The Conversation with Nadine Matheson
Welcome to The Conversation with Nadine Matheson, where best-selling author of the '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.
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The Conversation with Nadine Matheson
Chris Bridges: Writing What You Know And Second Chances
Publication hasn't come easy for Chris Bridges. After completing a first manuscript during the height of the pandemic while still working hospital shifts, Chris Bridges faced 50 agent rejections before finding his breakthrough through the London Writers Award. Now with his debut, Sick To Death, shortlisted for the McDermid Debut Award and a second novel already in progress, Chris offers invaluable perspective on managing creative ambitions alongside the unpredictable fatigue of MS.
Whether you're fascinated by psychological suspense, navigating health challenges yourself, or simply drawn to stories of persistence against the odds, this conversation delivers profound insights into the creative process and the deeply human struggle to find meaning through storytelling.
Meet Emma. Emma is sick.
She can’t work because of a neurological condition, so is stuck in her family’s tiny council house.
Emma is sick of being told to ‘get over it’.
Her stepfather, her doctors, strangers – everyone has an opinion.
Emma is sick of being the other woman.
Her boyfriend Adam is perfect: he’s got a great job and an amazing home. His wife Celeste is the problem.
Emma is sick of being underestimated.
All she needed was a target. And now she has Celeste…
Emma is sick. Just not in the way you thought.
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I think writing is such an act of faith, isn't it all the time? I think doing a first draft is a constant act of faith, because you've got to keep going and believe in yourself and you've got to turn back up at the desk and think, yeah, what I'm writing, that there is a point to it.
Speaker 2:Hello and welcome to this week's episode of the Conversation with your host, nadine Matheson. As always, I hope that you're well and I hope that you've had a good week. I have some exciting news to give you. This week I am part of a brand new podcast. I know another one, we have another one, but this one is called Adventures in Publishing Land, and I'm joining Marco Rinaldi and Tariq Ashkanani from Page One, the writer's podcast, and every second Monday we come together and we give you our takes on the latest publishing stories and we have a brand new episode.
Speaker 2:Well, our first episode that came out yesterday. So just go to all your usual places where you find your podcasts. Put adventures in publishing land in the search box and our podcast will come up, and you can also watch us in YouTube. The links are in the show notes and I really hope that you enjoy it. Right, let's get on with the show, because today I'm in conversation with author Chris Bridges, whose debut novel, sick to Death, has been shortlisted for the McDermott Debut Award, and in our conversation, chris Bridges and I talk about his surprising journey from nurse to novelist, the surprising reality of book launch day and the struggles of writing with chronic fatigue. Now, as always, sit back or go for a walk and enjoy the conversation. Chris Bridges, welcome to the conversation.
Speaker 1:Hi, glad to be here.
Speaker 2:I'm glad to have you here, even though you're leaving me, Chris.
Speaker 1:Yeah, we're about to move to South East London. We've lived here for 12 years and loved it, but we're just about to move down to the South Coast for a maritime life whatever you want to call it A life by the coast. He's abandoning southeast london I love southeast london as well. I'm really loyal to lewisham. Um yeah all right.
Speaker 2:So my first question for you, chris, is because obviously I've got your debut novel, sick to death, so I've actually got two questions. I've got two questions. Okay, what was it like? Those two I'm picking two months coming up before the publication of Sick to Death. What was that moment like for you?
Speaker 1:So it's quite weird. So the publication date is tomorrow. Is it tomorrow? Yeah, so it actually comes out physically tomorrow. But it's kind of weird because you feel like the publication date is going to be this huge event where it's the first time anybody ever sees the book and then in reality, people actually do see the books in dribs and drabs. So the marketing department have sent it out in waves to people on like bookstagram or booktalk and those kind of people um, you know, bloggers and crime fiction lovers, so quite.
Speaker 1:I had this sort of vision in my head that there'd be this day where all of a sudden, there'd be this explosion and that people would all read my book that very day and know my book, which is which was never going to happen like no one's going to run to the shop and buy my book and then just read it straight away. But it's just this weird thing that you kind of have in your head and that all of a sudden you're vulnerable and exposed and you work out there. But actually what you forget is that you work out there on NetGalley. So there's the website for book reviews called NetGalley where people can request books. So I've had a lot of reviews on there which naively I thought was a good idea to look, which it hasn't been. It's been good and bad, mostly good, um. So, yeah, so the kind of publication, it feels sort of odd.
Speaker 1:And then yesterday, um, I had an article in the Daily Express and then I had an article in the Metro as well, so that was kind of a weird feeling because it was all that.
Speaker 1:They were quite personal articles as well, talking about my own illness, how that relates to the book, um, so yeah, it's just been a strange experience. It's, um, I know a lot of people say that publication is something that affects their mental health and kind of that. They've really struggled and, to be honest, I can't unpick what is affecting my mental health at the moment because we're moving house tomorrow and it's six months to move house because we had a buyer for three. So it's been a really fraught process. That's just gone on and on and on um, so I think the kind of combination I don't really know which dress is which but yeah, I feel excited about publication. It's an amazing thought. I have this like really humble dream and that, well, I probably won't do it now, well, after I'm leaving London, but need someone on the tube reading my book oh, I haven't had the tube yet and I haven't seen it, but I've had it.
Speaker 2:Um, when my friend has seen that she's seen someone on the train reading it, and then she's got them to because she sent me a picture, I'm like who's this random man, like why she sent me this picture of this man that I didn't understand. And then the next picture was him holding the book, and then it was another picture of them.
Speaker 2:I think it was the binding room, so that's, I haven't seen anyone on the. I haven't seen anyone personally, I think. Actually I think another friend saw someone on the tube, but it'd be cool to see someone yourself reading your book that would be really weird, but so tempting then to go up and tap them and say like hi, I would do it, I would be like I would as well.
Speaker 1:I'll be like you know, if I write that even though I hasn't got my picture on the back. Yeah, just go to like offer and see if they recognize you or not. That would be quite, especially with the kind of books we write. It would be quite creepy, wouldn't it?
Speaker 2:it would be. But I was thinking as well, um that maybe in a way, you know, having, I say, having the stress of moving house, um, it probably helps with that whole publication probably helps a little bit instead of it being all consuming publication day yeah, I'm part of a group, so there's part of them.
Speaker 1:I got inducted into a whatsapp group, which can often be terrible, can't they? When it's like like school mums or something you know, or whatever, or work thing. But no, somebody invited me to join a whatsapp group, um, and it's a really varied group of kind of all sorts of writers and they're all debuts for this year, um, and there's like 50 something of us, so that's really useful. The solidarity of kind of seeing other people's experiences, um, it's really interesting. Um, yeah, we've. I think we're like an unofficial union, to be honest how did you find each other?
Speaker 2:because 50 is a lot and I don't think my debut year I think.
Speaker 1:I only knew, let me think I think there's only one of oh no, it's a lie probably three yeah debuts that I knew, I think it's because it's so varied, because a lot of them are like there's quite a lot of literary fiction people in there and, um, you know, historical, there's all sorts of stuff, um, so I think that's probably why I think it's because there's so much variance, and I think a lot of it's people have found each other through social media, or there's a couple of people that you know they came up through the Women's Prize things or the different writing groups Curtis Brown and things like that and it's just kind of mushroomed.
Speaker 1:I think we're probably, yeah, we're maybe becoming a force to be reckoned with In terms of emotional support. That's actually really good because people are quite open and they'll be like oh god, this happened to me. You know, someone cancelled my event that I was gonna go to because no one bought any tickets, and you're like, oh okay, um, you know, which is not an uncommon thing to happen for debut authors, you know, because it's a hard sell.
