Tom Pepperdine interviews Tiffani Angus about her writing process. Tiffani discusses how she doesn't keep to a set writing schedule, her approach to research, and the difference between her fiction and non-fiction work.

You can find all of Tiffani's information on her website here: http://www.tiffani-angus.com/

And you can follow her on Twitter here: https://twitter.com/tiffaniangus

And you can find more information on the show and upcoming guests on the following links:

https://twitter.com/Therealwriting1

https://www.instagram.com/realwritingpro

https://www.facebook.com/therealwritingprocesspodcast

Hello, and welcome to The Real Writing Process.

I'm your host, Tom Pepperdine.

And this week, my guest is the author and scholar, Dr.

Tiffany Angus.

Now, if you think this podcast is getting high brow, don't worry, it's not.

In between seasons of this show, I've actually met a few of you fine listeners.

I understand that highbrow is not the way to go.

I get it.

I get you.

It's chill.

Tiffany is a lot of fun and occasionally writes porn.

We're good.

She's also written other stuff too.

Her debut novel, Threading The Labyrinth is a great piece of historical fantasy.

We discuss it a lot and it's definitely worth picking up.

But what's even more exciting from a writing podcast perspective is

that she has taught creative writing and has a PhD in creative writing

and is working on a book to help you write speculative fiction.

Useful stuff.

Interesting person.

Wonderful guest.

Shall I stop with the intro and get on with the interview?

Yes.

Let's go!

And I'm here with Tiffany Angus.

Tiffany, Hello.

Hello.

And thank you very much for being on the show.

Thanks for having me.

You're welcome.

And my first question as always, what are we drinking?

So I have orange gin and tonic.

I'm a bit of a connoisseur of flavored gins and I had to pick today, because

it was my birthday a couple days ago.

I must have a dozen different kinds of gin in my kitchen, and the orange

one was open, so we're having today.

Oh, okay.

Beautiful.

And it's August, it's still the, the last few days of summer.

It's getting cooler, but it's still not cold.

A nice, refreshing gin is always a pleasure on the show.

Lovely.

Yeah.

Lovely.

And where I'm talking to you now, is this your office?

Is this where you do all your writing?

It is.

This is the tiny room in our house that sort, I guess people called

a box room, and it's my office and it is full of, it's a mess.

This is, it's a good thing this isn't video, cuz it is a tip right now.

Behind me are shelves and shelves of books and toys.

I don't have children, I just have toys on the shelves.

Yes.

Yeah.

What those figurines called that I can see on your shelves there?

The little pop vinyls?

Pop vinyls.

Fun Funko Pops.

Yeah, Funko pops.

That's it.

Yeah.

They're all girls though.

Okay.

Only the badass girls.

I'm glad to see that they're not in their boxes and that they're actually out.

It's not that sort of must keep them as a collectible.

It's like no, they're toys.

No they're toys and I already broke one and replaced it.

I was very sad I busted one.

Is there one that is particularly rare that you're very proud of having?

I don't know if any of 'em were particularly rare, but I do love,

The first one I ever got was Antiope and that was the one that

I broke and I had to replace.

Wonder Woman's aunt.

And how long has this been your, the box room is the writing zone?

So funnily enough, we moved in here eight years and two days ago.

I, I know we moved in here on my birthday, so I know exactly how long.

So I've had this room for that long I finished my PhD in this room.

when I was a lecturer, I worked from here.

During Covid, this is where I taught from and this is where I write.

Okay.

And are you a morning, afternoon, or evening writer?

Man, I'm, a when-I-can writer, I've tried really hard.

I've really tried hard to be one of those people who gets up at 5:00

AM and writes, and that's just, it works for a day and then I say no.

But it depends on if I have a deadline or not.

Like right now, we're on deadline to try to finish a book.

My, my co-author and I on this one project.

And so like I wrote pretty much all day yesterday.

I tend to start, or right before lunch because I work out

and do stuff in the morning.

And so I'll do a little bit of writing, then I have lunch, then

I really go to town afternoon.

But last night I sat downstairs on the couch and worked till about midnight.

Oh, wow.

So it depends on, yeah, it depends on what's going on.

But I don't, I'm not really good at having a writing schedule.

I think I have delusions that one day I will, but it's never gonna work.

It's never gonna happen.

So I just accept that if something's due I can get it done.

Yeah.

Yeah.

And you mentioned there, you know, you're working deadline on

a co-written book at the moment.

Is this the first co-written project you've had?

No, it's not.

The first novel I ever wrote, which is on my hard drive.

That will never see the light of day.

The first thing I ever wrote, I wrote with one of my best friends back in the States.

We went to university together and then funnily enough, we kept

getting jobs in the same places.

And in 1998, I wanna say, we we both lived on either side of a very big cemetery.

This is in Dayton, Ohio.

And she took me for a walk through the cemetery one day.

I'd never been there.

And there was one of the newer headstones was a pyramid.

Oh!

It had hieroglyphics on it.

Oh, cool.

And we were at dinner later and I went, Oh, you know what?

I just thought, what if the hieroglyphics were a clue to something?

And then right there we started planning out this whole novel with

three different timelines and all these characters and all this stuff.

And we wrote it on and off for about 10 years.

Had an agent look at it like, we got some attention and then

we knew we needed to fix things.

And then she moved to LA and not very long after I moved to the UK and it,

we look at, it's our trunk project.

It's the thing that helped us figure out to write better.

Okay.

Nice.

So is this been as fun a writing?

I, I assume it's not taken 10 years?

No, it's taken about a year.

It's been different because when I wrote that book with Angel,

we would be in the same place.

We would be in, in my office in my extra room in my house there.

And I would type and she would walk back and forth behind me.

And then I would write this one timeline and she wrote the other

timeline and then we would trade.

So we would have a lot of in-person meetings.

But this project I'm working on now, I'm here in, in England and Val is in Ireland.

And so we have Zoom meetings and we talk about stuff, but a lot of it is okay,

I've posted it on Google Docs, let me look at it, I'll give you feedback.

So we don't, we're not in person, but we still had a lot of fun.

It's been a lot of fun to write.

It's not fiction.

Yeah, it's nonfiction.

It's about writing.

And it's been fun to make it sound like us, cuz we tend

to make a lot of silly jokes.

So it's got silly jokes and it has puns and et cetera.

Excellent.

That's made it fun.

That's good.

And so how did this project start off?

Was this you guys having a conversation?

Was there an inspiration sparker, like we should write a book about writing?

No.

So a lockdown happened and in spring 2020 Easter Con went online.

And right before Easter Con I had done an online festival that was

put together, and I did a workshop about writing historical fantasy.

And so at Easter Con I said, hey, I'll do the workshop.

