Tom Pepperdine interviews novelist, Nick Bradley, about his writing process. Nick discusses how he breaks down his writing into weekly targets, why he doesn't want to be constrained by a genre and who he thinks are the unsung heroes of the publishing industry.

You can find out more about Nick and his social media presence here: https://www.nickbradleywriter.com/about

And you can find more information about this podcast 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 author Nick Bradley.

Now you may know Nick from his successful debut novel, The Cat And The City.

And if you don't, then it's a collection of tales set across Tokyo

that weave in and out of each other in a sort of wonderful way to show

how societies and cultures overlap.

And what you also may not know is that it was a novel written as

part of his PhD in creative writing at the university of East Anglia.

And the UEA has quite a good record of churning out successful writers.

Too many to list, in fact, but the phrase, "notable alumni of the

UEA" is not too long to Google.

So if you're interested in that sort of thing, please go have a look.

Now, I spoke to Nick on his promo tour for the followup book

called, Four Seasons in Japan.

And for full transparency, I was sent his book in advance.

But for even more transparency and to be truly honest with you, he's only

on because I genuinely loved the book.

Uh, it's just a really clever, sophisticated uh, sort of

telling of a book within a book.

But lots of times, I don't think that sort of mechanism works.

This really does.

And it really worked for me and it's certainly not a book if, if I'm

honest that I would have picked up.

But I'm really glad that it was sent to me.

I'm really glad I read it.

And I'm really glad I've interviewed Nick.

And I don't want to get into a full blown rant, but I've been sent a lot

of crap and wasted many hours reading stuff by people I now no longer

have interested in interviewing.

I don't want to be at another podcast that just interviews anyone.

I want it to be people who are interesting and I'm interested in.

And my promise to you is that I'm not going to waste your time with

crap interviews with bad writers.

And with that said, Nick is a great writer.

He's also a lovely person to interview.

And I really think his way into the industry is unique,

certainly for this podcast.

And it's really interesting to hear his perspective.

And I really hope it's useful to some of you and interesting to all of you.

Anyway, here's a jingle.

Let's go.

And this week I'm here with Nick Bradley.

Nick, hello.

Hi, Tom.

Hi.

How are you?

I'm good, thanks.

Yeah.

How are you?

I'm very well, thank you.

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

I feel really bad about this, but I've made you drink a decaf black coffee.

How is it?

I'll tell you now.

It's good.

It is good.

I've actually had decaf coffee before.

And it has been squirrelled away in the back of my fridge wrapped

up because it's freshly ground.

But it's a Colombian coffee that I've got and it, yeah, it's good.

Also, it's an excuse to use my Aeropress, so I'm always happy to

have freshly ground black coffee.

I do love the Aeropress.

It's a game changer.

I think anyone who drinks coffee at home and doesn't want

instant, you have to have one.

Yeah.

Especially cuz my wife doesn't drink coffee.

I'm the only coffee drinker in the house.

So it's just, I used to have one of these big American filter coffee with

the big jug underneath, but it's just I can't drink that much coffee in a day.

It sends me to a weird place.

So do you always drink decaf or is this just today?

Don't wanna get too caffeinated.

Every day.

I don't wanna get too caffinated.

So I make mine in a, an espresso machine.

So I normally have a strong cup of coffee in the morning and that's good for me.

I'll have a cup of tea after lunch, but I tend to not go overboard on, on caffeine.

Okay.

I think it's definitely something that I think, we're waking up to

the, the, the health negatives as well as the health benefits.

So everything in moderation.

Yeah.

But yeah I've also had a caffeinated coffee today, so having a decaf for

the interview works well for me.

And where am I speaking to you now?

I see shelves behind you.

Is this your writing spot at home?

Yeah, so this, this is my study.

Weirdly though, it's probably where I do more of my kind of

second drafting or editing.

Cuz I tend to write first drafts outside the house.

I go to the, I go to a cafe.

Okay.

And with the first draft cafe, do you have a particular cafe

that you'd like to go to?

Or is it just, you like to wander and, sort of see a quiet spot in the corner?

I'm a really boring person.

A lot of my life, particularly when it comes to writing, is

just, I do the same thing.