Speaker 2:Um do you think that, um, like having that support group, especially having it early on, so before the books are even officially out, that that's helped you maybe like manage expectations and things like that. So you've gone into their much more of a clear view of publishing?
Speaker 1:yeah, definitely. And do you know what? There's another beautiful thing as well there, and sometimes publishing professionals write books. So there's like a few people in there who were ex-publishing professionals or so kind of that's really helpful to get their take. I think the only negative thing would be that if you do sort of um, interact with a lot of other writers, you can get that you've got to watch that. You don't get the comparison envy, you don't get like, oh, why has this person got an article in Marie Claire and kind kind of why is this person on the BBC or you know? Kind of you can't help it, can you? It's going to happen.
Speaker 1:Equally, I am always pleased for people. So I'm quite well known in the group for being the cheerleader because I read such a lot. Because I don't work now I retired through ill health so I've always been like a mad reader. Like even when I was working I'd read two or three books a week. So now I'm kind of it's crazy. I probably about four or five books a week sometimes. Um, so yeah, so I made it kind of a mission. Often people will join the group and the books come up on netgalley and I'll be like, oh, that book sounds really interesting. So the next thing I'm like shouting about the book on social media just because I'm really excited about it. Um, so yeah, it's increased my reading list as well.
Speaker 2:So but you know what that kind of support it's so important? Because you said you can't, the comparison thing doesn't go away, you know, just from you know, doing this podcast, talking to authors outside of this podcast, just other authors, it doesn't even matter how successful they are. Some of them are really really successful. They've got all the tags Sunday Times, new York Times, netflix, they've got all the tags. And then others they don't have it. But that comparison continuously looking to the other side to see what someone else is doing or see what marketing campaign they've been given, it doesn't go away, which is a weird thing.
Speaker 1:Yeah, it is. Maybe I went to that event that Dorothy Coombson organised, which was great. I really, really enjoyed it the women writers for Blackfriars. So maybe I should have kept an eye on you to see whether you were shooting daggers at lisa jewel no, I love lisa.
Speaker 2:I would never. The first time I met her, um, I met her, let me think. I think it was maybe two, three years god I can't remember might be two years ago, two, three years ago, and it was at an event um waterstones and I met her and I actually I had to say to her look, I need, I just need like a minute to do a complete fangirl moment and then I'll be, I'll be fine, but let me have my moment and I had my fangirl, I had my fangirl moment with lisa joel and then I was all right. I think she's, she's amazing, she's the loveliest person yeah, I did that with them.
Speaker 1:So erin kelly I'm a really big fan of her book, yeah, so I kind of have this running joke that Erin Kelly has got to be careful not to drive through Lee, where I live in a snowstorm misery especially you know what I want.
Speaker 2:I don't recall if I watched Misery again the other day and the scene when it's oh my, my God, it's so good, but the scene when Annie breaks his ankles.
Speaker 1:Yeah.
Speaker 2:I think I could have been so long since I'd last watched it I mean like probably decades I haven't watched it in years.
Speaker 1:Yeah, me too. Actually I must re-watch.
Speaker 2:Yeah.
Speaker 1:And on the re-watch I'm like I just completely forgot the violence of breaking so violent ankles. When I was a student nurse, we had to go to the operating theatres and, um, I was sent into an orthopaedic operating theatre and they were doing this surgery I can't, god knows what it was. I probably didn't even know at the time um, I was clearest and they got this massive hammer out because they had to actually break a bone and I got this like it was. I mean, this was the early 90s, so misery was a thing, and I kind of wanted to just stand there and like get this like moment where I had this compulsion to just shout like cock-a-doodie, you, dirty bird it's so funny I always think this about myself that you know I can read things like and read those sort of horrible, dark, yeah.
Speaker 2:Scenes like in misery, and see it on the screen, um, but it's just seeing it on the screen that puts me. It just yeah, I don't like it. It's the simplest way of like like I can't. Like I can't watch surgeries, like I grimace and turn my face away, but I can write the stuff that I write. I've always been quite squeam away, but I can write the stuff that I write.
Speaker 1:I've always been quite squeamish but I found with the operating theatre it was all right as long as you looked away like the first bit and then it kind of just looked like butchery. It was fine, but I didn't. We didn't spend a lot of time. That wasn't the career I went into.
Speaker 2:I was more like work with oncology and stuff it's weird, you know, because you're saying, yeah, once you get past the butchery, you're fine, and I was like I'm probably the same in terms of work and um, criminal law, like I was fine looking at autopsy pictures because you're like, okay, it's just like I don't know you're, it's so far removed, it looks almost clinical yeah but there are times you can't actually your brain can't comprehend that this is like a body part because of the way it's been photographed.
Speaker 1:I think, for me it was like being in work mode as well, because I was wearing a uniform and kind of the minute I was in my work uniform because I can't bear people being sick it really makes me feel quite unwell and I get such horrible reaction. I want to join in. But if I've got, if whenever I had my work uniform on, I'd be fine and I was much the same with gory things, I was okay. But I'm really funny. I'm a vegan and partly through squeamishness, because I can't bear like dead animals and me and it really upsets me. But I always kind of joked to my partner that if, like I walked, if there was a dead person like floating down the Thames, I probably would be like okay, but if it was like a dead dog, I'd be like, oh my god, I'd be hysterical it's so funny like listen to us, you wouldn't think we're both crime writers terrible, terrible the second thing I was going to ask you about sick to death.
Speaker 2:Did you feel as though you were putting yourself into the book? Because you know, obviously you have your health conditions with ms, and then we've got emma, who has an illness.
Speaker 1:It was kind of I did feel like I had, there was a part of me that kind of had to tell myself, um, to pull myself, to go a little bit, because I've got this feeling that I had to represent all ill people, kind of like I'm writing a character who's got an illness. So it was kind of, um, I decided that I wanted to kind of flip some tropes about sickness, because there's so many like tired, boring kind of cliches about sickness, um in not just in fiction but in films and television. And you often find that people who've got illnesses have to be like one of two things they either have to be really sickly sweet and passive and kind of like nice because they're ill, or they've got to be like you know, like in an old like Agatha Christie style book, where the bitter old woman who's just written the will and she's about to be murdered and she's horrible, um. But the other thing is that often if people are sick in a book, that is the story and that is pushed to be the story, it's fine.
Speaker 1:But the problem with an illness like mine is my story doesn't have a narrative arc. So I've been diagnosed with MS. I'm on like a holding treatment. I inject myself once a month to try and stop the MS getting worse. My life expectancy is only a few years less than someone without MS. So you know, although there's a little bit of like up and down, there's some undulation in them in what happens to me, because I get little relapses and flares. But on the whole I don't fit like a traditional like up and down story arc.
Speaker 1:So yeah what's expected in a book is that a character is sick. They start off at the beginning, then they've got to end up doing one of three things. One would be that they die. Two would be that they get better. Three would be that they're proven to be a faker.
Speaker 1:So I thought what if I write a character who doesn't do any of those things and the sickness is just there in the background? But I'm such a tangent go off I just do all the time I'm terrible. But yeah, to get back to the original question, there were passages in the book where I felt like I was putting myself in there, but what I kind of did. So I was thinking about it and I thought. First of all, I thought, could I write a sick person? It would be plausible that someone who's got a chronic neurological illness would end up getting involved in crime. Would they have the energy? And I thought, crime, would they have the energy? And I thought, would I have the energy? I probably would. So I think I probably could kill someone if I really needed to. I wouldn't, um, but I would probably just need a week to recover. You know, it would take time as well to recover, um, and I think you need a holiday everything.
