In this Christmas bonus episode of Best Book Forward, I’m delighted to welcome back Lucy Steeds, author of The Artist If you missed the previous episode with Claire you can catch up with it here... listen now

We take a look back at The Artist and some of the special moments that Lucy has enjoyed.

Of course, no episode of Best Book Forward would be complete without some irresistible book recommendations to add to your festive reading list. Here’s everything we discussed:

📚 Books by Lucy Steds

• The Artist

✨ Books Mentioned

• The Signs by Dr Tara Swart
• Endling by Maria Reva

Boutique Book Breaks 

Boutique Book Breaks - UK Retreat for Book Lovers. Hosting small groups, with author events at luxury hotels. Use code: 'BestBook' for £50 off the next weekend, 6-8 March 2026 in the New Forest.

For more details visit... https://www.boutiquebookbreaks.com/

I really hope you enjoy listening to this episode as much as I loved recording it.

Tomorrow, I’ll be sharing the last episode in our Christmas Chapter series; I hope you’ll join me again.

In the meantime, if you’ve enjoyed this episode, please subscribe, rate, and review Best Book Forward, and don’t forget to tell your friends... it really helps new listeners discover the show.

See you tomorrow, and happy listening. 🎄

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Welcome back to Best Book Forward, the Christmas chapter.

I can't believe it, but we're almost finished with this special bonus season.

It's just flown by just one more episode after this one and I really hope that you've enjoyed it as much as I have.

So today my guest is the Incredible Lucy Steeds.

We last got together back in June to talk about her incredible debut novel, the Other Artist.

Now, if you haven't read this book yet, you really are missing out because it is a brilliant read.

So do grab a copy, I'm sure you'll love it.

In this episode, we'll chat to Lucy to find out what she's been up to since we last spoke, looking at some of the incredible achievements of the artist.

We'll also find out what Lucy is working on at the moment.

And I need to give you a warning for this episode as Lucy will be telling us what her ideal Christmas lunch look for.

Like, so be warned, this episode may cause hunger pangs.

It's time to get into it.

Let's give Lucy a warm welcome back to the show.

Lucy, welcome back and thank you so much for joining me for a Christmas special.

Thank you so much.

I'm very excited.

I'm delighted to have you back.

We last spoke in June, so not that long ago when we got together to chat about your incredible debut novel, the Artist, which I think I've mentioned once or twice, is a book that I love.

Would you like to start off by giving everyone a little flavour of what it's about in case they've missed it?

Yes.

And he's been allowed to stay with this painter and write an article about him also, he thinks.

So he makes this long journey, he arrives at the house and.

And when he gets there, it turns out the painter has no idea he was coming, doesn't actually want to talk to him, and will not give him anything for his article.

So there's this strange impasse and then they strike a deal, which is, Joseph the journalist can stay in the house of this painter if he agrees to pose as a model for his latest painting.

And so begins this summer, where he stays at the house.

And while he's trying to write about this painter, he keeps getting distracted by this other inhabitant of the house, which is the painter's niece, Ettie.

And gradually he realizes that there are in fact, more secrets lurking in this house than he supposed.

And maybe he is not looking at the right thing all along.

Listening to you describe it again, I feel so jealous of anyone who hasn't picked it up yet.

You know when you always have that thing of like, if I could read a book for the first time again, I was like, I would love to.

I mean, I've read the Artist twice and I'm actually planning on listening to the audiobook as well.

So just a little obsess.

So the Artist is such a beautiful read.

It's got the most incredible descriptions, really interesting characters, it keeps you hooked until the end.

What is it, do you think about the artists that read us have really connected with?

Oh, I mean, I'm really curious about this myself.

I mean, delighted and curious because in a way it's.

I think a book about art is actually quite hard to appeal to a lot of people because I think a lot of people have a sort of almost knee jerk reaction where they think, oh, I'm not interested in art.

And I think a book called the Artist, you'd be quite justified in saying, well, I'm not interested in art, so I'm going to be interested in that.

So I've been really hugely gratified by the amount of people who have given it enough of a chance to, you know, get beyond the title and then go into it and then find something for themselves in there in terms of what it is.

Oh my gosh, I mean, I wish I knew.

I wish there was a secret formula I could just hold up, hold up and analyze.

But I don't know.

I mean, the things that people have said to me, they've enjoyed have been.

The people have said it's a very vivid book that they can picture everything in there, which is not necessarily something I like actively set out to do.

It's just, I think, an effect of how I write and maybe that's an effect of how I see the world.

So I think that really draws people in.

It's a very like hot, sticky summer book.

So I think that was nice in winter because it came out in January, it was nice in winter because it really took people away from those winter blues.

And then it was nice in summer because if you were having a hot, sticky European summer, you could dive into that in the book as well.

And then, oh gosh, I don't know, maybe I'm probably the worst person to ask.

I've.

Yeah, I've been so hugely surprised and delighted by the response it's had because you never know when you're writing, you have no idea what reaction you're going to get or if you're even going to get one.

So the fact that it's had such a glorious and wonderful response has been.

Yeah.

Beyond what I could have expected, to be honest.

Yeah.

I think it's interesting because you say.

I mean, we talked about this last time.

I remember when the Proof landed on my desk, I was like, oh, I don't know much about art, but I was like, just picked it up.

And so I think for me, it's how you just enter their world and you just feel like you're totally there.

You can see it, you can smell it, you can feel the heat and everything.

It's just.

It's such an escape.

But it's also brilliant in, like, it keeps you hooked until the very end, isn't it?

And then the ending is so satisfying as well.

So, actually, as you were saying that, I was thinking, I can't remember if we talked about this last time.

It'd be a brilliant movie, wouldn't it?

Oh, really.

Lovely movie.

I think so.