And I did the workshop.

And Francesca from Luna Press, she said, hey, let's have lunch.

So we had like little avatar people lunch on our computers.

And she said, oh, we had a writing book, but it was Gareth Powell's writing

book that's now gone to another house.

And she says, we need a writing book.

I saw your workshop, it was great.

Do you wanna write a book for us?

And I said, that would be awesome.

Let me talk to my friend who, cuz Val writes I wanna say

Science fictiony science fiction?

He's more like military science fiction, space opera, robots

and all that kind of stuff.

And so I talked to him and I said, hey, here's just cool

idea, let's do this together.

And he said, yeah.

And so the working title is Spec Fic for Newbies: A Guide to Writing

Various Sub Genres of Science Fiction, Fantasy and Horror.

And I wanna add "with puns" on the end of that.

But he doesn't like that right now.

I'll convince him.

And so there's three chapters and in each chapter there's eight to 10 sub genres.

So it's everything from big dumb objects to military science fiction

to historical fantasy, steampunk, body horror psychological horror, et cetera.

And in each section we give a short history.

Things that are cool about it, things to watch out for, and two activities.

So it's for somebody who's new to writing that certain sub genre.

And we split 'em between us and then some of them we've written together

and it's just been so much fun.

Except a couple ti a couple of them have been a little disturbing.

Like, he did splatter punk last week.

He said, I need a shower now.

That was just, that wasn't fun to write.

Yeah.

And was it fun researching that as well?

Yeah.

Cause there's this thing where you think I know how to write this, but I don't

really know where some of the stuff came from, or who coined the term steampunk?

I had to find out where that term came from.

And so we've, for the short history, so each of the sections is only two

to 3000 words, so it's not huge.

Because there are whole books out there that talk about the history of

fantasy and science fiction, et cetera.

And so we condense everything.

But it's been a lot of fun to find stories and novels and movies.

Yeah, so we mentioned a lot of movies too.

And it's just been fun to figure out how to make the history interesting

enough and fun enough to read.

And give somebody a context.

Okay, here's how this started, here's where it is now.

Yeah.

Like sword and sorcery changed a lot.

And that's one of those things where you could write forever and ever.

And holding back and cutting it down and slimming it.

Editing it down has also been a bit of a challenge.

Yeah.

And I can imagine there's definitely a lot you can go into on all of those subjects.

Huge amounts.

Yeah.

Yeah.

But yeah, it is a great concept cuz I think people who do like genre fiction and

just not sure where a story fits and being able to sort of find all these subsets.

And just knowing some of the tropes and that fine line between trope and cliche,

where you want something that the reader can go, Oh yeah this is this genre.

This is my wheelhouse.

This is why I like reading this thing.

Yeah.

Rather than, Oh, this is something that's done to death and I've

seen this again and again.

But yeah, having that sort of mapped out or even just having a touchpoint

to say, if you like this you can now explore and you know the genre.

Yeah, because a lot of the sections are actual sub genres.

Yeah, but then in a couple cases, we've taken more tropes.

So we'll have a section on vampires and one on zombies, for example.

And inside that there's things that like, like we all know about zombies,

but we don't all know where the actual the trop came from in the first place.

Yeah.

Way before, Romero and before that movie in the 1930s, like before all that,

where it came from during colonization.

And it's fun to, to explain it and to show where everything overlaps

because it's so difficult to say, one story is exactly one thing.

So we have a lot of references to other stuff.

And things have come up that we, I like, I didn't expect to be writing about how to

write a sex scene for Paranormal Romance.

I get through a whole section on how to write a sex scene.

Yeah.

Did not plan that.

Fun to do, or?

Yeah well, I've written them before, so I enjoy writing them.

But I know it's one of those things that a lot of people don't quite know

how to approach, and so I thought, Yeah, I'll put that in there.

Yeah.

And isn't there like the bad sex award that you know, very

notable writers who clearly don't know how to write a sex scene.

Yeah.

And yeah.

And if you go on TikTok, it seems that every uh, fantasy

book is written by Sarah J Mass.

Uh...

Really?

Um, well, my wife describes it as fairy porn.

And yeah, just that's generally this, the subset.

It's very Mills and Boon fantasy.

Wow.

Taking Twilight to the next level.

So that's funny you mention that cuz my friend Amy, who, she works

at Waterstones in Cambridge.

We were talking, she said, and she was talking about book tok cuz

they're doing a thing with book tok.

She says, I didn't realize this was a thing right now.

It's horny elves or horny fairies is the thing.

And I thought, that's a new sub genre to think about.

So yeah, for the next book.

And uh, you know, sort of a mutual friend and a friend of the show J.

L.

Worrad.

Yes.

Who did a very culturally interesting and thoughtful and

intellectual horny elf book.

It's still, can't get my head round how intellectual that book was

considering it was a very horny elf.

It was brilliant.

It's sitting on my shelf.

I haven't opened it yet, sorry James.

It's yeah, it's definitely worth your time.

And not for the, the things that you think, but also for the

things that you don't expect.

But yeah, he's just a good writer in an annoying way.

That's just, you don't expect the guy that we know, yeah,

writing the stuff that he writes.

I was like, Oh yeah.

Oh, there's a brain here.

There's a drinker, there's a drinker we know.

And a brain behind and a dancer.

Yes.

And a bad karaoke singer, but oh, I mean, a wonderful karaoke singer.

Anyway, we love James.

Uh, moving on.

Back to your writing.

Sorry, James.

That's right.

But speaking about your fiction.

Yeah.

So when you have an idea, when you're developing a story, do you like to

start with a scenario, a character or a world that you'd like to explore?

I tend to start with scenarios.

A lot of ideas I get, and this is gonna sound really woo woo and

strange, but you know that time like between when you're awake and asleep?

Yeah.

That is when I get a lot of ideas.

I'll suddenly get an image in my head and the next morning I still

remember the image, I can't shake it.

And it's just weird.

And I think, what would that mean?

And that's where I start going from there.

I don't tend to start with characters unless I do this thing that I love

to do where I take dead people from history and mess with their lives.

Okay.

Then I have somebody to start with to play with.

Yeah.

But I'm not a big secondary world builder, so I don't start with that.

I might start with a time in history, so world building in that sense,

but not fantasy world building.

So yeah, I waiver between some weird scenario or somebody who's been dead for

hundreds of years who I wanna resurrect.

And with that, you've been working on a fiction book this summer as well?

Yeah.

So I'm working on, in between trying to finish Spec Fic for Newbies, I've

been working on more stories set in the Threading the Labyrinth garden.

Nice.

To be part of a collection that is all garden themed.

And I'm also finishing a novel that I've been trying to finish for a few years now.