And it's so that my brain switches off.

And I'm not thinking about what I'm doing other than the writing.

Yeah.

So I always go to the same cafe in, in the city.

I try and sit at the same seat.

And it's all just a process of allowing my brain to, to just think about writing.

Yeah.

And to not engage with kind of the daily decisions

that get in the way of writing.

Yeah.

Yeah.

And for some people, I know that it almost feels like a daily commute as well.

Like it's the separation of home and work.

So do you, as well as having the same spot, do you try and go for the same

time and same length of time each day?

Yeah, exactly.

Yeah.

I mean it's about a 30 minute walk, which is, I mean there are definitely

places I could go that are closer.

I dunno, there's part superstition where I go to the place cuz it

worked for my first two books.

And yeah, it's also, you're right it's a sense of delineating or separating the

home from the workspace, which is good.

And I think also just that 30 minute walk is a great time to be in my head,

to be thinking about what it is I'm gonna write when I arrive at the cafe.

Cuz if I was just commuting downstairs to the study.

That would only gimme a couple of minutes to think about what I was gonna write.

Yeah.

Whereas that 30 minutes with my music, just in my own

head, is really good actually.

Yeah.

And when you get there, are you a laptop writer or do you have a

series of notebooks, or is it just again, how you feel on the day?

I tend to get my notebook out.

And I don't really know what the notebook is for sometimes.

I've fallen into a habit of just writing the date and just journaling.

And just, just getting my own feelings out.

How am I feeling about the project?

How is it going?

And also, I write words or themes at the top of the page, so that

I'm constantly seeing that theme or that idea that is very important

to the project that I'm working on.

So I'll sit there with my notebook for a bit and then usually I'll,

I'll just start feeling frustrated.

So then I'll get the laptop out and then I'll start working

properly on the document.

Yeah.

And it's interesting writing the theme in the corner of the page.

So is that your sort of grounding central spot when you start a project

that you start a theme and you go okay, how can I manifest this into a plot?

Or do you start with a character?

How does the story begin for you?

That's, yeah, that's a really good question.

So I'd say for me personally, a story always begins with a character.

Like a character will just pop in my head and that's where it starts.

But the reason I write down the theme probably cuz, cuz I, I suppose

listeners are interested in the writing process, but also the things

that we learned from mistakes.

What is my second book is not, the second manuscript that I've finished in my life.

It's probably the fourth full manuscript that I've finished.

So the first one I ever wrote, I just put in a drawer and I

never did anything with it.

And I'm sure the purpose of writing that first manuscript was just to

prove to myself that I could do it.

And once you've done it once, that's the most amazing achievement.

Even if it never gets published.

Even if no one ever sees it.

It's an amazing achievement to have written a whole novel,

a hundred thousand words.

It's a long slog.

So that one I didn't do anything with it.

The second one was my first book.

But then after my first book came out, I wrote another book.

And I ended up trashing that manuscript.

So it was about 120,000 words, but I threw it out.

And mainly it was because my editor's feedback on it was that

the themes were too diffuse.

It was a very long thing.

It was about 120,000 words, but it was dealing with too

many ideas and too many themes.

So really the reason why I write down that theme, that's basically the thesis

or the central theme of the book.

I write it down over and over again so that I can see it each

morning to keep myself on track.

Because I think the nature of my mind is that I will just

wander off into different paths.

So in a sense that writing down that theme is just to make sure I'm

not going off all over the place.

Yeah.

I'm tying myself down to what it is that I've set out to write.

Yeah, no, that's really interesting.

And I think that's a great method.

I haven't heard that before, but I think that's a great technique to do that.

Returning to the sort of idea of journaling and writing the date and sort

of, the start of your writing session, do you look back at the day before?

To just remind yourself and have a through narrative, or is it very much

you've had your 30 minute walk, you're feeling in this sort of vibe and sense

on that day, whether you know how you slept, you know what the weather's like,

and you are just writing a completely fresh session and it'll be later in

the edit you'll try and join them up?

Yeah, that's, that's another really good question.

So with the journaling, where I'm just writing in.

I'm often sort of keeping track with where I am in the story or with the characters,

but I don't tend to go and read that over.

