think love, oh no, it was not love at all so that that was the end of that dream, um, so, yeah, so we've with beautiful people, I wanted to combine a slightly more glamorous and and colorful and exotic, and yeah and um, you know, glitzy I guess, um feel to the book, um, but then obviously the darkness comes through, because that's me. So there's a dark, dark back history and it comes to rear its head. Funny enough, it came out just after Saltburn and there is a very similar sort of vibe to that, to those university, that university days. But I don't want to spoil it too much, but it's possible that our narrator isn't quite as straightforward as she seems.

Speaker 2: 58:51

We like a little bit of unreliability, right, amanda? I'm going to ask you your last set of questions. Are you an introvert or extrovert, or a hybrid of the two?

Speaker 1: 59:01

I was all. If you'd asked me up until five years ago, I'd have said extrovert, no problem at all. Give me a party, give me a table to dance on, I'm just there. But I now know that I am. I think, what's called an extroverted introvert Any party I go to, I used to smoke and that would be.

Speaker 1: 59:19

I used to think it was because I like smoking. It isn't, it's because I used to like getting out of the party for 10 minutes to have some peace and quiet with people. Um, if I have a party, even at my house, or even have people over for dinner, I'm always find me for five or ten minutes just in my room on my own, quietly, just recharging. Um. So I think, uh, give me, and also I will invite hundreds and hundreds of people say let's do this, let's do that. And then if someone phones up in the day and says I'm afraid I can't make it, I'm like thank goodness. So I think I definitely I get all my energy from being on my own. I get bored of the sound of my own voice. I get bored of being needing to sort of be everywhere but definitely give the impression of being an extrovert, but deep down I'm an extrovert, All right.

Speaker 2: 1:00:08

So what challenge or experience?

Speaker 1: 1:00:09

and it can be a good one or a bad one, but what challenge or experience and it can be a good one or a bad one, but what challenge or experience in your life shaped you the most? Well, I feel um a bit of a forward answering this, because I've already answered it really and it was it's definitely not um a traumatic experience, it's the opposite, but it was absolutely having my baby unplanned, um, when I was that age, as I said, I've talked a lot about it, so, um, it made me change. It changed me. It made me rethink everything that I had sort of got planned for myself. It was it threw an obstacle in the road, which turned out to be the very best obstacle ever, but it was something I had to work around and I actually ended up shaping. The who I am now is very much shaped by by that detour okay.

Speaker 2: 1:00:46

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: 1:00:52

so again, it's the same time, isn't it? I would like to be a little bit different. Maybe we'll say you know, I think, um, you know, for me I don't want. It was a good time, but there were moments where I was sitting in that basement flat, feeling like my world was out of my hands and out of my control.

Speaker 1: 1:01:10

And this wasn't what I wanted to do. So I had a one year old baby and, as I said, all my friends in my eyes were doing these incredible things and I was very stagnated and I just want to go back and just say to myself try and say this without crying. Actually I just felt a bit choked up. But you know, trying to say this without crying, actually I just felt a bit choked up. But, you know, I put my arms around myself and say you know, this is the very best thing that could have happened to you and, um, it's all gonna work out. I cried.

Speaker 2: 1:01:31

Oh my god don't worry, we won't show it, we won't.

Speaker 1: 1:01:36

We won't show Amanda's tears just to say, you know, this is all good, life is, life is good and she's important okay, and you're gonna make me cry now it's all right.

Speaker 2: 1:01:46

No, let's do the non-crying bit. What is? What is your non-writing tip for writers?

Speaker 1: 1:01:54

so by that do you mean, like not the sort of process of being in front of one?

Speaker 2: 1:01:58

yeah, it could be drink.

Speaker 1: 1:02:02

Have vitamin c supplements yeah, I mean, I think I think find, and again, I'll probably be repeating. I know you talk to lots of authors. I'm sure you've heard this before, but you know, find your crew, find your support system. You know, find the writers not that you want to be friends with because you think they're going to advance you or they google this or that. Find those people that really get you, that make you smile, are able to be sincere, and that you know we've got your back. So someone that, if you had a really good thing happen to you, is going to accept that news with joy and love and just say god, I'm so happy for you, this is amazing, you've done it for us. Um, so, find your crew, get out and walk. If you're blocked, go out, have a walk, touch grass, as the kids might say. Um, you know, get off social media if it's got its claws into you, and I'm. You know I'm not one to to lecture on this because I'm terrible, but just, yeah, keep space, keep and keep grounded and put everything in perspective. You know these things and everything changes on a sixpence.

Speaker 1: 1:03:01

Oh, and one more bit of advice I would say, which I haven't done, is if you have a moment where someone phones you up and says I've just had a producer read your book and we love it and I'm now enjoy it because I spent a lot of time. I can't talk about that to anyone. I can't do that because I can't enjoy it. And then nothing happens and you're like, oh, I didn't really get the joyful bit of that. Yeah, now I really say, if someone rings me, I've had someone read the book and they've come, beautiful people, and they've said I really loved it. I'm a director in LA and I'm going to give it to my producer. I'm like you know what? I'm going to enjoy that because I know it's not going to come to anything, but I'm going to enjoy it for the moment and just think that that's a nice feeling. So enjoy those highs for everything they are and try not to let the low bits get you down.

Speaker 2: 1:03:46

I agree. And finally, where can listeners of the conversation find you online?

Speaker 1: 1:03:52

so I'm not as much on Twitter anymore. I tried Blue Sky. That didn't work, so you can definitely find me on Instagram. Seems to be my favorite. Um and uh. You know I'm there and and uh, I can. You can always contact me. I reply to everything. So if anyone messages me on any of those platforms Twitter, blue Sky, instagram I will always reply. I made that a promise to myself when I started out. So you know I love talking to readers, I love answering questions.

Speaker 2: 1:04:20

Well, Amanda, that just leaves me to say Amanda Jennings, thank you very much for being part of the conversation.

Speaker 1: 1:04:27

Thank, you ever so much for having me. I really appreciate it. It's been really fun.

Speaker 2: 1:04:31

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 nadiemathersoncom. Thanks again for your support and I'll catch you next time.