But it's apocalyptic, post apocalyptic, that I started way

before Covid, so I'm allowed.

Cause I love apocalyptic fiction.

I read The Stand when I was like 11.

And I've always wanted to destroy the world and rebuild it again.

And so that's what that book is.

Nice.

Cuz I was gonna ask about researching history when you're saying people

from history and with Threading the Labyrinth obviously is,

that garden throughout history.

And do you like researching historical periods?

And do you just go online and find resources online or do you

actually have books and other resources that you turn to?

So two things.

A, Threading was a different animal, I'll get to that in a second.

B, I'm also working on, it's basically costume porn.

Literally porn.

But in writing not like a drama that you filmed.

You're not filming it?

No.

Okay.

No, I'm not filming it.

Set in the 18th century, so I'm doing research for that.

So yeah, I, when I did Threading the Labyrinth, it was my PhD project.

It was my dissertation.

And so I spent years doing research.

And because of what it was, because it's about 400 years in English garden, I got

to go to gardens all over the country.

I went to the Imperial War Museum when they had an exhibit on the

Ministry of Food and Victory Gardens during World War ii.

I went to William Morris's house.

I went to the V&A, I went to, I went everywhere to do all this research.

And I also have, behind me on the shelves of craziness, I have four big, giant

full shelves of gardening history books.

So when I'm sitting down to do the stories for the collection, I'll go

through there and find something.

Or I've done the same thing when I've been invited to anthologies

and I suddenly think, okay, I can do something about gardens.

Let me pick up this book and just go through it and see what ideas I get.

So I tend to do that.

I use Pinterest for visual stimulation, I dunno where that came from.

For visual stuff.

So I have a bunch of different Pinterest boards for different

time periods for the garden.

Yeah.

And I've started a new one for clothing for 18th century clothing.

For this new project.

So I like to have the physical stuff handy.

I can't, I don't use Kindle for nonfiction research books usually.

I remember where something is in a book physically.

I'll remember, oh, it was about halfway through on the left side at the bottom.

And I can find it again and I can't do that on Kindle.

I'll use online if I can't get somewhere.

But I like to actually go see the thing.

Yeah.

And I suppose actually going to gardens as well and actually getting that sense of

being in nature and the feel of the space.

Cause it certainly comes across in your writing the way you describe the garden.

It's very evocative and if you've actually walked a lot of gardens,

that would certainly have helped.

Yeah.

I took photographs.

I have, I still have, I dunno, a couple thousand photographs from

all the different gardens I went to.

And it would be everything from, here's the layout to here up close of flowers

to this is what it looks like during this season, especially walled gardens.

I'm a complete walled garden nerd, so anytime I could find a walled garden,

I'd go straight for that and take all the pictures I could of everything.

Yeah.

Are there places that you are looking to visit for your 18th century novel?

No, cuz I can't get to Italy.

Oh, but I can, weirdly, because of the 18th century being what it was,

I can think about the research I did on 18th Century Life and Gardens here

and take some of it and move it over.

But I will have to do some Italian specific research.

Yeah.

It'll just take more books and visiting stuff online.

But because what I'm doing isn't, how do I say this?

Because the project I'm working on is not really focused on outside, it's more,

I guess people could have sex outside.

It's more of you know, interpersonal relationships of a very intimate nature.

I don't need to know all the big stuff and what was going on politically,

et cetera, et cetera, so much.

People's bodies, were very similar.

Yeah.

Okay.

And completely differently, the postapocalyptic where you don't

really need to I suppose you can go outside at the moment,

that's, that's enough research.

But I guess you know, fully creating a postapocalyptic world must take

a completely different approach.

How have you approached that?

That one is, it's actually set in the States.

Okay.

So it's set in the kind of place that I'm familiar with, and I'm familiar

with the strip malls and where a school would be and where a supermarket would

be and what things would look like.

And so I've made a bit of an amalgam in my head of different places.

I never name the exact city where it's set cause I want it to be a bit generic.

And it's in a quasi gated community, which is also a bit generic.

Yeah.

It's not you know, one of the really fancy ones.

And so luckily I can use that from having grown up in the States.

I can use that.

And it's because I use most everything is set in a neighborhood.

I don't have to worry so much about other stuff.

There are scenes early where the protagonist is out in the world

and has to deal with things.

And I do have a lot happen in a hospital.

Luckily, one of my closest friends is a nurse.

Okay.

And so I asked her about the drug machines in hospitals.

I needed to know how they worked.

So right I could find somebody who could give me the low down

on, on that kind of stuff.

Which is helpful.

I had to like, I've always set it like a near future and then after the

pandemic I realized I really do need to at least hint that this happened.

Cuz one of the characters is like 19.

And when she was 12, the pandemic hit.

And so she talks to her friend about when we were 12 and all this stuff happened.

So we know that we're a few years in the future.

Because I think it's weird now to not reference it.

Yeah.

That makes sense.

And with uh, writing historical fiction and pornography and apocalyptic fiction,

in different genres, do you find that your general approach to mapping out and

outlining these stories are quite similar?

You have a consistent approach to your projects?

Or are they tailor made?

Oh gosh.

So with Threading, because it was several years long and because it was, because

it was what it was as my PhD project.

It was one of those things where I had to do like, try something

out, see what failed, see what worked to just keep going at it.

And I was doing research as I was writing it.

Plus I was doing research for the nonfiction part of the dissertation.

So I was doing a lot of other stuff.

I wasn't just sitting in a room and writing a book over a year.

It was like a five year process.

But doing that and then having it done.

And then thinking, okay, it's finished, how do I fix it?

Quote unquote air quote, fix it to make it publishable.

Because something that you do for a PhD and something you do for the

market are two different things.

And I had to start thinking about a little bit differently.

And so because I had to reverse engineer the whole project, it has gotten me

to think of how I do the next project more consciously from the beginning.

Yeah.

Because the apocalyptic book, I started it before I ever started the PhD, so

it's been hanging around for a decade.

And again, I didn't plan it out the right way at the beginning, cause

I didn't know what I was doing.

And now I'm going back and having to.

I started using Scrivener in May and I'm like, let me make this make sense.

And so it's something I wish I had done from the beginning, but now

I've gone in and reorganized it all.

So, I know that it is making sense, cuz there's like a parallel

timeline, there's two characters.

But projects from here on out, I am sitting down and saying, Okay, let me

plan this a little bit more carefully so I don't find myself in the weeds wondering

what I'm doing, hating myself, et cetera.

So if we call it the Italian book.

Yeah, let's call it the Italian book.

So with the Italian book, have you mapped out an outline for the plot

before you start writing chapters?

Yeah.

Yeah.