Speaker 1:You'd plan it kind of with me. Um. So I kind of thought that and then I kind of thought as well about my own situation and I thought, yeah, I've kind of got things like I've got a supportive partner, I've got a network of friends, I've got occupational benefits from having worked as a nurse for so long, so you know, I've got sturdy accommodation. But I thought, what if you had none of those? What if somebody was ill and they were living on benefits? The family were unsympathetic, no one believed them that they were ill, all of those kind of things. So I just kept extrapolating and pushing it to try and think what would make someone do something quite extreme. Um, I wanted a kind of plausibility to it. I did want to give an authenticity to the voice as well and kind of. And there were bits I suppose little passages that I've put in where it's about my observations about being ill. Um, yeah, it's an interesting one the hospital.
Speaker 2:You know, in the opening of it of um sick to death, and it was the opening that, to me, I felt like no, this is definitely what Chris has seen when he's probably been lying in a hospital bed. That's me I felt like no, this is definitely what Chris has seen when he's probably been lying in a hospital bed. That's what I thought. A couple this is what I've heard when I spent had to spend a week in St Thomas's and I'm listening to everything going around me and I'm listening to the woman in the next bed screaming out that she needs more morphine. Literally, I said that was the same me. She needs more morphine, and it was me asking for for more morphine because, no, I didn't want more. I just didn't want them to take away my morphine pump, because the pump was nice.
Speaker 1:That's relatable. I think I've got the kind of both sides experience as well, because I was a nurse for 30 years before I retired due to ill health recently. So you know, obviously I've kind of had episodes where I've been in a&e and you know different things as well and different reactions, um, and also a long route to being diagnosed as well. So there's a lot of things you go through, um. I sometimes I used to joke that I could write a rough guide to medical procedures. You know those, do you remember those rough guide travel guides? Yeah, internet. I could write one like oh, this lumbar puncture not recommended. You know this one's really. But yeah, definitely, um. But yeah, I think having that both sides experience really helps as well, because obviously I've spent my whole adult life I've been hanging out in hospitals.
Speaker 2:It's been a thing you know it always gets me about the hospital, not even the hospitals like the waiting area, especially like in A&E. The last time I was there so it wasn't last year, it's the year before because I had an allergic reaction to medication so I had to go to A&E and it's sitting there in the waiting area, but it's when other patients were coming in and the familiarity that the nurses and the doctors had with some of the patients and it wasn't a familiarity because you know they're, then they're like I know they've probably got a long and ongoing illness. It was the one because they just want company and they were always coming in to.
Speaker 1:A&E. I recently had an episode where I just the MS symptoms all flared up, which can just happen sometimes and I was talking to my partner and I said you know, I've not left the house for two and a half weeks and I was like, oh no, I did go out one day and I was like so and I was like, and then I remember that was the GP surgery, that was like my day out. But it's kind of weird, isn't it? Um West End or anything?
Speaker 1:I'll kind of it's your little trip yeah, so you can kind of understand when people are. I mean, you know, I think for me I've got a strange illness in a way, because my illness fluctuates such a lot. So I'll get really good days when and they're the days when people tend to see me when actually I don't look like there's anything wrong with me, but then I'll get long periods where I'm not very well at all, which you know so. But yeah, I can imagine if you are constantly in this state, like I was the other week then going to a medical clinic and seeing some stuff would be like a bit of a treat sometimes, yeah, um change from homes under the hammer, and it's always homes under the hammer, isn't it always, always?
Speaker 1:yeah, it's a bit of a depressing program, isn't it, though? Because I always think the homes that they're buying they're probably where someone's died and then sort of not been found for two days, or or those houses they've been repossessed because someone's fallen into poverty or something. You know. They've all probably got a really sad story why do you go to the extreme?
Speaker 2:it couldn't just be just like?
Speaker 1:I'm always like you're gonna be over budget. It's like um grand designs I love grand design.
Speaker 2:They never listen and they're be over budget. It's like Grand Designs. I love Grand Designs. They never listen and they're always over budget.
Speaker 1:And they always choose a different song, don't they? If it's like a house, or if it's like Broken Down, they do like this Old House by Shakin' Stevens, or whatever you know, it's always like that.
Speaker 2:I've always thought that was a great job, choosing the music, Choosing the music for Hans Holmes under the hammer, that'll be. That's going to be Chris's alternative job yeah, definitely I'm there if they're listening so talking about jobs, right, chris? How would you describe your writing journey getting? To this point of publication yeah.
Speaker 1:So it's kind of there's a lot of commonality with other writers. I think that in the as a child I wanted to be a writer like from a really early age. When I was seven I won a writing competition at school and I won this little plastic machine that if you put two peas in you got little dairy milk bars came out oh, you got, you won that.
Speaker 2:I wanted that when I was little. I never got it for Christmas wasn't it, um?
Speaker 1:and so I was like, oh, so something in my brain kind of clicked and I was like, oh, if I write, then people will give me things. You know, it kind of works out like that and I always just really enjoyed stories and telling stories. And then I got really into fiction and as a teenager I wasn't very happy at school and I kind of discovered crime fiction in the school library and I worked my way through all the Agatha Christie's. I used to read like at least three or four Agatha Christie's a week. And then I graduated on to like psychological crime fiction, like Ruth Rendell and books about PD James, different things. I was really, really into it. So I kind of thought, yeah, I'm going to be a writer. So I got myself a plan to go to university to study English.
Speaker 1:Then it all just went a bit wrong. I was was completely teenage, probably a little bit depressed and a bit unhinged, um, and ended up it all fell apart. Uh, ended up working in Woolworths, um, and I thought, oh, so this writing thing's not going to pan out and it's quite a long story short. So I ended up becoming a nurse, had a very busy career that was really satisfying and enjoyed it and just put the idea of writing to one side. It didn't really figure. But I just thought I'm not going to be a writer, I'm just a reader and I love reading. It's a huge passion for me. I'm the kind of person who goes into a bookshop and smiles at books that I like. I just get really excited and I'm a bit of a book hoarder as well. So anyway, about gosh, a bit of a book holder as well.
Speaker 1:So anyway, about gosh, about 15, 16 years ago I was unexpectedly single, went to the local art centre running a creative writing program, went on this course. Then at the end of the course he said why not submit some of your work to this local competition? And it was, for it was called writing east midlands at the time. So it was like um, for the whole of the region of the east midlands. And I won the competition had to go to a stately home. They gave me 50 pounds. Um, I was like it's amazing, I can write. So I like started submitting story after story to different websites and different magazines and different things. Rejection, rejection, rejection. And I just couldn't hack it. I didn't like it at all. I was like okay, that was obviously. I can't write um, I need to just sort of bin that idea for now, and then somehow can I, just, can I stop you just one second.
Speaker 2:So, even though you know I'm going to go back to you won the competition when you were seven years old, then obviously it doesn't pan out. But then you start, you start writing, you win another competition, you get your prize and then, but you couldn't manage the rejection, even though you'd I'm thinking, even though you'd got validation.
Speaker 1:Yeah, I think maybe I don't know if it was my headspace at the time or I just don't know where I was at but I just remember thinking, yeah, this isn't working. You know, um, I don't think I've got what it takes um, although I did win that competition and I've got. I can't remember the name of the man. He was a crime writer who judged it and he gave me really positive feedback and said you know, he said it's really important that you pursue this kind of, and I was like, somehow didn't. Yeah, so I got I can't remember how it happened I ended up writing a column for a website. So it was kind of there was an up and coming LGBTQ website that was being kind of. There was an up-and-coming um lgbtq website that was come, that was being sort of touted around, and it was kind of like um, set up by this couple who started it up, and I said, well, I'll write an article for you. And they really liked it. So that kind of fell together.