I mean, it's quite a good set piece in terms of, like, it's just this one house and these three characters and.

Yeah, someone was saying that, like, from a casting perspective, it's quite fun because you have, like, the old.

You can get a really established figure to play the grumpy artist.

Very fun role.

And then you can have two more.

There's like, the man and the Woman of Joseph and Etty as these new characters who come in.

So, yeah, I think it's quite a visual book as well.

So you can see it.

Yeah, I would love it to be a movie.

I think there's lots of.

Yeah, lots of scenes which are just full of, like, texture and visual treats that would work really well for.

I mean, it's a book about vision and looking at things, so a visual medium is one that would work quite well.

Yeah, I'm really glad you said that as well.

That, like, you weren't sure about it, which is, like, from looking at the title on what it might be about and then once you're in it, it welcomes you in because that was something I really consciously crafted.

I never wanted a reader to feel pushed away by this book, so I was very careful never to.

Even though it's a book about art, I never wanted to use, like, art historical terms or even just words like surrealism, because I knew that if you don't know what surrealism looks like, what a pointless word to use in a book.

And I never wanted the reader to have to put the book down and Google something.

So I wanted it to be a book that once you're in it, you're in it and you don't ever need to Google anything or check something or feel like you're missing something.

You don't definitely don't need to Google anything.

And I think.

I mean, we spoke about this before.

The way you describe things, it's so.

I mean, it's an art in itself.

It's like I remember saying as I felt like I'd walked into a masterpiece, I could sort of see all the colors and everything.

So.

And I think probably what's happening, because I do see and I say to people, it's a bit of a. I mean, yes, it's had a massive success and we'll talk about, you know, what's happened with the artist in a few minutes, but I think probably people are recommending it and giving it to people.

I think it's probably a bit of word of mouth, isn't it, as well, people.

That's the best response effort, to be honest.

That's the biggest compliment.

Yeah, I mean, I. I love it when people say, oh, yeah, my friend or my.

Yeah, mother or sister or anyone recommended it to me, like, pressed into my hands.

That means so much.

Yeah, that's.

That's the biggest compliment of all.

Yeah, I got it for my sister for her birthday.

I think I'm probably going to get another copy for Christmas for somebody else.

So I think we'll love it as well.

So keep dishing it out everywhere.

Lizzie, something I'd love to talk to you about, which came up in our last chat, which I've not heard anyone talk about before, which I thought was really interesting.

You talked about how you use free writing and I just wondered, is that something that you were taught or is it something that you came up with yourself?

And could you just sort of talk us around how that works for you?

No, I definitely didn't invent free writing.

Would love to have come up with that myself.

I can't remember it.

It's enough of a thing that enough writers talk about it that I must have picked it up.

But, yeah, it's for anyone who doesn't know, it's this thing where you just connect your pen to the page and you write and you don't look back at what you've written.

You don't edit as you go along.

You don't even read what you're doing.

You just free write and let your brain go really loose and you find all these surprising connections which I guess bubble up from the unconscious and.

And you just write how many pages you want.

You can give yourself a prompt or you can literally just write whatever monologue is going through your head.

And I find it really useful for, like, unclogging the metaphorical pen of my brain.

So when I'm stuck, if I just do some free writing, it gets everything on the page and then I can look at it and work out.

I mean, usually you have to, like, discard three quarters of what's there.

It's not useful, but there are some gems in what's left and.

And it's this thing of, I think, by moving yourself on and not allowing yourself to look back at what you've done and see how bad it is.

Often you get to the good stuff because you can't just write perfect, crisp, jewel, like sentences all the time.

You've got some rubbish in there too.

And often you have a sense of what you're interested in, but you don't quite know what shape that'll take.

So you need to just write four pages freehand, look back on it either immediately or maybe the next day or the next week and say, oh, this is.

This is what I was interested in.

This is what I'm clearly trying to get at but couldn't quite see.

And I find it really useful because there's something about if you type on a screen, on a laptop or something, a Word document looks a bit too uncannily like a finished book.

It looks too much like a book and then it looks like a bad one.

Whereas if you just handwrite, it doesn't look enough like a book.

It looks like your scribbles, and your scribbles can be bad.

So something about this means that you don't worry about editing it, you don't worry about what it looks like or being perfect.

You can just have a go and see what happens.

So I find it really useful for just, yeah, unclogging whatever is going on in my brain and finding the good stuff amongst all the noise.

And so would you have done that sort of when you had your first sort of spark of inspiration, or was it scene by scene that you sort of would sit and do that or a mixture?

A mixture.

I mean, I really did it when I was.

I would go to museums, I love museums that provide you with a bench, because then I would sit on the bench and I would look at a painting and the painting would be my prompt.

I would just like, fill my eyes with the painting and write, sometimes not even looking at the pad.

I mean, it would be really scribbles.

We talked about my handwriting last time as well.

But I would just look at this painting and think about the texture of the paint and the movement and the way everything fit together and the world of the painting.

And I would just write anything that came into my head.

Even things just like that.

Person's footsteps are too loud.

They're really annoying on this floor.

What's this floor made of?

Things like that can also enter your mind, and you just write them down.

So I would do it for things like that.

And then I. I remember doing it in the church near me in Amsterdam over the summer.

They gave these free organ concerts.

And I used to go there, and it would be an hour of just an organist playing music.

And I would sit in the church and do it, too.

So often you would need, like, a little prompt.

And there's a scene at the end of the book where Joseph goes and sits in a church.

And that was just me writing, just looking up at, like, these gold accents and the.

The organ and the paintings and the light come through the windows.

That was written just in the church or lunchtime.

And so it's little things that just spark off your brain, and it can be anything.

So, like, if you want to shape a scene, you're like, I know he needs to sit in a church and think about stuff.