So I don't go back and look at what I wrote the day before.

But the way I work and, I know writers have all got their

sort of funny ways of working.

Yeah.

My, my way of working is again, it's born out of things that I've done

with the first two books that worked, and I've tried to retain those and I've

tried to jettison things that didn't work.

But what works, what really works for me is instead of thinking in terms

of word count, I always think of in terms of scene when I'm writing.

So I don't think, oh, I need to write X number of words.

I think, I need to write this scene.

But what I do in terms of word count is that I actually set a

limit on myself for the week.

Okay.

So I say to myself, you must write one chapter of 5,000 words and it

must be ready to go on Sunday evening.

And the way I work on that sorry to get really granular.

No.

This is exactly what we're about.

Okay, good, good.

I start a new word document for each chapter.

And each morning, say on the Monday, Mondays are the scariest, cuz that's

when you've got an empty document.

Yeah.

So the aim for Monday is just get something down so that, you've got a

thousand words or so in the document.

But what I tend to do each morning though, is when I'm, when I start,

I don't really start writing.

I read over what I've written so far in that chapter.

And the reason why I separate out my chapters and just work on one,

is because I know that if I was working on one long document, I would

scroll back to the beginning and I would start at the beginning, right?

And read through everything.

Or I would get carried away editing bits or it might start making me

question things when really when you're writing a first draft, you

have to move forward like a shark.

You can't stop.

I mean, I'm quite a quick writer, so I can definitely write a thousand

or 2000 words in a day, no problem.

But what I find is I gen generally, I'll write about 1000 words a day.

But what it means is that by Sunday, that piece has been

edited and looked over a lot.

So I know that when I put it away and I move on to the next

chapter, it's a solid piece.

My rule for it is that it's to the level that I would be willing to send

it into the UEA MA workshop, which I did before I wrote my first book.

It has to be to that level that I could send it to a workshop of

people, some of whom would like me and some of whom wouldn't like me.

And even the people who wouldn't like me would have to begrudgingly admit

that this was done to a good level.

that's my kind of mental gauge of where I need it to be on that Sunday.

Yeah.

And when you are assigning a chapter a week, have you mapped out

an outline of what each chapter is going to achieve in the plot narrative?

Do you map all of that out before, or is it just you get a rough sense of what

might happen before you start writing it and then you just let the characters go

and by the end of the week it might have ended up somewhere completely different?

it's difficult sometimes cuz you know, even when we talk

about ourselves, we think we're a certain way and we're not.

It's more about the narratives we tell ourselves.

But I think I'm a I'm an adaptable person in terms of writing, so so

most of it is just kept in my head.

For example, the thing I'm writing at the moment, I know the three worlds that

it's set in and I know what I want to happen and, where things are gonna go.

I kind of know that in my head.

But the reason I just keep it in my head is that over time, and I think Stephen

King said this, but a writer's notebook is the best place to immortalize bad ideas.

And I kind of agree with him in that all my best ideas just stay in my head.

So if I think about a premise or if I think about an event that

I want to happen, if it's a good idea, it will just stay there.

And all those kind of like little flash in the pan ones, I just forget

them because they're not very good.

And so for me, that's the reason why I don't plan and write things down.

I don't write down what's going to happen.

And part of that is also to get that thrill of when you sit down, just

think I've got no idea where this is going, see where it goes today.

But in a sense, I do know where I want it to go eventually.

But in that chapter, it's giving me the freedom to do whatever I like.

I often kind of liken it to going on on a country walk or something.

And you might see like a church spire in the distance.

You might think, yeah, or I'm gonna head that way.

But in the process of heading that way, you'll spot all these

really interesting things.

Oh, there's a ruin for a castle.

Let's go have a look at that.

And I think that combination of roughly knowing where you're going and also the

kind of playful, openness to just say I know I said I was gonna go there, but

like, Hmm, this looks interesting here.

I think I liken my process to that.

I think it's an adaptable combination of someone who likes to plan, but

someone who also likes to improvise.

Yeah, I've definitely uh, spoken to writers before where they actually

liked not knowing the ending of their books because it causes them

to ramp up and race to the finish cuz they wanted to know how it ends.

Yeah, which I just found really interesting.