Speaker 1:The website got a bit bigger and I ended up writing a weekly column, ended up doing theatre reviews. Then we moved to London, ended up doing theatre reviews for Londonist website and I kind of just really really enjoyed the writing. I just found it so much fun. I love the idea of writing an article where you can sort of start off with a, an opening theme, then kind of bookend it in the article, and I really enjoyed the word limit as well, that kind of like the challenge of like a thousand words and you've got to do I'm sure you've done it yourself for like magazine articles or whatever um, and I just thought so. I thought to myself, well, maybe this is what I do, I'll just do this kind of thing, or just write theatre reviews, and you know, write a 300 word or a 500 word theatre review, um, and it's fun. Um, and I kind of had in the back of my head maybe one day I would write, um, and then I did a weird thing. So I, you know, you've got all these COVID writers, who are people who were furloughed and then they'd always wanted to write a book and they got furloughed and they had loads of time. Um, I did the opposite.
Speaker 1:So, beginning of 2020, I'd just been diagnosed with MS. After having that diagnosis hung over me for quite a long time before that, but I'd had an attack that put me in hospital, um, and I recovered quite quickly from it and was back at work. Covid hit and and there was a shout out for Radio 4. So Radio 4 was saying they wanted people's COVID experiences. And I was a palliative care nurse so I was seeing lots of patients who were at the end of their lives and I thought to myself it would be a really kind thing for me to do to write about the reality and say, look, people are dying in hospital from COVID. You know it's obviously not a nice thing and it's awful that you can't be with them and that's really tough, but we're doing the best that we can and you know the deaths aren't necessarily scary. You know there's medications and kind of.
Speaker 1:So I wrote this short piece. Anyway, they contacted me back within a day and said, will you read it on tonight's show? And I was like oh my God, oh wow. And I and said, will you read it on tonight's show? And I was like oh my god, oh wow. And I think I think what it was was all of us. It was the MS made me think who knows what's going to happen with the future. You know, maybe this is my chance that I just need to grab whatever's going. I think it was that bit of validation. So I just sat down and wrote a novel, kind. So what I would do was every day I'd get him from work after being on the wards in a London hospital with COVID, which was insane get home and I'd write for an hour and then I'd write at weekends and ended up writing this whole novel. So I submitted it and it was like tumbleweed. Nothing happened.
Speaker 2:So was that sick to death?
Speaker 1:No.
Speaker 2:Oh, ok, it was about nurses, nurses.
Speaker 1:So I was sending it was a crime thriller about nurses, so I kept sending it in, sending it in and I think after about 50 agents I thought I'm gonna have to give up with this one. So I'd had positive feedback from two agents and it was really enthusiastic. They basically said we love what the way you write, but we don't like what you've written about within. We think it's not very good, um, or your story. So I thought, okay, that's really positive and actually that validation worked that time and it clicked into place and I thought what could I write about? And I thought, and that's when the whole sick to death idea came in, um, and I started writing that. Then, um, there's a connection, so which will please you, um?
Speaker 2:of course it will.
Speaker 1:It always does when I hear Deptford so the there was, um, I saw a thing online for a thing called spread the word um London Writers Award, and it's an award for people who are from like more underrepresented backgrounds, so like people from different ethnic backgrounds, lgbtq people, disabled people, people from working class backgrounds or you know all of that and it's the fact that those, those groups of people are underrepresented in publishing and to try and bring their voices forward and to help.
Speaker 1:So and it was a thing about having a novel and all you had to do was have like the first bit of the novel and I got taken on to the course and it was the best thing I've ever done. So it was like a nine-month course and we had like lectures, um visiting speakers who were authors, workshops and we had like a feedback group. So it was like having to lay yourself bare and put your work in front of another writer and I was already kind of probably over halfway through, sick to Death. But I worked through it, through that, and then at the end of that I found an agent.
Speaker 2:You know what I was just thinking. Sometimes it's not even about necessarily winning the competition. Sometimes it's about the point when you properly immerse yourself, that world and and you're surrounded by other writers who are in a similar position to you and you're, you know, either starting something new or you're working through an existing project. But just being immersed in that world is the thing that then pushes you forward. Because that's a lot, because a lot of mental like mentally it's a lot to go through. You know how. You know, whatever the story you tell yourself about rejection, that's a lot. That takes a lot of mental work to push. Yeah, that it's really.
Speaker 1:It's difficult, isn't it? And I think for me as well, because I came from I came from a working class family who then became middle class um, you know, I was doing kind of like a non-arts job, so I was working as a specialist nurse. You know, I just didn't feel like I fitted into this world of being a writer as well. I kind of thought, oh gosh, you know you need a master's in creative writing or you at least need to have gone to uni and done English literature, whereas my degrees in nursing kind of. You know, it just didn't feel like I had a place in that world.
Speaker 1:But actually, I think in lots of ways I did understand. You know, because of my reading as well, I kind of had an understanding of kind of writing patterns, storylines and plots. I think the thing with the first novel, I think I just didn't know enough and I think it was one of those like learning novels, you know, that kind of thing. It was like I'd thrown out the novel where I didn't quite know what I was doing, um, before I wrote but I think there's so many of us.
Speaker 2:You'll find very few writers who haven't got that first novel and that first. You know it will never see the light of day. You know they. They finished. It has everything there, it has characters, it has plot, yeah, but maybe the structure's not there. You don't even know. You didn't even know what, what it meant to indent a paragraph at that point. But that's just you. I think you're just coming, becoming comfortable with putting some kind of story down and also knowing that you can finish something, because once you've known that you can actually finish a book, whether that book's rubbish or not, but knowing that is that's like the first hurdle and you're like, oh well, I can finish a book, now let's see what the next step is yeah, 100%, because that I think writing is such an act of faith, isn't it all the time?
Speaker 1:I think doing a first draft is a constant act of faith, because you've got to keep going and believe in yourself and you've got to turn back up at the desk and think, yeah, what I'm writing, that there is a point to this, because you're in this little echo chamber just sitting there. I mean, I'm not one of those writers who like shares their work constantly, which some people would do but having like constant beta readers and being part of a group and also passing it around, or definitely not letting my partner see it, that would kill me. So, yeah, so I think for those reasons kind of, for me it's kind of a constant act of of faith. I think that's why the other thing I wouldn't trust voices around me, because I think you just worry that, um, they might say positive things just to please you, because you know they care about you, kind of thing but it's just a thing.
Speaker 2:It's like I always used to say to like when I was mentoring writers is that you know, don't really rely on your mum yeah, like advice about, because she's your mum and she loves you.
Speaker 1:She's want to hurt your feelings.
Speaker 2:So you know you need to get feedback from strangers. I was going to stand a bit like Blanche, you know, in a street car named desire the kindness of strangers.
Speaker 1:Sometimes you don't need the kindness of strangers.
Speaker 2:Sometimes you don't need the kindness of strangers.
Speaker 1:Sometimes you need the bluntness yeah, yeah, strangers, when that's my favorite is it really?
Speaker 2:I had to read it I read it in school when I was like 15 and I was playing, they had me reading up um blanche oh, that's amazing.