I just sat in a church and wrote whatever came into my mind while this organ music played for an hour.

So, yeah, you can sort of do it how you want.

I know a lot of people do free writing in the form of morning pages, which I think is the, you know, the artist's way.

I think it's that thing where you wake up and the first thing you do every morning is just write four pages.

And it can be anything, and it can be what you think, what you're dreaming about.

And I think the rule is actually, you don't read it back.

I think it's just, again, to unclog the brain and get everything on.

On the page out there.

That's so interesting, because I was chatting to a friend about it, and she was like, you should use it for brainstorming, because I. I'm terrible.

I'm always, like, firing ideas.

So I sat down and I was just like.

And it's probably because, I mean, I said, my writing's really bad, but I sat there and just looked at the page for ages.

And it's like, you know, like, when you'd have a new book at school, you don't want to make a mess straight away.

But then once I started writing stuff down, I was like.

I did find it quite helpful.

The problem is, when I came back to look at it, I was like, no idea.

No idea what some of it says.

That is so funny.

I also have this because I have, I think, very beautiful writing, but it is impossible to read.

But you can do it.

I suppose you could do it in a, like, voice note.

You could do voice notes and where you just speak for 20 minutes and see what's in there.

Can you imagine if you lost your phone?

Then somebody was listening.

They'd be like, was she all right?

Is she okay?

That is so interesting.

I love that.

And I haven't actually heard, as I said to you before, you know, when I talk to people about plotting or planning, that's not something that anyone sort of spoken about before.

So it's just really interested me in that idea.

So I know before you said you were a real perfectionist of your sentence, which shows because it is such a beautiful read, but I was like, that's.

I just thought it was a really interesting.

Well, I think maybe being such an, like, incorrigible perfectionist is why it's good for me.

I think if you have a very noisy brain.

I find my brain just doesn't shut up.

I.

If I write, I will also be editing and correcting and thinking about a million things.

But I think if.

If that's how your brain works, then maybe free writing is a really good thing because it slightly focuses you on just this one task.

And something about you cannot write faster than you can write, if that makes sense.

So you are limited by how quickly your hand can move across the page, which means you can't race ahead or do a million things.

You can literally just write the word you're writing with that pen.

So I think, yeah, if you are a bit of an inveterate tinkerer and a perfectionist, it's a good trick.

And have you kept all those notes from the artists that you did?

Yeah, I have my notebooks.

I go back, and what's so interesting is sometimes there will be a paragraph that's completely unchanged.

It'll be in the finished text, and it'll just be.

I've handwritten it in a notebook at one point.

And the other thing is, you will go back and ideas which took maybe, like, a year to percolate.

And for me to understand what I actually wanted to do, I'll see the early forms.

It'll be like early cave paintings where you're like, oh, I can see the genesis of this idea when I didn't know what was going on.

And it'll just be all these questions that I was asking of myself.

And it's really satisfying looking back now that I have the answer.

But I do feel sorry for past Lucy, who was clearly grasping at something but not quite understanding what it was she wanted to write about.

Oh, and did you sort of find anything in there that you think wasn't used for the artist, but you're like, oh, it's sort of sowing seeds for other things, possibly.

It's more that you can see.

You can do a lot of, like, psychoanalysis on yourself through this because you can see it with distance from this sort of bird's eye view.

And you go, ah.

I keep coming back to the ideas of creation and destruction, for example, and I didn't know it at the time, but it was like everything I wrote about was either some form of creation or some form of destruction.

And I can see that now, now that I can stand back and see the big picture.

But at the time, I was just there going, you make food and then it rots.

What's up with that?

And I've just been writing about that for ages.

So, yeah, it's really.

I find it comforting because I'm currently at the beginning of a new project and it's that feeling, it gives me comfort because I'm like, oh, I was here before and I got through it and you just have to be stuck in the mud with all your questions and no answers at some stage.

Yeah, I remember ages ago on Instagram, Taylor Jenkins Reid shared a post of all her notebooks and shed for every book she's written, and even ones that sort of haven't gone anywhere.

She has got all the notebooks and so she goes back and I was like, I would love to look in those.

It'd be so interesting to have a look in, like.

Well, yours as well.

It'd be so interesting to sort of peek through writers.

Have you ever been to.

The British Library has a lot of writers archives, essentially, and they have a lot of the notebooks and you can go back and see, like, early drafts of really famous poems, you know, and you're like, oh, that was quite bad at one point.

I'm just like, the phrases, you know, really famously, or like, they'll have like, you know, those are Bronte notebooks and Jane Austen's first drafts and things, and you're like, oh, okay.

They cross things out all the time as well.

But they also had beautiful handwriting.

Yes, that's true.

Gorgeous.

Yeah, yeah.

Which I find really hard to read, though.

So it's beautiful, but really hard to read.

Okay, so the artist has done exceptionally well.

I'm going to just sort of have a look at some of your.

Your wins.

So you are a winner of Waterstones debut fiction prize, Waterstones Book of the Month.

In June of this year, you're shortlisted for Waterstones Book of the Year, long listed for the Women's Prize for Fiction, a Sunday Times bestseller, a finalist in a Barnes and Noble Book of the Year.

It's.

It's amazing.

I'm sure there are many others that I've missed as well.

We're recording this on the 13th of November, so this will obviously go out in December.

And at the moment on Instagram, we're doing the Best Book Forward awards.

And the artist is getting so much love in.

In those awards, you're shortlisted in three categories.

How does that feel, Lucy?

All those awards?

Oh, gosh.

Just.

Yeah, as you can tell, quite speechless.

It's terrible for a writer to be lost for words, but really.

But it means so much because as I said before, I mean, you write in solitude and in quietness and in the darkness.