I'm working on an outline.

The Italian project is gonna be, I think, a collection of novellas.

Okay.

So a bit longer than a short story.

Longer one handed reads, so yeah, I've actually, I'm such

a, I'm such a stationary nerd.

I went to the Rymans or whatever it was, to the store.

Yeah.

And I got one of those spiral bound notebooks that has all the sections in it.

Yes.

So I'm like, each section is a different story, a different novella.

So I know Oh, how to put this together, because otherwise with the nonfiction

book going on and with the apocalyptic book going on, and with other

projects I have, I get overwhelmed.

So if I have everything in one notebook, I feel much more in control of it.

So, yeah, it's, if I plan it out then I have more time to think

about what my character's doing and what they want and what they need.

Yeah.

And if I can get that vocalized up front, then I can sit down

and I can write really fast.

If I know what's going on, what a character's gonna do.

I can pound out words really quickly.

It's when I'm faffing and like walking around in a dark room with a blindfold

that it just takes me forever.

Yeah.

And writing short stories and novellas and novels.

Cause where I've spoken to short story writers before, it's often just a

little deconstruction of one concept, and it can be a couple of scenes and

you just exploring a simple theme.

And illustrating that, quite simply.

With a novel, you can be doing multiple themes, real long character arcs, the

characters at the end are very different from where they are at the start.

There's a full story mapped out.

And there could be multiple challenges that they're overcoming where, it could

be just one challenge in a short story.

With a novella, how do you approach that, in, as you say, it's slightly

longer than a short story, so you're not just having that very simplistic

couple of characters exploring one idea and it's not as expansive as a novel.

So how do you map that out?

What do you want to achieve in a novella?

Yeah, so this particular project, because it's a series of novellas, it's

different from a standalone novella.

So like your standalone novella means, Okay, I have this idea and it's not gonna

fit inside the arbitrary parameters of submission guidelines for X market where

they say 5,000 or 7,000 words or 10,000 words, and you're like, I can't do it

in that, but I can do it in 15 or 20.

Because it's a series, I'm allowed to play that evil trick of stopping

on a like a bit of a cliff hanger.

So I'm thinking of it as a novel.

I'm making arm gestures people at home, I'm so sorry.

I'm doing like the big Rainbow Arms.

Yeah.

So I'm thinking of it as a novel in that sense, but more as episodes.

So it's much more episodic, almost like each one is a long chapter.

Yeah.

Yeah.

And so there is like a through line for each one.

There is a tiny arc for each one, but it might just be that, this person has gotten

to this place they need to go to and dealt with this little problem, but behind

him is this bigger thing that they want.

Kinda like the show, Alias.

Yeah?

Which, yeah, that was the first time I realized that was how TV worked

and why that was a problem sometime.

Because that show was so great, but, this is so off topic, so I remember watching

Alias and loving it, and every episode ended on this big cliff hanger and there

was this big thing in the background that everybody was working toward and what they

did after the first series, because it was popular enough and because of the people

running the show and the network said, Hey, we want more people to watch it.

They started making everything way more easy for people to

come in and just watch one.

Yeah.

And it changed the way everything happened.

Yeah.

Instead of it being more of a continuation, more episodic in that sense.

And so that's made me think about this more differently.

When you talk about episodic and multi characters you track with their own story

arc, I instantly think Game of Thrones.

And although it's a different genre and hopefully a less controversial ending and,

um, unnecessary rape, just get rid of it.

Mine will all be consensual sex.

Excellent.

Yeah.

But yeah, those books were very expansive with multiple points of view.

And that overarching plot, but everyone having their own journeys.

It's a lot of balls to juggle though, as you're trying to write something

that is gonna be eight, 900 words.

Yeah.

Rather than thinking, Okay, here's one like, why do I keep doing hand gestures?

Is it a little crab?

Little, Yeah.

And in my language, I'm like, a little poop, this little poop.

Yeah.

So it's a different animal from doing something like Game of Thrones.

I can't keep that much in my head at a time.

Yeah.

And I completely forgive Martin for not finishing because that's

just a lot of stuff to deal with.

Yeah.

, Yeah.

That's another thing I was going to ask about actually,

are you a prolific note taker?

Or do you try and keep it all in your head?

No, I take notes.

And I take notes by hand, longhand, because I remember it better.

Whereas, everybody else like types out their notes or they write

all of their appointments and everything down on their phones.

I have to have it written down in paper, so I remember it.

And so all my notes are there.

Which unfortunately, leads the problem of having pieces of paper all over my

office and trying to keep track of them all and telling myself, Oh, I'll keep

all these in the purple folder, and then suddenly they're all on the floor

because I threw them on the floor as I finished and then I have to figure out

which one's going in the purple folder.

Yeah.

So I do keep some stuff in my head, but I will get to the point where I write

it down because I know I will forget it.

And as you get older kids, that really happens even when you don't want it to.

Do your suduko.

Yeah.

Keep your brain sharp!

And we mentioned earlier that how you write when you can.

It can be, you know, sort of just before lunch, it can be up to midnight.

Do you try and write a section of a story?

So do you write to a plot beat or an end of chapter, or do you just

leave it mid scene and just go, Okay, that's enough for today.

I'm out, it's not really working anymore.

Or do you have an opinion on word counts?

When you are writing, do you have a minimum that you try to achieve?

So, just like how I can't seem to get into the schedule of writing at

a certain time every day, I've never been able to get into the schedule

of, okay, I have to do this many words today, this many words tomorrow.

Cuz something about having that pressure on me and something always happens.

Like I either have to go to the store and get something or, something

happens, something interrupts life.

And so it's better for me not to have that guilt hanging over my head.

So when I write, I tend to write in spurts, which I know sounds lovely.

Like before, when I was, when I was still working at the university, I

didn't get any writing done until there would be a bank holiday.

And my partner would go out of town and I would have three days to myself

and I would have just frozen food in the house and I wouldn't shower for

three days and I'd write 20,000 words.

So I'd do that kind of thing.

So that has unfortunately ruined me for being organized in the sense of,

okay, I write to the end of a scene or end of a beat or end of something.

I'll just write till I get to a spot where I think, I don't know what happens next

and I need to think about it a little bit.

Or if I do know where I'm going, like you say I will write to the end of a

thing cuz I've planned it that far.

Yeah.

But yeah, I try not to, I try not to leave in the middle of a scene, cuz

I'm afraid I'll come back and not remember what I wanted to happen.

I'll write myself notes.

I'll say, write this thing tomorrow.

This is what happens next, so I don't forget.

That was literally just gonna be my next question.

At the end of the day, do you have a little summary for yourself and when

you start a writing session, do you have to reread a significant amount

or is it just you have a summary?