Speaker 1:I saw the recent version um with paul mescaline and I saw the julian anderson one. Um, I saw the julian anderson one. I had to sit on a bench at the cut at waterloo for 15 minutes after the play because I couldn't. I was like I need to. I was so dazed, I was like I need to just have you need to decompress yeah, I just sat there like staring you weren't mouthing along when she goes.
Speaker 2:I've always depended on.
Speaker 1:I'm trying to do a really bad southern accent. Yeah, I've got the right accent for the southern. It doesn't work listeners.
Speaker 2: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.
Speaker 1:Just check out the link in the show notes yeah, there's a constant out of place of writing isn't there, and I think that's the hard thing, isn't it? And I think, if you know, I think there are, I think that's there for everybody. It's there, you know, regardless of whether you've got a master's in creative writing or regardless of whether you've come from a, you know, I think there are, I think that's there for everybody. It's there, you know, regardless of whether you've got a master's in creative writing or regardless of whether you've come from a, you know, an upper middle-class background and you're surrounded by writers. It's still there.
Speaker 1:But I think definitely there's extra layers to it if you're someone who's from a different world, because there's a huge imposter syndrome feeling which you know. To be honest, I'm pretty big on imposter syndrome, regardless of what, what it's about. But you know, I think that's with writing, it's really easy to have that because you can see writers as being something elevated and special. Um, who you know have got this amazing. I think you know there's this image as well you think of, like Jessica Fletcher on Murder she Ray, where she just sits at the typewriter and then this sort of thing comes out she's got this novel and she just like it's published, like within a week, and then the publisher's paid for a cruise for her.
Speaker 2:It's the cruise we're so, oh God. She has a lot to answer for Jessica Fletcher and her bloody editor.
Speaker 2:Because it you know, and it's not even you. You know I've said a lot on here it's not even Jessica Fletcher murder. She wrote. You know there's so many films you will watch or tv shows or tv films more especially about a writer and, as you always say, their editor sending them off to help finish their book. And you're like, I watched and I did watch. I watched one the other day and they sent and it's one of these Hallmark movies and this woman's book got to number one. You know she didn't know it was going to happen. She's surprised. Now she's got to go out on her tour and they got her someone to help her with her public speaking. But it wasn't like you know, going off and do a class and come back. This guy was with her like 24-7 for like weeks.
Speaker 2:I'm like like that's so unrealistic one. It's also concerning I don't know if I want someone following me for like two weeks, but also it's just unrealistic well, sounds a bit whitney and kevin costner.
Speaker 1:To be honest, it's a bit it could all go extremely wrong yeah, I do think the media just perpetuate these strange ideas about writers and there's this kind of myth of the writer, isn't there, like the muse and all of those kind of things. I think it is quite hard for some people to feel like they belong to that world, which I think is why, you know, oh gosh, I'm I mean, the republican government wouldn't really like me, would they? I'm the dei hire, aren't I? Because I came upon a course people so, um, yay, it's just so important, isn't?
Speaker 1:it to like, elevate those voices, because these are the voices of, oh, we all are. So, yay, it's just so important, isn't it? To elevate those voices, because these are the voices of people who don't feel like they've got a place in publishing and they're also, you know, readers. I think readers are entitled to have these stories there. You know, readers from different ethnic groups need stories that relate to them.
Speaker 1:I think for me I really don't pause for breath, do I? I think for me as well, like, reading has always been a consolation and whatever I'm going through in life, there's always a book that helps me, kind of in fiction, and I can think of fiction, you know so things mood, mood issues or work problems, relationship problems there's fiction for me is the place that I go to, because I don't really read non-fiction. So, but when it comes to illness, there wasn't a lot when I became ill that kind of really comforted me in that way. It was more memoirs. So I thought, yeah, why can't I have a bit of a Trojan horse in a way? It's not that the, it's not that Sick to Death is a book that just goes on about illness all the time, but it also is in there because that's a huge integral part of her life and it's also part of the motive for why she does what she does.
Speaker 2:Yeah, I just think you know when you're, you know whether you come from, I'll say like an ethnic background, or you know LGBTQ plus community or anywhere else that is seen as other and different. You spend such a long time trying to work out how you fit in the world and your you know, I say the world at large and your smaller world, your communities. There's always a lot of code switching. Sometimes you're not even aware that you're doing it, but you are doing it, trying to fit in. And then you have this world of, I say, of publishing, of writing, and then again you're trying to work out how you can fit in there, and which is where you probably get the disillusionment of maybe this isn't for me, because I'm not seeing people or reading from people who look like me yeah, I mean, I think things are definitely they have had to become better.
Speaker 1:I'm not sure it's going to stay that way with the way the world is at the moment, but definitely. I mean you do definitely see more diverse fiction around now. Um, there's definitely more kind of more queer romance around. Um, yeah, I don't know about the ethnic representation. It seems to be a bit better than it was, but, um, you know, it's better.
Speaker 2:It's better than what it was, but I mean, my bugbear is always that there needs to be it just makes sense, there needs to be more diversity in the stories that are being told, and I think that can be across the board, really, yeah yeah because if you're writing about, you know you're writing about um you've. You've got a book by an lg? Um an lgbtq writer. What it doesn't necessarily means that his main character or their main character needs to be someone who's gone through every single form of adversity known to man because they, because they're part of that community, they might just want to tell a story about, I don't know, a man fighting dragons it's like that
Speaker 1:just just tell your stories yeah, or just a crime story with someone who's a detective, who's not tortured because they've been in conversion therapy or whatever oh my god, exactly, but then also.
Speaker 2:Well, you know you're talking about the world, like every morning right, I think it's getting the balance, isn't it?
Speaker 1:and it was. It was really interesting doing the London Writers Award, um, which is kind of um, yeah, the program was so helpful because, like to me, to the people from diverse groups as well, and sort of their experiences and how they were trying to get it across as well, was really interesting. Um, it was split into groups. So I was in the commercial fiction group, which I was called like the, but I always felt like we were the like sort of dirty money makers writing like crime and romance, where you've got the literary fiction group too, but that wasn't the concept of it at all. Um, actually there was some really good fiction coming out there. It was amazing, but just the act of sharing your work as well in a group.
Speaker 1:So we had a facilitated group with a published author who, um was really helpful and she you know. So we would take it in terms that two people each week would each, each session, would read out some work and then there would be critiques of the work and stuff, or they'd, sorry, submit work, not read out. Um, it would have been submitted previously and then we'd give constructive feedback. So all of that stuff. It was invaluable, um, and I did learn so much during the course about things like things I've not understood about point of view and plot, structure and just sort of you know quite although I'd listened to like loads of podcasts and read lots of writing books because I was quite keen to do that, um, and I was doing all that kind of trying to think like a writer, trying to watch television and think how is this structured, how does that work?
Speaker 2:um, it's really, it's interesting but it's not until you have someone read your work and actually give you feedback that you understand what it means to have a change of point of view. And I'm god, even if you look back at something you wrote years ago and I did the same thing I looked back at something I wrote about, let me think, maybe about 10 years ago, 10, 11 years ago, and I read it and I was like there's like three point of view changes in the first two pages. It's like I would never do that, never do that now. I can't know. That was not the way yeah to do things are commonly right.
Speaker 1:It's mistaken as it to that head-hopping thing yeah yeah, I'm quite. I'm a bit of a first-person point of view addict as well, like first-person present tense, so thinking of crime, psychological thrillers or suspense, it gives an urgency, um, but it can be quite claustrophobic as well, which is good and bad it's hard like this is my like.
Speaker 2:I've given myself like two challenges for 2025. Like writing wise and that was like one. I'm gonna write something in the first person because I can do a short story in the first person.