But yeah, having two points of a journey, a beginning and an end, and sort of the

meandering middle for a first draft.

Yeah, it's definitely a recognized technique.

It's definitely a group of authors I know who approach it like that.

So it, it's nice to hear another.

And you mentioned how there's three worlds in your current project.

Yeah.

I'm a sci-fi nut, so I'm instantly thinking interplanetary, but is that

more timeline based or is it a bit of meta fiction of books within books?

Could you say a bit more about those three?

I, okay.

I'm slightly worried cuz had I done this podcast with you before when I

was writing that book that I ended up trashing, I would gone, yeah,

there's this book and I'd gone into all these yeah, details about this

thing that I ended up throwing away.

So just the caveat that this, it might not go anywhere.

It might be that, yeah, the one I write afterwards is

the one that's the next book.

But yeah, I think just the easiest way to talk about that without

being too specific, is that yeah, one story is set in space.

One story is set in contemporary Britain.

And one story is set in 1990s Seattle.

Wow.

Yeah.

I'm glad that you said that you're into sci-fi because I like sci-fi too.

I like all genres.

I really love everything.

And with my first book, one of my aims for it was to try and write as many

genres as I could into one book, so that me being a contrarian I don't

like the way we divide up books.

I think we should just have a wall that's just fiction and, yeah.

I don't like this division of here goes the sci-fi, here goes the crime.

So I tried to put some sci-fi in it.

I tried to put some crime in it.

I tried to put a bit of like ghost story.

I wanted a bit of everything in my first book.

Cause I, I feel like your first book is an announcement of this

is what I wanna do with my career.

Like each one of those stories, like there's probably

two or three homages in it.

But one of those was to Ray Bradbury's Illustrated Man.

Yeah.

No, I've not read Illustrated man, which is why I wouldn't have picked up on it.

Illustrated Man's fantastic.

I think you love it.

So it begins with the narrator meeting a guy who's got tattoos all over his body.

Yeah, then each one of the tattoos becomes like a story.

So it's illustrative man is a kind of linked collection of stories, but

yeah, anyway, I think you'll love it.

You'll love it.

And Ray Bradley is a great writer, so yes, thank you for the recommendation.

But yeah, just Just so we don't lose the thread, going on to your current project,

which may or may not see the light of day.

It sounds like there's a lot of fun research opportunities

to be had with that.

Because obviously Japan features strongly in your first two books.

You spent a lot of time there, fluent in Japanese.

So there's a lot that you could call upon, I felt like with that.

But yeah, when you're doing a historical period in Seattle and also with space.

Do you want to ground that in a reality where you are looking at what technology's

achievable now and where it's going?

Or is it very much, these are the sci-fi films I like and I

wanted to write something similar?

Yeah.

Yeah.

Good question.

I think with the sci-fi one I read a, a memoir by a Japanese soldier who in

the Second World war, he was in a small island I think in the Pacific somewhere.

And he kept fighting the war.

Have you heard about this?

Yeah.

So it was like after the war finished, he still was defending this island

because no one came to tell him.

Yeah, exactly.

So I read his memoir and it was so interesting, and he carried

on fighting the war for 30 years.

And his brother came to the islands and was walking around with a

loud speaker saying, Hey, the, the war's over, you can come out.

And he was saying to himself, I don't believe that.

It's just propaganda.

They're trying to trick me.

And it took getting his former, What would you say?

Like his commanding officer?

Superior.

Yeah.

To come who was now working in a bookshop in the south of Japan.

It took bringing him over to give him the order to stand down.

To come back to Japan and stop, and stop fighting this war.

So I think it was reading that got me thinking about this idea of wanting

to do something similar in space.

And I suppose that world is now growing.

I actually haven't started putting pen to paper for that strand.

Okay.

So I've written one strand, a rough draft of contemporary Britain,

and I'm halfway through 90s Seattle.

And with the space one, I haven't started writing it yet, so it's still just, it's

still just a story that is percolating.

Yeah.

Yeah.

I talk about it like I've run stimulations.

Yeah.

So I'm running the scenes in my mind and I'm seeing it,

but I haven't yet codified it.

Yeah.

Okay.

That's cool.