Oh, I'll have a little summary.

Yeah.

I don't tend to, I don't tend to go back and reread until I start

editing and start messing with it.

I try not to do that thing where I know a lot of writers will sit down

and read everything they wrote up to that point and then go from there.

And I just feel like every day it would just get longer and longer to read that.

Yeah.

So I'll write myself notes.

I will say, this is what happens next, I don't know where this person is.

Double check your notes to find out where that person is,

because they should be here.

Yeah.

And yeah, especially when you're dealing with something

that has so many characters.

It was like the apocalyptic book is in a neighborhood and so I've

named a lot of the neighbors and I keep giving them different names.

So finally I made myself a list of characters and their addresses

so I knew where they were.

And what their kids' names were, and so I could find people again.

Yeah.

So I'll write myself those notes.

Remember who lives across the street and you have to have that person come over.

And then I'll go look it up.

That's cool.

Yeah, I was gonna say that when you've got that sort of enclosed

or a finite space, a neighborhood.

Yeah.

Do you ever draw maps, so you actually have that physical

and visual representation?

I have done that before.

This map I mostly have in my head cuz it's based on a neighborhood that I knew.

But yeah, I have done that before, I've done it for this one once because there's

a fire in one of the houses and I had to figure out which house was near and

who lived there, as I couldn't remember.

So I had like little boxes on a page with the addresses and the people's names

to figure out whose house burned down, which seems so mean to my characters.

You're just a drawing on the page, sorry about your house.

And you mentioned earlier how you can write until you're not

quite sure what happens next.

Yeah.

You need a bit of a thinking time.

If you get really stuck, if you really can't think, those uninspired periods,

is it a waiting game of just, okay I'll just wait for the creative part of my

brain to work through that problem.

Or do you have any processes that like help move it along?

Do you do writing exercises?

Do you go for walks?

To just start day drinking and hope for the best?

How do you get through the uninspired periods?

Two things.

One thing, when I was teaching writing, one thing I would tell

my students, waiting for the muse, you're gonna be waiting all day.

It's not gonna happen.

If you do the thing, it like changes your brain chemistry and

then you can do more of the thing.

So sit down and even if you write, this is garbage, this sucks, I can't believe

I'm doing this, blah, blah, blah.

I went to the store.

And it'll start to help your brain.

And that creativity is problem solving.

So when you sit down with nothing, if I said to a student, write me a story.

They're gonna go, meugh.

I dunno what to write about.

But if I say, write me a story about a dog that can talk that's on another

planet that's waiting on a train.

They'll go, ooh.

Yeah.

And their brain tries to figure out how to fix it.

And so when I'm stuck, I will either start asking myself questions, and I

try to stick with the yes and no's.

Because if I ask myself open-ended questions sometimes I get stuck.

But I will also do things to let my, I call it my back brain.

If, and I've had this before, especially like on that first novel I worked

on with Angel, there was this one thing I knew something was missing.

And it was driving me crazy and I said to her, something's missing.

I don't know what it is, something's missing.

And so I would go driving.

I can't drive here in the UK yet.

I know that's sad, I still have to get my license.

I have my learners permit, but I haven't got my license.

But I lived near the country and so I would just go out driving.

Or here, I'll go for a walk or I'll go do dishes.

I'll do something mindless and my back brain will figure it out because it was

always there, it was just hiding from me.

And I remember that day I called her, I said, Are you home?

I'm coming over.

And I walked into her kitchen and I said, I figured it out.

We did the jumping up and down and yaying.

Yeah.

And I said, Okay, now I have to go home and write.

But yeah, so it's either start asking questions and kind of

interrogate my way out of the hole.

Yeah.

Or go do something else and distract myself and let my brain take a break.

Yeah, and it will come up with the solution if there's a particular

gnarly thing I can't figure out.

Nice.

And question I like to delve in with all guests on the show is imposter syndrome.

And I used to have like, have you ever had it to realizing that

actually all writers have it.

It's, and it's always there.

Is there a particular point that you, it really hits in a writing project?

Because I know sometimes, when you first start, you all excited

and it's like getting the words down, like all nice and creative.

Do you get to a certain, like word count or second act, third act,

where the doubt creeps in and you begin to lose faith in a project.

And how do you push past that to complete?

It's hard.

Threadings been on the shelf for two, two years and I still have been

imposter syndrome about that book, and it's been published for two years.

It's a weird thing to ask because I spent so many years teaching newer writers at

university, and so I would have to talk to them about this exact thing and be really

honest about them and say, I do this too.

I need you guys to not do this because you have a deadline.

But I know where you're coming from because I do it all the time myself.

And so one of my mantras I came up with, which is, it's obnoxious

as hell, but it's, why not me?

You know, you see other people with success or they publish something

or they do whatever, and you start to think that they have this golden

shine, but then you know them and you know they're just a schmo like you.

You go to a pub, you know their secrets, you know they're like just a nerd.

And so I think, then why not me?

I've worked hard.

I've done this thing.

And that's not even just writing.

I think everybody does that in life and yeah and there's that funny little thing

that goes around that's like everybody, everybody feels like this all the time.

Like we all think we're still 12.

We're all faking it till we make it.

And so I try to get outta my own head and think about that stuff.

And I do look at my little shelf of books and anthologies

and I think I've done this.

People wouldn't buy it if they thought it was shit.

So that's a good thing.

That, that kind of proves to me that I'm not a loser.

It's so hard.

Man, writers, we are sad and pathetic, messy things.

We seriously are, we are a mess.

And it feels like so much of our life is chasing that, gold star sticker.

And for somebody to say, Oh, you did a good job and you're like, thank you.

Because you don't hear it often enough.

And that's why it's so great.

I have so many writer friends and I read their books.

I say, Oh, this was great.

I love this.

This was awesome.

Cause I know what it feels like when somebody reminds you

that you can actually do this.

Yeah, yeah.

Absolutely.

And it's one of the gifts of this show, I think, is being able to talk to

writers about it and seeing that shared experience that you all have and yeah,

being able to publish this out in the world so other writers can listen to

it and go, Oh, okay, it's not just me.

Yeah.

Because it is such a isolating experience, it's so insular.

But then I guess like working with Val on the Hot To write Spec Fic book is

quite a liberating experience because you are riffing off each other and

having someone that spur each other on.

Yeah, exactly.

And we're using our experience and there's that thing where you start to think,

who am I to write a book about writing?

And I'm like, I'm somebody who has a PhD in writing and spent 10 years as

a university lecturer, and yeah, I know what the hell I'm talking about.

And he's the same.

So that's who I am to do this.

I've built my own expertise and my own experience in this.