Speaker 2:And again, that was my other thing. My other challenge was to write more short stories, because I normally run away from them but I don't like doing them. I just I find it hard work. So I thought, no, this year I'm going to write more. If I someone invites me to do a short story, I'll say yes. So I'll do more short stories but also challenge myself to write in the first person because I can do it for short stories. I thought I can maintain it for like 3,000, 5,000 words. For anything longer than that, I'm like I can't stay in one person's head for that long, like it's a bit much, but I'm challenging myself to write something.
Speaker 1:yeah, I find like if I'm not in the first person, for me it's like if it sort of feels slightly distant and I think for me I need to try writing a different style. But I think it's probably just what I've got used to and I'm just in that habit. That's my groove kind of thing. I need to reprogram my brain, get my neuroplasticity working, to try a different style. I'm not very good with past tense. I know there is a kind of movement, isn't there, of people who really hate people who write in the present tense, yeah, first person, but whatever they don't have our preference.
Speaker 2:I think you know we all have our preferences, but I think challenging ourselves and being open to challenging ourselves it's never going to be a bad thing as a writer yeah, definitely would you write anything else other than crime fiction, or is this?
Speaker 1:this is um, I'm quite into vintage stuff. So I really like the 1950s and um 60s, maybe, maybe wartime, but not in a kind of twee way. I don't like all that jolliness, like like companies in a bubble singing while the bombs go off, kind of thing. Um, I like the gritty side, but yeah, um, I did have an idea for a book that was set kind of um from the 1930s with sort of and then a bit in the 50s and then a bit in the 90s, um, so, yeah, I'm still I've still got that on the back burner I think I would consider that maybe I'd have to have like an exotic nom de plume, like a pen name. Some writers do that, don't they? Um, so the publisher I'm with avon is quite a commercial publisher, so they publish lots of um romance, historical fiction and crime and what would stupidly be called women's fiction, because there's no name for what it is. But, um, it's just a derogatory name to to label it like that.
Speaker 2:But um well, you don't have men's fiction, do you? Because Nick Hornby was never classified as men's fiction.
Speaker 1:Or Tony.
Speaker 2:Parsons when he was writing that sort of book.
Speaker 1:But some of the writers that Avon can like they're quite commercial and they will publish a couple of books a year and some of them have different hats, so they'll do books under different names as well, which I think is not that common with commercial fiction as well.
Speaker 2:Um, but I think you'd need a lot of energy and time do you think I was going to ask you about energy and time because you know now, obviously you're you're retired. It seems weird looking at you and saying chris, you're retired, because you don't seem old enough to be retired. But but you know being but being retired, you say it's medical retirement yeah and moving. Do you think that's going to affect, like how you write and?
Speaker 1:your. Yeah, so part of one of the big symptoms people get with multiple sclerosis is fatigue, and I think people don't realize that people get that, um, and I didn't really understand fatigue, even though I'd worked with patients with cancer for years and people talked about having fatigue and I'd be like talking the talk, but actually I didn't really. I don't think I quite got it. I think it's quite difficult. So you've got it, um, so I get severe fatigue with the MS and I ended up having to give up work. I was a specialist nurse in palliative care, um, which I really enjoyed, um, but you know there's good and bad things, because I think leaving the NHS isn't the most terrible decision at the moment as well. Um, but yeah, I was lucky enough that I'd got enough pension behind me to retire, which was good, because I was getting to a point where I was so tired that, like I'd get home from work and I'd just collapse on the sofa. I'd spend the whole weekend collapsed, then I'd go back to work and then it was kind of like I got to the point. Actually, sometimes I'd sneak off at lunchtime because I was too tired to talk to anybody. You know those kind of things. It was just I was exhausted and then I started to panic that I was too tired to do the job and I was thinking I started to feel like I was drunk, sometimes because of tiredness. And you know, obviously with nursing and a responsible job, it's safety is quite important.
Speaker 1:So I think it affects my writing quite a lot. I think because when I think what I have to do is kind of just pace myself and just think, um, can I write today? Um, is it? If I push myself, is that going to make myself feel worse? If I'm feeling fatigued, because there are moments when I get to the computer and I get this kind of brain fog where it's like I always compare it to like you've drunk a hot bottle of wine at two o'clock in the afternoon. It's that feeling and it's quite hard to write through that. But there are times I can push through that and I can sort of pass through the wall. So it's just getting this balance and it is. It's quite hard sometimes to work the pattern out. Um, it's frustrating as well because I think for me momentum is really helpful, um, so if I keep writing and keep at it, it's fine. But if I take a break and, like I'm away from the manuscript for a week, I come back to. I'm like what is this rubbish, or I?
Speaker 1:start writing like I can't remember how to write anymore. It's kind of I like the momentum of it.
Speaker 2:I don't know if you're the same no, like I say, my only comparison, like medical wise is like being anemic. And I'd have a moment when I'm not someone who naps like I just haven't been, I'm just. If I nap it's because I'm ill and you so you know I'm ill if I'm falling asleep during the day. So I'm just someone, I just constantly go. But when my anemia, some of my eye levels drop, it's that, and it's always at two o'clock in the afternoon, two o'clock in the afternoon I could be sitting and I'm like I need to sleep.
Speaker 2:And again, you know the exact description you gave of the brain fog and I'm looking at the screen. It's like I got nothing.
Speaker 2:There's nothing, nothing's going in, nothing's coming out. I just need to, I just need to just lie somewhere and just say I remember one time I was at the doctor like I had a blood test and they called me in doctor's like I need to speak to you and I'm like what's wrong. He said are you okay? And I said no, he was on the phone. He goes are you okay? I said yeah, I'm fine. He goes, just got your blood test results back and he goes you should be on the floor because my eye levels are so low.
Speaker 2:He's like you should be on the floor, like you're this close to going to get a transfusion, and I was like, no, I'm, I'm all right. So it's weird, you don't sometimes, yeah, like you push through it, and there's other times when, yeah, I need to fall asleep now on the floor, right at this point.
Speaker 1:I can't believe that I was working and that was writing and doing all these things, because I don't know how I was doing it. I think it was caffeine, and adrenaline was getting me through a lot of the time. I think it was a combination of two and determination you do push yourself through so many.
Speaker 2:And when you look back especially and I think, because my anemia was linked to my endometriosis and fibroids and all of that, that stuff. So but when I look back in the amount of times like I remember, like I collapsed at Canada Water Tube Station, I was in Lewisham Hospital on a Friday night, you know, leaving there at stupid o'clock in the morning, spending the whole weekend like on the sofa because I am ill. And I still went to court on Monday and did a trial at the Old Bailey. And when I'm looking back on it now I should have just said no, no, because because I'm not well, clearly I'm not well, I've been at the hospital. But you, you put, you know you push yourself, you do push yourself through, you do stupid things. That's the only way I can describe it.
Speaker 1:You don't prioritize the publishers have been amazing. Actually they're really understanding about it as well um, because I've kind of pre-warned them that like moving could potentially set me off into like a period of being a bit less well, because at the moment I'm doing edits on book two, so I've got a second novel which is coming out a year tomorrow, um. Um, so we're kind of like well into structural edits and I'm doing some more feedback. So you know I've got through. I'm part way through the really difficult bit.
Speaker 2:Um, I have warned them that I might need a few weeks yeah, you need that because and it's not, and I understand, it's not just that I finished a book and I'm just tired. Let me just have like a couple of weeks off just to relax. It's a different. I've called it like a full body like you need to stop recalibrate and then deal with whatever follows on from that because of your I've got quite a type a personality.