And for so long, this book was just me and my messy pages, or me and my laptop at 2 in the morning.

And this book was, you know, carved out of very small snatches of stolen time.

And the really strange and hard thing about writing, I think, and if anyone listening is a writer, you have to do all the work before you have any idea if it's going to go anywhere or do anything.

You have to write the whole book.

You have to finish the entire project, which is years and years of staring at the same word document, which is a form of madness.

I mean, there are very few tasks, I think, which involve just sort of booting up the same word document every day for years and years and working away at it with no guarantee that, you know, anyone's going to read it or it's going to go anywhere or do anything.

So that was my reality for so long.

And my relationship with the book was really just me, you know, in the darkness at 2am trying to find the perfect word for a rotting peach.

That was it.

And that was.

It was just.

That was my relationship with this book.

And then when, if you're lucky enough that, you know, it gets published, that's.

That was enough for so long.

Just.

That was my Biggest dream in the world.

And for it to be published and then find its hands into readers, and then for those readers to love it and for them to press it into other people's hands, it's extraordinary.

And it's like the book is just on its own journey in the world.

And, yeah, for it to just go so far.

I'm so.

I'm so proud of my book.

I'm so, so proud of where it's going, but it honestly feels like it's having this adventure.

And, yeah, I'm.

I'm so delighted by all the people I've come into contact with.

And what I love as well is that often people will talk to me about the book and they'll see things in it that I didn't know were in it.

I love that.

So it feels bigger than it was when it was just with me, which obviously it is.

And I just.

Yeah, it's this expansiveness that comes with having readers and such generous and interested and interesting readers as well.

One of the most completely unexpected and extraordinary responses I've had is that people have created art in response to the book, which is.

It feels like the most essential and core form of art and the point of art, which.

So someone shared with me.

They had composed a piece on the piano in response to the book.

I know goosebumps.

And people have, you know, painted things in response to the book.

And someone made a T shirt inspired by the book.

Like, all these incredible things where you could never dream of that happening.

So I. I love that this book has transformed into different forms and entered other people's lives in ways I never could have expected.

That's amazing.

So that I'm just wondering if, like, this.

Should we go there?

I'm gonna go for it.

That piece of music.

Then I was like, oh, is this a good question or not?

When you heard that piece of music, did it sound like the artist to you?

Yes, because I guess the.

Oh, I mean, it was inspired by the.

It's all part of the same ether, if that makes sense.

Like the.

The atoms that are.

Came that were in my head that then got pressed into the page and then got pressed into someone else's head and then into the piano keys.

That's all part of the same.

But, I mean, yeah, it's just magical.

And I love it as well because I'm unfortunately not very musical, so I never think in terms of music.

So the fact that someone else can take what I've done and transform it into music, it's magical.

Yeah, that is that's really special.

So, I mean, that's obviously a very special moment, but with your awards, you know.

Well, from publication to today, are there any moments that you just look back and just think, those are so special?

I'll remember that forever.

Like, what are your real standout moments for you?

The Waterstones Debut Prize, in particular, was an incredible moment.

That was such a beautiful evening.

I really didn't expect to win.

I mean, that was when I read all the other books on the shortlist, and with each one, I was like, damn it, they're really good.

So I fully did not expect it to be my name that was called.

And also, I was so nervous.

I was very nervous that night, but I was very much just like.

Because we had to do a reading.

Had to.

A reading on stage before they announced the winner or anything.

So we had to do our readings.

And I.

For the whole night, I was like, okay, I'm gonna get through my reading and then I'm gonna have a drink and I'm gonna have fun.

I'm gonna chat to people.

But, like, until I've got my reading out the way, I'm gonna be very nervous.

But then I won, and I was.

I was just.

Didn't.

I didn't get the calm bit of the evening.

I was just completely off planet Earth for the rest of the evening.

It was incredible.

It was very special to have my parents there that evening because they didn't.

They didn't manage to make my book launch, but they were there for that night.

So that was like their first.

Their first time seeing me in my book, in my world.

In the world, My book.

It's very sweet.

I don't know if there's a video recording, but when they announce the winner, there is this cheer, like a sort of football cheer, which is my dad, which is like the air and cheering.

And I was like, I don't think that's usually the response to, like, literary.

No more football.

Cheers, please.

That was an incredible night.

And just this room full of the most incredible people.

And Waterstones have been phenomenal.

I love.

Yeah.

All the people who have been involved in just.

They really just took this book and have championed it and made it so much.

They've just shot it into the stratosphere in a way I will always be so, so grateful for.

But, I mean, every.

Every award means so much.

And in particular, like, the ones you're talking about on Instagram at the moment, they mean so much because it's.

It's voted for by readers, which is so Nice, because it's just real people and what they've read and what has spoken to them.

And it's so nice knowing that this book that I cared about so much, this is the other thing about writing is you write about what you're obsessed with and what means a lot to you and what you really care about, your book, but you don't know that anyone else is ever going to.

So the fact that once it's out in the world, other people read it and really take it into their hearts, that's like.

That's just the biggest award that you can have.

That's so lovely.

And the Waterstones, I mean, I remember walking past in Piccadilly.

I sent a little video to you of the window.

They did the most beautiful window display for you, didn't they?

Had, like, a setup of, like, you know, fruit.

And then.

I love the new edition as well, that they've done the new.

They had to design the new edition entirely in secret.

Oh, this is what was so fun.

So my wonderful publisher was like, so, yeah, they designed a new edition for after the Waterstones debut prize.

And my brilliant publisher was like, listen, we would never redesign a book without the author's approval, but we couldn't let you know you'd won.

So they were like, it had to be a surprise.

And luckily, I love it.

But they revealed it.

They took it out of a paper bag on the night of the ceremony, and we're like, by the way, here's your new book.