And I'm, right now another project I'm working on building is to

actually build online writing courses.

With somebody else, with somebody else who's also got a PhD and

is also a published author.

And so we're working on building the courses.

And that keeps coming in.

I keep thinking, why would somebody like, buy a course that I did?

And I'm like, because I did it for a living, because I've done this stuff.

Yeah, why not me?

And going more onto the editing side now.

Yeah.

Cause it's,

I love editing.

The old adage, writing is rewriting.

With your own work, you just said there that you love rewriting, do

you like to write complete drafts?

So just you go, Okay, that's draft number one, now I'm

gonna rewrite the whole thing.

Or do you like to rework individual scenes and go, no, I just wanna get this section

right before I move on to the next one?

I tend to redo individual scenes.

When I'm working on a short story, I'll try to get through to the end of a draft.

So one of the mantras I taught my students was, we can edit shit on

a page, but not shit in your head.

And so I'm a firm believer in just writing the crappiest first

draft because get it on the page, we can do something with that.

And I spent so many years working with writers that it's really honed my editing

chops and I look at my own stuff much better than I did at the beginning.

Yeah.

And so with a short story, I'll get through to the end and then I'll

go back and start messing with it.

But with a novel because it's just such a big monster, I'll get to the end and

then that's when I think, okay now.

Because as you, as you write a book, you discover things.

And something will happen.

I think, oh, I've gotta go back and add this thing to this earlier chapter.

I'll write myself a note and then I'll do it after I finish the whole draft.

I try to.

The apocalyptic book is a bit a different animal, cuz it has been

built in so many different pieces.

It was originally, each chapter was a different month and then I realized

that wasn't gonna work and I made it each one a different season.

I'm like, no, that's not gonna work either.

So I've restructured it.

I don't know how many times now.

So if I ever finish it, it'll be a miracle.

But other stuff, Yeah, I'll work on a section or a scene at a time.

It's just easier that way.

Otherwise you get overwhelmed.

Absolutely.

And when you are going through your sections, do you like

to read it off the screen?

I know some people like to print it off and make annotations.

So when you're looking on what to improve, how do you mark it up?

How do you identify that's what's not working and that the pace is off?

Every project is a little bit different.

So when I wrote the book, it's called The Heart Scare, by the way, that first

novel I wrote a million years ago.

When we wrote the Heart Scare, it had three different timelines

and all these different places.

And so we got to the point where we had note cards and each scene was a different

color for a different POV character.

And in the corner we wrote like where they were, whether there

was peril or not, all the things.

And used my living room and laid 'em out on the floor to figure out

what order to put things back into.

So we did the physical thing of that.

When I do short stories, I tend to print them because it doesn't

take a whole lot of anchor paper.

And I'll tend to edit on the page I'll write.

And that's what I used to do with students until Covid happened.

And then, I couldn't print and I couldn't see people, so I got much

better at doing it on the screen.

Because I was a proofreader for a while.

I was an editor.

I edited and wrote textbooks for several years.

Yes.

And so I got used to writing on proofs, but I've had to

shift to doing it on a screen.

Yeah, so for books, I'll write notes because it's too much to print it out.

So I might draw out a structure.

Yeah.

Was there another part of that question I lost?

I don't think so.

We have been drinking a fair amount of gin.

Oh, I haven't had that much.

Oh, I'm on my third.

I'm just-

Are you?

I'm actively listening and just constantly re topping.

Oh, I'm trying not to make noise on the microphone, so I

haven't had that much of mine.

I've got a directing mic, so I can just like tip my head to one side, you're not

even hearing the glass, the ice tinkle.

I should have got a straw.

Yeah.

This is why I brought the bottle to the interview.

Yeah, I was gonna ask this with that editing, do you read

aloud your work to yourself?

Never.

You just, no.

No.

No?

I know a lot of people say, and they say, oh, you should read your work aloud.

Thousands of years ago, we told stories orally.

We didn't have written language or what have you, or a lot

of people couldn't read.

So we told stories and that was a natural thing.

We don't do that now.

I know a lot of people listen to audio books, which is cool.

They put me to sleep, but I can't listen to them.

For me, reading something aloud to find stuff is really artificial.

Okay.

So I don't tend to do it, which if other people wanna do it fine,

it's just not my, it's not my jam.

No, that's all right.

At all.

I think it, it's good to have that opposing view, because recently I have

had a lot of people you know, I just put everyone's opinions out and then it's

the listeners to make their own judgment.

No, but it's good to hear a published writer who has taught creative writing,

who's writing a book on creative writing, who has like multiple books

out, that and multiple stories out.

And doesn't read them aloud because yes, you do hear that as a piece of advice.

It's just proving the point that you don't have to, and that if you don't

read your story aloud, it doesn't mean that you're not a writer.

It doesn't mean that it's not gonna be any good.

No, not at all.

Yeah.

It's just a different process.

So yeah, I'm actually quite happy when I do hear the same piece

of advice over and over and then someone goes, Yeah, I don't do that.

Poetry's different.

Poetry's more of a performance thing, it makes sense.

But for prose it just doesn't make a lot of sense to me.

And as far as finding mistakes, I pride myself on, in handing in like the cleanest

copy I can, as far as like typos and spelling and all that kind of stuff.

It's sometimes the bigger things that I can't see anymore, that's

when I need somebody else.

That's why I need my editor or somebody to say okay, you know.

This transitions lovely onto the next question, which is once you've

got the story the best it can in isolation, who reads it next?

Does it go to an editor directly or do you have Beta readers?

Is it your partner?

Who's the first person to read it once you are happy with it?

Okay my partner, he's literate, but he doesn't read fiction.

I think he might have read like one erotica story I wrote.

I don't know if he's ever read anything else.

That's cool.

He's got his own stuff.

No, that's fine.

Plus, I don't think, and I tell my students this all the time, unless your

mom or your dad is actually a writer or in publishing your mom's gonna

love everything that comes outta you.

Yeah.

So don't don't use them for a beta reader.

But I have a writing group that meets in London.

And when I lived in London, I would go in person and now we've gone

online because of the pandemic.

And so if I have something, I'll give it to them.

If it's the time of year that's right, I will give it to Milford.

I go to Milford every other year.

The Milford writers workshop up in Wales.

And so they've seen a lot of my stuff.

They saw a first bit of the novel of Threading when it first was being created.

And what they saw has nothing to do with what the book ended up being at all.

Yeah.

They said, no, this isn't working.

They'll see it and then like for Unsung, George, Dan saw at Unsung and

I got, they said, you need to work on the theme here and this, you need

to get rid of this POV character.

And so the big stuff we worked on together.

So I don't have a single person I send it to.