Speaker 1:I'm quite ambitious, quite driven, and I find it very frustrating as well to kind of not be able to do the things. It's really annoying. I'd quite like to just be writing all day, every day, kind of doing loads. But actually I've kind of learned I can only write for a certain amount of time and then I've got to, I've got to kind of rest and yeah, I mean thinking's writing as well, isn't it? It's a huge part of it.
Speaker 2:Oh, my god, every moment I was looking at, I always, I always think about this one moment I think I was washing up and I was putting knives away. No, I wasn't washing up, I was watching. For some reason, my mum was here and we were watching. I think I must have been flicking channels and I stopped on QVC and they were advertising like a block of knives advertising the knife set. And I said to my mum could you imagine like a killer sitting there watching QVC, thinking that's a good knife, the paring knife would be good for that one? My mum was like what is wrong with you? But this is how your brain is always thinking. I think as a writer.
Speaker 1:I'm just imagining your mum's face when you said it as well it's like.
Speaker 2:This is not my child.
Speaker 1:I don't know where you came from yeah, I think to me, dog walking is a really big one. So I've got a silly little dog, I've got this, I've got a miniature poodle who's all like 1950s, cut with big pom-poms, and when I take her for a walk I'm often thinking kind of, I'll go into these little zones where and that's often where, like, I sort of unpick a plot issue I think, oh god, yeah, that's what I can do with this and that's what needs to happen. And I've actually. Sometimes I stop dead in the middle of the street and I'm like put on the notes app on my phone. Um, because it's fatal if you don't, because otherwise you get back from the dog walk.
Speaker 2:You're like what was that for what? What was that? I've gotten better. I've gotten better at that, like putting notes in my notes happen actually when I'm walking in the morning because I've got my, I've got my airpods in, yeah, and I'm like, oh, because you know my phone's in my leggings, I ain't got time to pull it out. So I just say, hey, siri, can you make a note?
Speaker 1:and I say the note and it records it, I was like, look at me because, if you, if you don't do it, it's terrible, isn't it? Because you completely forget. And then you, you know, got it in your head. You determined it was the best idea ever. You know what was that amazing idea? It was the best idea ever, and it probably wasn't well, I well, I'm convinced.
Speaker 2:I did have an amazing idea a few weeks ago and I had this idea of sitting on myself and I was like, oh my god, and I don't know, I can't think, I can't remember whether it was something to do with an existing book that I'm writing on one of the Henleys or whether it was something you know. I thought, oh my god, this is so good, let me write it down. And I said myself I'm just going to go upstairs and I'll write it down. I never wrote it down. To this day I cannot remember what it was, and it still bugs me because I know it was good. Chris, I know it was good, but it's gone. It maybe it'll come back. Maybe it'll come back.
Speaker 1:It's got to be it'll resurface. It's like trying to hold a pool down in there, swimming pool, isn't it?
Speaker 2:it bounces back yeah, it will bounce back, right, chris? Do you want to tell um the listeners of the conversation about sick today? I'm going to hold it up because you know, talk and see.
Speaker 1:Oh, thank you.
Speaker 2:You're welcome. I don't know why I think it was out, because I haven't got the proof copy. I've got the final copy.
Speaker 1:Yeah, that's what they did. Yeah, I think we ran out of proof, so they sent some final copies out. So, yeah, which is.
Speaker 2:Yeah, because I'm seeing it everywhere, as you explained didn't it?
Speaker 1:Well, publication date was a month ago and then it was put back because of the retailers. We've got a retailer slot in the supermarket, so we put it off to care inside.
Speaker 2:We like those.
Speaker 1:Which was fine. It's up to me if it's on moving day. So Sick to Death is about Emma, who's a young woman who lives in South london. She's got neurological disability, um, she lives in quite a gentrified area where everyone's middle class, fairly wealthy, but she lives in one of the last remaining cancer houses that still belongs to the local authority, um, and she can't work because of a condition. She's got a very, um, oppressive family who don't understand her, who don't believe her about her illness. Um, and things start to look up when she bumps into a neighbor who's a very handsome doctor and he offers her a way out of the pit that she's in. But it's quite extreme and it's a bit criminal. It's been called Hitchcockian at the start, but I don't know. It's difficult to categorize, but I'd call it a suspense novel.
Speaker 2:Yeah, no, it's definitely that there's no car chases okay, I've got two questions that I now ask about your book. Did you face any challenges in writing?
Speaker 1:sick to death could have been a personal, one could have been one about writing the book itself yeah, I think for me it was structure that I found really difficult. I found like getting the structure right was so tricky because I just didn't quite. I became a little bit obsessed with it, like with having the right midpoint and kind of how to fit it together. Um, that was one of the things I got really kind of hung up on and I think it, you know, I think it has worked, hopefully, um, and I think by the time I'd submitted it to agents I'd kind of got there almost yeah um, but yeah, it was quite difficult.
Speaker 1:I think that can be a tricky thing, can't it?
Speaker 2:story arc and if you're a planner, it can be, because I was um the last, literally the last week, last couple of weeks actually, I started writing it's, this is, it's like my, it's my other project that I do between Henley. Because Henley always keeps coming back, I have to keep pushing this other project to the side. But then I decided, um decided a few weeks ago that I need to just rewrite the outline and restructure it and stuff. And I think the last two days it was me staring at the story art because I'm a planner and because I do use the free art structure and I look at the story art. I've literally got the story art printed out in front of me and I was trying to work out where exactly is my midpoint?
Speaker 1:yeah, it's once you and if you I got so hung up on midpoints, I'd be watching television program and I'd be like where's the midpoint? And kind of, then you've all you generally know it's really interesting, um, but I think I'm a bit over my midpoint addiction.
Speaker 2:I got over it. Once I got through, I'm like, oh, there's a midpoint, right, let me just keep on going.
Speaker 1:Now I've got to the point where every television programme I want to like sort of shout to my partners. This is the midpoint.
Speaker 2:But you know what, though that is a good, I think there's nothing wrong with necessarily like watching TV programmes or even reading with that in mind, because you are a writer. And if you're a planner, and that's how you plan your books and you use that three-act structure, then I think inevitably you are going to be looking at things, thinking have they followed? It yeah.
Speaker 2:And then, especially if it's like a, it's one thing, it's a film, but if it's like a series, it's then trying to work out where exactly is the midpoint within that whole series, because you'll have it within an individual episode, but also you'll have it.
Speaker 1:You know we're watching one as well, yeah.
Speaker 2:So I don't think there's anything wrong. It's just the geeks in us isn't it. No, it's good, it's all good. Okay, so if you could spend an afternoon with any of your characters in Sick to Death, who would it be, and why?
Speaker 1:Oh, so halfway through the book there's a character called Lauren who Emma bumps into in the hospital and Lauren's got MS and she's hilarious and she just yeah, she just has a really like devil make her attitude. She doesn't care what people think about her. She's really funny. She's a beautician, so she could probably laminate an eyebrow. She's really hungry around, um, she makes jokes about doing an only fans for specialist services kind of thing. You know she's. She's quite sort of the disability she. She bats it off and kind of just gets on with life and I think she's a great she'd be fun you know what's always interesting about this character?
Speaker 2:not this character, this question, when I've asked it, very rarely has anyone said the main character. It's always, yeah, it's always some I say some background character, even someone who's just passing through, who they want to spend the afternoon with.
Speaker 1:Maybe it's because they're too much of the author in them and they couldn't cope with it.