So that was such a wonderful moment.

And then what's really special is, yeah, that Waterstones Piccadilly window, that huge window, they transform it on the night of the prize.

So while the prize was happening, people were downstairs, window dressing.

And then I got taken down in, like, halfway through the night to see the new window.

And it was incredible because it was my book.

And all of this stuff, I kept saying to them, I was like, where did you find these, like, model oysters and lobsters?

They made this huge feast in the window.

And there were so many details.

Like, I don't know if you saw the wine bottles, and the label of the wine bottle is the book cover.

I was just like, can I have these?

When you dismantle the window display, did.

They give them to you?

I haven't got one yet, but I'm going to.

I imagine there's, like, some stockroom I can read.

Yeah.

Because I loved it.

They had, like, the postcard which had come written on it and everything.

It was just.

I would have thought.

I didn't realize that's how they did it.

That's better than the Oscars, surely.

I do feel that was a really magical moment.

Okay.

Also, sorry.

On Magical Moments, they showed me it was dark outside on Piccadilly.

You know, London's lights were glittering, and they had just unveiled this window display for me.

And as I was looking at all, this woman just was walking past on the street, and she pointed it and she went, oh, I just read that book.

It's really good.

And I was like.

And then when she found out who I was, we had this picture together.

But that was such a magical moment.

And I was like, did you plant her to the water?

I was like, did you have this woman ready to say that?

But no, she was just walking past.

That's so lovely.

I love that.

That's really so interesting.

I love, like, when you find out, like, things like, you know, you just.

I had no idea how that's how it worked.

When they do those, I just would have thought, like, of course they couldn't have done it before you walked in, because then you would have known you won.

So now you say it makes sense.

Yeah.

Like with the wine bottle, it was my.

Brilliant.

My team.

It was Kate and Charlie on my team.

They were like, yeah.

Half an hour before the ceremony, we were in the bathroom with a hairdryer trying to get a bottle at the label of a wine bottle.

And they were like, we had a butter knife and we're just scraping it entirely, and it wasn't coming off.

And I was like, I love that that's what you were doing half an hour before the ceremony.

That's dedication.

Dedication.

So if you look back now at your journey from when you started writing the Artist up until publication, what has been the biggest lesson you've learned about writing and getting published?

And what advice would you give to anyone who's hoping to follow in your footsteps?

Oh, that's a very good question and a very big question.

And at the core of all of it, I would say you have to trust your instinct.

And I have quite a good gut feeling about things sometimes.

I don't know why I know something, but I know something, and it'll just be some gut reaction to it.

And if you listen to that, you're often right, and you should listen to your instinct and your gut in terms of what you write.

So sometimes I'll be writing something and I'll be like, this doesn't really make sense, but I feel.

Feel like it belongs in the book, and I don't know why?

But I'm just going to keep going.

That instinct is a really important one to listen to and to hone.

And you get it with lots of things.

So I had it.

When I was choosing an agent, I was in a very lucky position that I had some agents to choose from.

And it was an impossible choice because they are all brilliant and they all had wonderful visions for my novel and what they could do with it.

And there's also no guide for telling you how to choose an agent.

But it really just came down to gut instinct, because I met them all and I had these wonderful meetings and it just.

I knew somehow that I knew who I would choose.

My wonderful agent, Eleanor.

But I didn't necessarily know why.

But that gut instinct is very important.

And it's the same one that just tells you what it is you're interested in.

And it does a lot in terms of showing you what you should be writing about.

And it'll tell you.

It'll tell you what to listen to.

So I think honing that is really important.

And there are ways you can hone it, which is just by focusing on what it is you're interested in and what it is you're drawn to and listening to that.

And it can take a while to calibrate that gut instinct.

But I think if you can do that in as many ways as possible, I mean, it'll help you a lot in life, but particularly in writing.

It's a very important thing to listen to, I think.

Quieting the noise of the outside world and listening to what your.

Your body and your brain, your mind is telling you, because often it knows things before your rational brain understands things.

That is such a great answer.

And I've been really interested in, like, instinct as well.

Like, not obviously for writing, but I've just read The Signs by Dr. Tara Swart.

Have you heard?

Oh, I haven't read that.

It's so.

I mean, it's.

It's.

It is talking about signs, you know, from people of past.

But she talks about sort of honing your instinct and listening and ways you can improve.

Like, it's really interesting.

Definitely recommend.

But, you know, she was saying, like, using your senses more and things.

So definitely pick it up.

That's.

That's really interesting.

I think that was with people.

Sorry.

No, no, go, keep going.

So with your agent, I think you do sometimes you just know when you meet somebody, it's the right person for the right thing that you're going through.

So, yeah, that's really interesting.

I love that.

Yeah, it's not a very practical tip.

I'm sorry, Practical?

I can give you a practical one if you're a writer, which is read your work aloud.

Sorry, that's really horrible tip.

It's very painful to read your work aloud, but it's painful because you find all the mistakes.

This is actually a tip for later in the process.

Don't read your work aloud at the beginning because you'll find too many flaws.

But it's perfect for it.

When you're towards the end of a project, read your work aloud because your eye is not your friend.

At the end of a manuscript, your eye will trick you.

It'll gloss over all the mistakes, all the clunky phrases.

But if you have to read your work aloud, you will find all the.

You'll find the places where you've just repeated a word three times in the space of a sentence.

You'll find all these moments.

And if you slow down and you have to, you know, analyze your work at the pace of just how fast you can speak it, that's a really good way of catching things.

That's really interesting.

And actually, that's something I noticed my kids are being taught now more in that English, their homework.

They're told to read it aloud, which, as you say, that's when they sort of realize.

Yeah.

That they've made a mistake or it just doesn't make sense.

So it's a really good tip.