I have different groups of people depending on what's going on in the

world and where I am in it and where the schedule, the year is, et cetera.

Yeah.

That's great.

And with your academic background, obviously your first published novel being

your PhD project, your experience with editing must be like slightly different.

Cause with that it's I need to do what my tutor says, because I want to get my PhD.

So I feel there's quite a power balance there.

Did you feel that you could argue the point with that editing process

or, and how's your view of editing as you've also taught creative writing?

Can it still sting?

Can it still be, oh, damnit they're right, or they're wrong and I'm gonna write a

strongly worded letter why they're wrong.

Or is it just I need that input and they're there to make it

better and I crave that feedback.

What's your approach to an editor?

When I wrote Threading, I had two supervisors.

My main, my first supervisor was Farah Mendlesohn, and she

mainly supervised me through the nonfiction, through the dissertation.

My dissertation was space and time and gardens.

So it was like theories of space and time in fictional gardens and

in real gardens and time travel and all that kind of stuff.

My second supervisor was for the fiction.

And unfortunately I got a few of 'em pregnant.

I kept going through second supervisors.

They just kept, they kept going on mat leave and then one quit

the day after I first met her.

It got to the point where Farah said, Do not breathe near any

of my other lecturers, cuz they keep going on Mat leave.

And I ended up with Una McCormack, amazingly.

She ended up being my final second supervisor who got me through the

end, the really the bulk, middle, and end of writing that book.

Oh man, she's really good at planning everything.

She knows when she sits down to write a book, she knows every chapter and

every scene and exactly what happens.

And then here I show up this complete mess going, here's all my stuff.

So she helped me focus a lot more and that was really good.

But as far as feedback, it was, so you do have supervisors when

you do a PhD, but it's your PhD.

And so you own it and you're an adult.

And they'll say, I think you should do this.

And you sit and you think, okay, yeah, I can totally see that.

Or you can decide that's not what you wanna do.

Whereas, if it's an editor at a publishing house who's actually gonna

publish your book, you tend to listen to them because they're doing this for

a living, for their living, et cetera.

And over the years, from doing the PhD, from being in writing groups, from

going to a bunch of different writing workshops, I've been to some harsher than

others, I've grown a really thick skin.

I don't really have any problems with people giving me feedback,

even if it seems harsh.

I'm okay with it.

And that's something that was sometimes difficult to deal with when I was

teaching, cuz I had new baby chicken writers who had never done workshopping

before or nobody else had ever read their work before and they had to

suddenly share it and talk about it.

And so it, it got me to be a lot more sensitive about certain things,

but at the same time I'm very, not mean, but is forthright the word?

Uh, yes, it can be.

Yes.

Yeah.

Yeah.

And I would tell students like, this isn't working, but here's why it's not working.

And I think that's the important thing is if you give somebody feedback,

it's not just fix this, it's fix this because here's, x, y, z that

isn't working that you can improve.

And so I think it's, people say it's constructive criticism, but

I think it needs to be really deeply thought through criticism.

And so you show I know what I'm talking about, I'm not just pulling this outta

my ass that I think this is garbage.

Yeah.

Basically.

No, absolutely.

Yeah.

And when a project, especially when you've worked on projects for so

many years, is there like a grieving period once a project's actually done

and once it's actually signed off?

Or is it just a sense of relief of just oh, it's done.

I can actually move on to other things.

Yes.

Yes.

Both actually.

Yeah, cuz it's great to have it done.

And like right now, Val and I are working toward this deadline

at the end of September.

We got delayed a bit because of life stuff.

And so once it's done be like, whoa, that's great.

Finished.

Yeah.

Cuz I have other things waiting in the wings I haven't had time to do.

But yeah, when you finish a big thing, you do have this moment of, I don't

know what to do with myself next.

I have all this other stuff.

But so much time and focus was put into this one and now

you've taken it away from me.

I don't know how to switch gears to this other thing yet and

you you kind of need a break.

Even if it's just a few days, where you just go and faff and go get a

massage and get a pedicure or do whatever you need to do, while you're

thinking the new thing cuz it feels.

It'll start, it feels too much like production line if I go from one

thing to the next, within a day.

Yeah.

When something has finished, do you have any kind of ritual, open about

all or bubbly, go on a holiday?

Do you have anything that you do to celebrate or just take

a break for a couple of days.

How do you deal with the time between projects?

After I finished Threading, it was a lot of, I can now go

to the movies or read for fun.

So it was a lot of that because it was such a different project.

For other smaller projects and for the one, yeah, because Threading

came out and lockdown happened.

I didn't have all of my in-person signings and launches were all

canceled, everything was gone.

So it was very sad trombone.

It was very, like, when I signed the contract, I was at Fantasy Con.

And I signed the contract and went to go on a panel and I told everybody,

I had just signed a contract, everybody clapped and it was awesome.

And I had some drinks that night.

But because with a book you have signing the contract, going through edits, handing

in the final thing, waiting for the cover reveal, waiting for it to hit the shelves,

there's so many different stages of stuff.

If you drink for all those, you'll never stop drinking.

That's a problem.

So, so it's like you have to pick which one's gonna be your big thing.

And so what I do when I finish stuff is I buy a piece of jewelry.

Okay.

Yeah.

I bought, I bought myself a Alex Monroe bee from Liberty

when I finished Threading.

Yeah.

It was awesome cuz I'd quoted his autobiography in my dissertation.

And it's a bee cause I love bees.

And so I got to go to Liberty and buy something fancy and expensive

in the purple bag and all that crap.

And then when Threading was coming out, I bought myself a bracelet.

So yeah, I buy myself a little thing to celebrate.

And then, and then sit in pajamas all day in my office.

And nobody sees my cool jewelry.

And would you pick something out before you finish the project?

Is it, we need to finish this project so I can get the thing, or

is it you finished the project and then it's just okay, now I'm just

gonna look for something that fits?

I've done both.

The bee I knew I wanted the bee.

Yeah, like I knew, Oh, I knew I wanted the bee, and I wanted

go to Liberty cuz Liberty is, I would live in liberty if I could.

It's such a pretty store.

I can't afford it, but it's so pretty.

Yeah.

But when Threading was finally coming out, I was at this one store that has

this great jewelry and I said, Ooh, I wanna buy myself a new cute Animaly thing.

Yeah.

And so I knew what I wanted, but I hadn't picked out one before.

And so that was fun.

But when I, when I got my first royalties from Threading, I bought

a piece of art from an artist I always wanna buy a piece of art from.

It's in the hallway.

It's a Margaret Walty.

She's always exhibits at EasterCon and she does very gardeny drawings and

it'll be like flowers with dragon heads.