Speaker 2:Yeah, I mean, when I think about this question for myself of the Henley series, I mean it changes. But recently I'm like I would spend the afternoon with Joanna, because Joanna knows, because she's the office manager. But she's more than the office manager. She knows stuff and I just think you would have a proper gossip session with her.
Speaker 1:She'll tell you everything, everything yeah, well, I just want to learn how to laminate an eyebrow you just want to know.
Speaker 2:All right, chris, let's do the last set of questions. Are you an introvert or extrovert, or a hybrid of the two?
Speaker 1:I think I'm definite hybrid. I think I'm quite loud and obviously you've worked out that I talk quite a lot um, but I really do need alone time. It's like essential to me to have time where it's just quiet, um, no background noise, books me and the dog. Um, and you're good?
Speaker 2:yeah, definitely okay, what challenge or experience, good or bad, in your life has shaped you the most?
Speaker 1:I think, in terms of a challenge, I would say my job. I think being a nurse has shaped me massively. I think it's one of those jobs that does change you, because you're seeing lots of things I think. I think my career has been a continual challenge and the nurse training was quite a rude awakening and I think it's shaped me in lots of ways. I think it's given me more understanding and empathy, um, it's helped me kind of understand people's psychology a little bit more as well. Um, but it's occasionally been a traumatic experience as well, not, yeah, not uncommonly.
Speaker 2:I think you know, looking back now and looking back at like my own, my own career and how I write like being able to work with so many different people like yeah, all different and be the same for you every, every background, if you have missed everything.
Speaker 1:It's been so instrumental in how I think about my characters and how I create my characters and give them their little arcs themselves, which is like I just know they're not flat there's a commonality, because I think as well, because I think with a solicitor or someone in the law you would be quite open, somebody like that you would walk in and I would just tell you anything you asked.
Speaker 1:You know, it's fine, I'm going to tell you, and that's the same with the nurse as well, kind of. So you kind of almost get this like access to people's depths which people wouldn't normally have, and also for, you know, like you're right, I've, you know, people of different like social, ethnic backgrounds, and an nhs hospital was it's just vast, you know, because often the attachment area with the hospital I worked at in south london had some really wealthy areas and some hideously poor areas where people's living conditions were just shocking, um, and a huge variety of people from different nationalities, which was really, you know, it's enriching and fascinating. So, yeah, and I wouldn't have had that without nursing at all, I wouldn't have met those people 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:oh my god, I was in such a toxic relationship. I would just tell myself to pack a case and go. Just get out. I would have ordered the train ticket, yeah, but I just persisted and stayed there for another five years. So that was stupid. So, yeah, that would be my advice Escape, escape, just to get gone.
Speaker 2:Okay, and what is your's? The one? I like to ask now what is your non-writing tip for writers? So not the. This is how you write, just a non-writing tip non-writing tip.
Speaker 1:Yeah, um, I think, I think to what what I've been talking about to watch television. I think you can't watch television and films like a writer, so you can watch them and look at the picture, and I think that's a really helpful thing to do. There's actually a book. It's called Into the Woods. I've forgotten. Is it John York?
Speaker 2:It is because I've got it. Literally, it's in front of me, I'm looking up Into the Woods, by John York.
Speaker 1:Yeah, it is because I've got it literally. It's in front of me. I'm looking up into the woods by John York, yeah, and that one he looks at film and so I think watch, and he looks at things like the godfather and kind of the structure of films like that, um, and I think it's really helpful.
Speaker 2:so, yeah, yeah, I saw him because when I was doing my MA and we'd every Wednesday or every couple of, maybe once a month, we'd have someone come in and be uh, they'd deliver like a masterclass or the guest lecturer. And he came in and he did one on the. There's probably one I'm so obsessed with it. He did one on the story art, the free act structure, and I got his book out. He was so good and I was just like no, yeah, so.
Speaker 1:I just want to. It's so relatable, so I think he used I. So I think yeah, I can't remember if he uses the devil wears prada as one or something which is quite um, definitely the Martian and the Godfather, but it's really interesting and to think about how other media can be like books as well, because they've got story arcs and character development and those kind of things and well, one of the other ones I offer I not I offer, like I recommend is another one screenwritingwriting Tricks for Authors by Alexandra Sokoloff, and it's so good.
Speaker 2:I go back to it all the time when I'm planning because she will, you know, take same thing take movies and break it down, you know, looking at the free act structure, looking at characters, looking at plot, looking at the three-act structure, looking at characters, looking at plot, and because it is literally, sometimes I just need a paint-by-numbers, I don't need a full I don't need a PhD description of it, I just need you to tell me what do I do on page 46.
Speaker 1:Yeah, and it's so good. Sometimes you do a story in your head, but it's hard to think how it fits. A three-act structure yeah, it's almost like you want to push it together, but so I think having a good understanding of that really does help, doesn't it?
Speaker 2:yeah, and so having it, having it explained to you in a really relatable. I said sometimes, sometimes there's nothing wrong with that. I said that paint by numbers. Someone said, um, online I don't know if it was on fred and I completely agreed. I understand they're talking about recipes and I said, listen, I just when I go online and I see you've made whatever, mate, you've made a cake and you're now going to give the recipe, can you just give the recipe? This is like. I don't need four paragraphs of what took you to this place emotionally before you made the cake. That's me. Just just give me the recipe.
Speaker 1:I don't need to know one thing that inspired me that was really helpful as well was I heard a podcast and it was Erin Kelly talking I think this was before I was stalking her and Annie Wilkes to her, um, and she said, like one of the things that she did when she wanted to become a writer, she got one of her favorite crime books, or some of her favorite crime books, and she just dissected them, um, read them not for pleasure, but as a kind of exercise, and I think that is a really interesting thing to do.
Speaker 2:I think so I know I agree you have to find ways to make it work for you, but also work in a way that you're comfortable with. I think sometimes you know, when we try and force our way into you know a different way of learning or think like, well, we need to learn this way, we need to be right this way because x person has done it this way. This is the structure we try and force ourself there. It doesn't work because it's not natural to us.
Speaker 2:So just find different ways yeah, yeah, definitely yeah, so finally, chris, where can listeners of the conversation find you online?
Speaker 1:so I'm a big instagram user. I'm a bit of an he is so sometimes it's yeah, I think, when I get days when I'm quite fatigued as well. It's a nice little window on the world, isn't it?
Speaker 1:yeah so I'm at chris bridges writer on there and on the same name on blue sky social, and then I'll start just on stack, because it's pretty much obligatory now, isn't it? You've got to have a sub stack. Everyone seems to have one, um, so I've got a sub stack that's called sick words, um, and I usually post on that about once a week, um, and post about me or the dog or being ill or whatever cry I'm following you on that.
Speaker 2:You know what made me laugh? Someone said, someone described Substack as only fan for writers and I'm just like. And I was like yeah, sounds about right, that's what it is.
Speaker 1:It's great, isn't it? Unless you subscribe to too many and then you get the email pings constantly. That's a bit annoying um, I did have.
Speaker 2:I did have to turn off my notification because I've, like I've subscribed to too many now and it's just like it's, it's just.
Speaker 1:It was just a constant of like randomness that I didn't really need to know yeah, so I usually recommend books on there as well, because I love recommending books.
Speaker 2:It's a huge thing for me, but I will put all your details in the show notes so people can come and find you. Yeah, and that'd be great, that would be great oh well, that just leaves me, chris Bridges, to say thank you so much for being part of the conversation.
Speaker 1:Oh, it's been an absolute joy.
Speaker 2:I've really enjoyed it 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.