So, Lucy, given the success of the Artist, do you think that has helped you and made you more confident?

You said you were working on something now.

Or do you feel a lot of pressure for your next book?

How are you feeling?

I wish the confidence was proportional, but it really isn't, unfortunately, because, I mean, I definitely.

I wouldn't change anything for the world.

But one interesting side effect of all this is that you are a lot more aware of your reception than you ever would be.

I mean, particularly when you're writing your first book, the curse.

But the slight blessing is that you are writing in total obscurity.

No one's ever going to read it.

And so you're writing just for you.

And that's very freeing.

So you're free to, you know, follow your instincts and your weird subconscious thoughts when you scribble on your pages.

Now, I can try and deceive myself back into that state, but it's not real anymore.

And the reality is I will have readers, and I know who they are now, and I know the things people say.

And I wrote very freely before because I had no idea What I just wrote what I thought I was doing, but then other people read it and they say, oh, you were doing this?

And you're like, oh, I.

That's news to me.

Interesting.

So now I'm a lot more aware of the way people read me and it's just a slight distraction.

I think you have to tune out because I think you can't.

You get too conscious of what other people might think, which is a really terrible way to write.

So it's, it's an extra challenge in that sense.

I mean, nothing compared to the agony of just writing on your own with no idea if it's going to go anywhere.

So I don't, I wouldn't change it, but it's definitely a factor I hadn't necessarily thought of before.

And with writing a new thing as well, I think you ideally would write it in total isolation.

But you're also aware that it's going to be in relation to your first book.

I had a while where I got quite tied up about how different the next book should be to the first one and I sort of had this thought that, well, I don't want to just repeat myself and do the same thing over and over and be accused of being a one trick pony.

And then I thought, but if people enjoyed the first book, presumably they will enjoy the second one if it is a bit similar.

So you get a little tied in knots with things like this.

But obviously the best thing is to not think about that at all and just again, follow that instinct, listen to your gut, write what you're interested in.

So it's an extra.

Yeah, just thing to consider or.

Yeah, try, try to.

Try not to put too much stock in.

Yeah, it must be really hard.

It must be really hard.

But I'm sure you will do brilliantly.

Do you feel comfortable sharing a little bit about what you're working on next or.

Yes.

Well, actually, I'm not, not going to be able to give you a generous detailed scoop because I don't know, I mean, the thing is, and I think the reason I am very predisposed to being a writer is that the way I work things out is by writing.

So I have a lot of nebulous questions in my head and the way I will find the answers to those questions is by writing.

And it'll take me 90,000 words and a very long time.

It'll be more than 90,000 words because you write and then you delete and then you cut and write again.

So it'll be hundreds of thousands of words before I quite work out what it is I'm thinking about and I'm circling around, okay, it's definitely historical fiction again.

I love going back into the sort of analog world.

And it's something I think, again, looking at my early notes, my early scribblings.

It's something about beauty and destruction, which I think is also what I'm interested in the artist.

It's something about how do we create beauty in terrible circumstances?

And I'm trying to weave the story out of that.

It's very unhelpful.

My wonderful agent and editor are always asking me, so, like, where are you at and what's going on?

And I just have these huge existential questions, like, what does it mean to create beauty in a world style?

And they'll be like, right, well, it's not giving us loads.

And I'm like, the thing is, I will have an answer to that question in the form of an elegant story once I have written through it.

But I don't.

It's not like I can sort of say it's a book about a man who catches the large fish.

It's not that at the moment.

So I'm, I'm doing that.

But I. I think the other reason it's quite difficult to talk about is that I often find that if I try to vocalize it or verbalize it too early, it sets it into a form and then I get.

If I try to write about it, I'm like, oh, I described it as this last time, so I guess that's what it is.

Whereas actually the.

The best way for me to work out what it is I'm writing about is to write it's, not to form it into a neat sentence that I can say to people.

So I'm sorry, that's a very unsatisfactory answer.

Well, it's just lovely to know you're working on something and we've got something exciting to look forward to.

I mean, it would help me a lot too if I knew what I was writing about, but unfortunately I don't.

That's the thing you find out in the writing.

It will.

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So we're going to have a little look at those and see whether it's not that long ago, whether this list still stands, whether you'd swap any or add.

So you had A Series of Unfortunate Events by Lemon.

Lemony Snick.

That's not right, is it?

Lemony Lemony Snicket sounds really a fake name.

A Roomba to view by E.M. forster, the poems of John Dunn, which I loved chatting with you about last time.

We had so much fun talking about that.

Then we've got in the Dream House and the Idiot as well.

So how does that list stand with you?

I stand by.

It's still very formative books for me and still ones that I would return to and enjoy a lot.

My sister recently went on a road trip through Scotland with her friends and I just got these like updates from them because they were listening to the audiobooks of A Series of Unfortunate Events on this road trip.

And I've never had so much FOMO than being in this car going through the islands of Scotland listening to A Series of Unfortunate Events.

I was like, that just sounds like the absolute dream holiday.

I'd never get out of the car.

So yeah, fantastic, fantastic books.

And yet ones that I still think.

I think if you're still thinking about books 20 years after you first read them, that definitely indicates that it's a very formative book.

Yes.

There's so much in there in terms of just humor and language and story and plot.

There's so much in there.

There's.

They're slim, they're children's books, but they are just dense with ideas and very formative ones for me.

Brilliant.

Well, that's good.

That means you did it well perfectly the first time.

So it'd be terrible if you're like, actually none of Them change the entire list.

But.

So I know you're busy writing at the moment.

Do you read a lot while you're writing?

And have there been any books that you've read this year that really stands out you'd like to recommend to us?

Yes, always read when I'm writing.