I mean, I was kind of leading up to, is there a piece of jewelry or

art that you have your eye on for finishing as you have a project that

you are hopefully finishing in a month?

I don't.

Oh gosh.

No, you know what, isn't that funny?

I haven't thought about it and now I'm gonna think about it cuz yeah, when I

turn in, when we turn in Spec Fic in a month and then it comes out next Easter.

Yeah, so depending on the next few months, I might wait for right before

EasterCon and go find my special jewelry.

And it'll have to be something science fiction, fantasy themed.

Yeah definitely.

And I have my last two questions, but I feel that we've answered them already,

cause it's just, is anything you've learned from a previous story that

you're now applying to your latest work?

I think we covered that with outlining?

I think the fact that you are now outlining, so I'm gonna

modify a bit, because you are writing a book about writing.

Yeah.

Is there anything that you've learned now on this project that you think

you might apply to future writing?

Oh my gosh, that's such a difficult thing because this project is nonfiction

because I'm writing it with somebody else.

And I'm taking all that stuff that is, it is internalized.

Like, one thing as we're writing, I keep thinking, Oh, I need

to cite a source for this.

And I think, but I don't have one, this is me.

This is what I used to teach.

And so because of that, it's such a different animal from writing fiction.

But I think maybe using Google Docs has been nice.

Like using the tech's been nice.

So because you're working with Val, and so you're getting his

input on the projects as well and his opinions on writing things.

And because it's covering so many genres and you've had to do

some research into those genres.

True.

You would've definitely have had opinions about these, these

sub genres before you started.

But with the input of Val and the research you've done in producing this book, has

any of those opinions changed or modified that you think, actually, what I was

thinking before I'm slightly different, I'm a slightly different person coming

out of this book than I was before?

In a way, I am a slightly different person coming outta this, because

you know, I used to write textbooks.

I've written articles and that kind of non-fiction stuff.

But doing something like this that, that students are gonna pick up,

that other writers are gonna pick up.

That's gonna last a little bit longer than like an online blog article or something.

It has shown me that I can do this and I have stuff to say and I do know stuff.

Yeah.

As conceited and shitty as that sounds, I know stuff.

I've spent lots of years knowing stuff.

Yeah and so I, I've worked with other writer before, but doing this project

has shown me how much fun it can be.

And one thing that Val and I do, when we have something to say to the

other person that might be a little scratchy, we're like, do you trust me?

Yes, I trust you.

And that's like the code of, okay, I'm gonna tell you a thing, but I'm saying

it from my heart and from our shared friendship we've had for so long.

Exactly.

Safe.

It's a safe space.

Exactly.

And so working on this makes me now, I'd love to write more non-fiction books.

I'd love to do this more cuz it's so much fun to do this research.

And as far as the content, that's changed me in a way because there's

always sub genres I know about, right?

Yeah and I've read my students work and I've been talking about

in class and blah, blah, blah.

But actually having to sit down and process all of them.

Now there's so many that I want to write in more.

And there's certain things like theme.

Theme is one of those elements that I've just hammer on about to

my students, I have for years and they look at me like I'm crazy.

And I've had to figure out new ways to explain it every time to get students

to really get what I'm talking about.

And I've had to do it here again.

And so having to do this has brought home to me how to explain things better,

easier, more clearly, with more humor.

I'm doing the hand signals again, doing hand gestures.

Yeah, that's really exciting.

I think having genre or just creative writing text about theme and about

different elements yeah, of the writing process would be really good

and it would definitely worth reading.

I hope so.

Yeah.

Cause some writing books out there are they're really serious.

They feel like they take themselves a bit too seriously.

Yeah.

Yeah.

And it could be quite hard, I think, with some writing books

where they're encompassing so much of the writing process.

Yeah.

And it might be that there's a writer who's struggling on theme, you know, on,

on a specific part of the writing process.

So you can get the component that you're struggling on and just read that.

Yeah.

And the one thing, because of the way this book is put together, so we do have

a list of different writing elements and in certain places where it's

natural, we've talked about an element.

Some of them are science fiction, fantasy specific, like magic systems.

Okay, this is the right place, I'm gonna talk about magic systems for a paragraph.

Other spots it might be, Oh, let me talk about mood versus tone.

And so we haven't covered everything, it's not that kind of book.

Yeah.

But it's more, let's talk about this fun sub genre.

You like this and by the way, I'm gonna teach you a little bit more

about mood versus tone that maybe you didn't know that you didn't know.

Instead of, let's go element by element and really bore the pants off you.

Yeah.

Yeah.

And my final question is, and again, I feel that you've answered this

before, so I might ask it in a different way cuz it's, what's the

one piece of advice you find yourself returning to when you're writing?

And you did mention the "why not me" earlier.

As someone who's taught students, so many, is there.

If any of your students said, Yeah, Dr.

Angus had a, a catchphrase.

One thing that you feel that you are known for as giving a piece

of advice, what would that be?

I know they would all come back and say, what I say is we can edit shit

on a page, but not shit in your head.

And I'd say it just like that, I curse in class cuz they're grownups, but yeah.

And they would all look at me and go, Oh, she, she said shit twice.

I'm like, yes cuz that's important.

Yeah.

That was the thing you know, you gotta get over yourself and you've

gotta get over the fear and the anxiety of what you're writing is

garbage cuz it's gonna be garbage.

But I don't have ESP, I can't help you edit something that you're thinking about.

And that's the same thing for me.

I can't edit the stuff that I'm thinking about.

I actually have to see if it's gonna work on the page and then I can edit it nice.

For years.

Until I'm ready to let it go.

I think that's a, a nice place to, to end for now.

And I feel like in a few years we'll have you back and see what's happening then.

Cool.

That would be awesome.

But for today, Tiffany Angus, thank you very much for being a

guest on the Real Writing process.

Thank you so much for having me.

This was a lot of fun.

Thank you.

Thank you.

And that was the real writing process of Tiffany Angus.

I hope you found lots of interesting little nuggets of wisdom in there.

Her next book, Spec Fic for Newbies (or whatever the final title will be) is

co-written with Val Nolan and shall be released by Luna press publishing in 2023.

And as soon as it's available for pre-order, I will be

posting it on my socials.

Now, I'm publishing this shortly after Elon Musk's takeover of Twitter., So

I'll say Tiffany is currently on Twitter.

Um, but I will link to her website in the show notes as it has her blog

and lists all her published work, as well as her social media accounts.

Uh, which might be subject to change.

This is also going out midway through national novel writing month,

often abbreviated to NaNoWriMo.

So to all those taking part, I wish you well.

You're a bunch of lunatics who must be overcome with self-loathing.

You have my sympathies.

In the meantime, to everyone listening, look after yourselves and keep writing.