I know there are some writers who say they can't read while writing because they get too influenced, but I find I need to be not influenced, but inspired if I am struggling with my own writing, I need to read some good sentences to believe they're out there and, you know, have some good stuff sparking off my brain.

So, yeah, I've had a really good reading year, actually.

It's been a good one in terms of if I just pick one I could see and if you can see if my shoulder.

Endling by Maria.

Yes.

Yeah.

It was on the long list for the book.

For those who have not read Endling, it is about.

And bear with me.

And while I describe what it's about, bear with me in the belief that all these things do tie together in one novel.

So it is about the bride industry in Ukraine, by which I mean the industry whereby usually wealthy foreigners travel to Ukraine to find a bride.

This is all modern, by the way.

It's.

Yeah.

2022 onwards.

So it's about that.

The Ukrainian marriage market.

It is also about end of species extinction via, in particular, a snail.

It is about the last snail in its species and a snail scientist who is determined to find the last snail in its line.

And it is about the Russian invasion of Ukraine.

And all of these things come together in one novel.

And I promise it's really good.

It's so fascinating how she ties all these things together.

And one.

Oh, there's a really good sort of very meta twist that happens halfway through the novel.

So you're reading it thinking it's one book and then suddenly you're spat out and it becomes quite different.

So I. I love this just for how playful and inventive and innovative and interested it was.

You know those chapters that are like conversations between the yurt makers and the writer?

They're just things like that where you're like, I love that you have included this incredibly metafictional section.

It made me think about so many things.

I know so much more about snails than I used to.

And just one of the most unique and different books I've ever read.

I mean, it's a heist book, it's a war book.

It's a meditation on writing and creativity.

It's fascinating.

There's so much in there.

And I think possibly if you saw that it was on the Booker list and it's about war and snails, you might not think it's for you.

But I really enjoyed it.

It was great.

I'd really recommend that.

I think people are probably put off, as you say.

I mean, I picked it up because it was on the list and it is one of the ones I really enjoyed.

I feel like it's one I want to go back and read again.

Yes.

Sort of like the first time I was like, what's going on?

Do I really care about snails?

And who are these marriage people?

I think it's reading it a second time would be really interesting to pick it up.

And actually it's one that somebody said to me, the audiobook is brilliant as well, so I might go back and listen to the audio.

Yeah, that was.

I also like reading and then listening to the audio as well.

It's, like, so interesting.

It's such a different experience, isn't it?

So that was one of your top reads for the year?

Yes, one of my most surprising reads as well, where I had no idea what I would find going into it.

And I found so much in there.

Like, it's like 300 pages.

It's not.

It's not huge.

Yeah, I love that when it's a surprising read.

That's.

That's so interesting.

Right.

So we have got a couple of festive questions to end with.

So, firstly, the artist has some of the most beautiful descriptions of food.

Even when it's rotting.

It's just so beautiful to read.

So I would love it if you could describe for us what would be your perfect Christmas lunch.

Great question.

And one of my favourite things to think about, one of the things to talk about.

Okay.

I come from a family of.

We're a big cooking family, big eating family, but most of our family life is in the kitchen.

We're all together.

We're all very hands on.

You know, we're all getting involved in doing stuff.

So it's definitely like, part of it is just the communal act of all being in the kitchen, cooking together.

So much fun.

Christmas prep in our house begins, like, weeks before Christmas Day itself.

We'll be, you know, making everything from scratch.

Very ambitious.

Like, every year we'll be like, let's try and do this.

Let's try and make this this year.

And then it'll just be a fun experiment to see if we can do it.

So I love.

I love that.

That sense of having, like, made Everything yourself.

And then it all comes together in this one.

This one wonderful meal that you share with people.

So in terms of what we're eating, I don't care much for turkey.

It's fine that it's there.

But I love the side.

That's where I'm getting excited.

Getting excited about sides.

I'm not a huge meat eater, to be honest, so I don't really like.

That's not my jam.

However, all the sides, all the.

You know, they're so colorful at Christmas as well.

Okay.

Like, things like the orange carrots and then, like, the purple cabbage and then, like, sprouts.

Sprouts are delicious.

If you don't like sprouts, cook them with chestnuts and maybe some, like, pancetta or something if you need that in there.

Really good parsnips.

They're really good at Christmas as well.

Different textures.

Something's mashed, something's roasted, something's fried.

Oh, we all have peas as well.

We have a lot of vegetables.

There's a lot happening.

Cranberry sauce.

Really good.

Oh, there's a really good.

There's a really good apple sauce that involves, like, loads of star anise and festive spices.

That's really good.

There is one person in my family, my grandma, who likes bread sauce, which means it has to be made every year.

No one else likes it.

I think that's a very, like, almost Victorian food.

It's very like.

You find it in storybooks, but, yeah, we made every year.

Yeah.

Huge.

Like, lots of things happening at once.

Then.

Okay.

After the main course, I.

Right for pudding.

So I would say I eat everything.

I am voracious and pretty indiscriminatory in terms of what I eat.

But the one thing I don't like is raisins, which makes Christmas tricky time because raisins freaking pop up everywhere.

They're in mince pies.

Pudding.

So I don't like Christmas pudding.

I mean, as the children like Christmas pudding, it's like really boozy dried fruit.

That's fun because you set fire to it.

Yeah, that's fun, sure.

But, like, I mean, it tastes medieval.

You know, when you're like, this hasn't changed for 800 years.

It's.

What is it?

Like beef suet, dried fruits and alcohol?

No, not into that.

So I every year, instead make a Guinness cake.

Have you ever made the Nigella Lawson chocolate Guinness cake?

Right.

It's really good.

It's.

You use Guinness in the batter, and it's really yeasty.

It's this, like, Bubbly, frothy texture in the batter.

And it's this chocolate Guinness cake.

And then you have this white icing on top.

So the cake itself looks like a Guinness cake.

It's this very dark chocolate, and then there's white icing on top.

So I always make that at Christmas for me and the rest of the children who do not like raisins.

Yeah, those.

Those are the key staples.

There's a really good.

Oh, who makes it?

It might be a Kate Young recipe where it's this cranberry cordial.

And then you can add it to alcohol if you want to make a cocktail, or you can just have it as a cordial.

That's really nice as well.

Oh, God.

Christmas for me is just about, like, spending days in the kitchen.

Absolutely.

Like, honking out some Christmas songs on the radio.

And it'll be me and my family just making things.

And like, that's.

That's like a meal that takes days and weeks to make and then.

Yeah.

An hour to eat.

I love that.

That's wonderful.

Oh, I love that.

Jo, I was laughing there when you said about lots of veggies.

My sister, who does listen, I remember, I think she must have been maybe pregnant, but I was at work and she phoned me.

She's like, can I just run through my vegetable list for Christmas?

Like, do you think.

I mean, I think we had, like.

I don't even know.

It's like 20 veg on this.

And I was like, it's a lot.

Yeah.

Restrain her.

She always goes through her list.

And we are there going, is anyone going to notice the mashed Swede if it's not there?

And if the answer is no, there's always one person who wants it.

Yeah.

Christmas is so, like, everyone comes together and everyone has the one thing that's their thing that they love.

It's like, right, great.

Okay.

Gotta make.

Yeah.

That one thing for everyone.

Yeah.

Pigs and blankets are a big one for us, for my brother.

Why do they only come out once a year?

They're so good.

You can get them all the time.

I know, but people don't.

But they should.

I see.

We do, because my son loves them, so that's like one of his snacks.

So he'll have them.

But, yeah, they are like the Christmas.

They put an appearance in a Christmas, don't they?

So I know it's obviously a family affair, but if you could invite anyone, fictional or real, to come and enjoy this lovely meal with you, who would you invite?

Oh, what a question.

Okay.

Okay.

I think you would want someone who's a dab hand in the kitchen.

Someone who can do some.

Or at least do the washing up.

So, yes, I mean, I was.

Think I was going through my list of the books I chose.

Okay, so Lemony Snicket.

I think he'd be great.

There's a lot of food in his book.

He's really fun.

My friend met him when he was doing his All Souls Fellowship at Oxford.

My friend ran into him.

Apparently he makes a great martini.

So perfect.

Lemony Snicket.

He can come.

He can make Christmas martinis.

Would love him to be there.

Who else was on my list?

John Donne.

I'm sorry, not coming.

He would just try and sleep with all my friends.

No, John Donne's not invited.

I would want to talk to him about poems and he'd be just trying to smog people.

So he's not coming.

Forster, I think would be fun.

It's.

I would want Forster to have a nice time.

It's so funny how the impression we have of people from the past in particular is often based on the only, like, photograph we have of them.

So I always think of Forster as quite mournful because of that one photograph where he just looks very sad and sort of the facts of his life match up with that a little bit.

So I would want to like, you know, get some eggnog in him and razz him up a bit.

Have a fun time.

Would be great additions as well.

So I think, yeah, they'd be really fun.

I would want someone maybe like some really, like.

I would want some people, some writers to come along who, like, had some really good gossip.

You know when you invite people to a party and you're like, they are going to turn up with an outrageous story on the doorstep and it's gonna be great.

So maybe, maybe someone like Noel Coward and Rebecca west who would just like, be really bitchy in a corner, but whenever you went over, it would have some, like, scathing thing to say.

I think they'd be really fun at a dinner party.

I mean, this is.

This is my jam.

My happiest place, firstly is behind my desk when writing is going really well.

Secondly is in the kitchen serving people.

I love delicious things and just like cooking and chopping things and making mad drinks.

That's my.

That's my happy place.

Yeah.

Noel Cowden, Rebecca west could be bitchy in a corner together.

And then I'd want someone really loopy, like maybe just like Hildegard von Bingen, the 12th century mystic.

She can Come along.

She can just add some energy.

This is my.

Yeah, she probably would like bread sauce too, to share with your grandma.

She can make the bread sauce.

Perfect using her original, original 12th century German recipe.

Perfect.

Amazing.

So our last question then.

If you were going to buy Ettie, who is your character from the Artist, a Christmas gift, what do you think she'd be secretly hoping for this year?

This is such a lovely question and I think I would love to give ETI something completely frivolous and unnecessary because her life has been such a.

Such a.

One based on just necessity and the bare minimum and not having anything indulgent or.

I mean, she's not even allowed to eat things unless they serve some utilitarian artistic function.

So I would get her something outrageously indulgent and decadent and completely pointless.

Maybe like a nice thing she could wear or paint or eat.

Something really frivolous.

Lovely.

Oh, I love that.

I kind of want to imagine her unwrapping that now.

Lucy.

Lucy, it has been such a joy.

Thank you so much for joining me again.

Oh, thank you so much for having me back.

This has been so much fun, as always.

It has.

I've loved it.

Thank you.

I hope you enjoyed that conversation as much as I did.

I love chatting to Lucy and how fun does her Christmas party sound and all those lovely food ideas.

I'm going to go and have a look at that chocolate Guinness cake.

It sounds amazing.

All of the books that we've talked about are listed in the show notes but below, so do take a look at them.

And of course, the Artist is available now and it is one that I would highly recommend.

Tomorrow I'll be back with our final episode in this Christmas chapter, and I really hope that you'll join me for that episode too.

In the meantime, if you have enjoyed the show, please do take the time to rate, review, subscribe and tell your friends about it.

It would mean the world to me if you could do that.

Thanks for listening and see you tomorrow.