And so when you are researching Seattle, have you got any connection to Seattle

or is it just internet research?

Have you got a book that's a really good sort of anchor

point for you or a documentary?

How's the research for that going?

Okay.

Yeah.

So that one is also just personal interest.

And it's like partly nostalgia.

People from Seattle would hate me for saying this, but I was a grunge kid.

Very much into the music that came out of Seattle in the nineties.

And I think we are roughly the same age, so..

We are, I think there's only about eight months between us.

Uh, So yeah, I had a Pearl Jam 10 tie dye t-shirt, I love those days.

Yeah so I think um, partly, you know, I've been to Seattle

a couple of times and I love it.

I love the music that, that came out of it.

So I wanted to write about that period.

I also like, I'm kind of a bit nostalgic for the nineties.

In the sense that now with social media and everything, I just feel like we don't

have the serenity that we used to have.

Yeah.

There's, yeah.

Sorry, go on.

So yeah, I get that.

You know, not going too much into my personal life.

I'm in a much better place now than I was in the nineties, so maybe I'm not

too nostalgic about it, but I totally get where you're coming from with it.

Yeah.

Yeah.

There are so many things that we've gained.

So yeah I don't wanna be one of those people who just I don't wanna age too

quickly and be, it was better in my day.

But I think there is a side of me that, in, in the same way that when

I read a book, I want to escape.

I think also when you are writing a book, you want to escape.

You wanna escape to a place that interests you that you're passionate about.

So I suppose with Seattle, I don't wanna go too much into details, but there

has to be a con, a tech connection.

And Seattle's an interesting city in that it, it went from being a

very blue collar city, to being this huge a fashion icon as it were.

Yeah.

People trying to dress like these loggers from Seattle.

And then also then you've got the tech companies moving in and

you've got places like Nintendo of America's based near Seattle.

Microsoft, Google, like all these tech companies also settled there.

And I find it an interesting place.

I think it reminds me a lot of Manchester in the UK.

Awful weather, but great music.

Yeah.

So yeah not to go on about Seattle too much, but I, I

definitely, with my new book, I definitely want to get out of Japan.

I want to challenge myself and do something different.

So there is a sense that I'm going to places that are different, that are not

Japan, purely on principle as it were.

Yeah.

And as you said, you've got these three different world elements and

you've written you know, a draft of the contemporary and you're

working on Seattle at the moment.

So how many words would you say you are into this project?

30,000.

Okay.

And compared to your what, I guess this is the fifth manuscript you are working on

and is there a period that you get through a manuscript where it either all clicks

into place or the complete 180, is there a moment where you have a complete crisis of

confidence of, actually what am I doing?

I'm not even a writer.

Why am I doing this?

It's a really good question.

Okay.

It's, I think it's something I used to suffer from.

So even that first manuscript that I wrote, that obviously wasn't the

first thing I had tried to write.

And I think I spent my teens and my twenties and my, my early thirties.

I tried to write a lot of books and I used to always stumble at about 20,000 words.

That used to be my stumbling point.

But I think after writing that first one, I don't think I have that fear anymore.

I think what's more likely is that I'll write the whole

thing and then I'll look at it.

Or someone else will look at it, my, my agent, or my editor.

And they will say this isn't working.

And I'll say, okay, why isn't it working?

And then I'll go back and I'll start something else.

So I'm not scared.

I am aware of the voices in the head and this is what I tell

people to stop listening to those.

Your brain will try and trick you and say, this isn't worth it.

Don't do it.

Don't do it.

What's the point?

But I always just tell myself like all of the great works of literature

that I love and adore, I know that the writers felt those same things

and had they listened to those voices, those things would not exist.

And I just think it's better to have done something than to not.

It's better to regret something you've done than something you haven't done.

A quote from Orbital Satan single that came out in the early nineties.

But yeah, so I think your brain will try to say to you, this has been done before.

Your book is just like this other book.

Of course, you are gonna write something that's similar to other things, but

it's never been written or done by you.

And that's the important thing.

You are going to bring something different to it.

And the fact that similar stuff already exists is, you know, clear

demonstration that it's a good idea.

If it wasn't a good idea.

It probably wouldn't exist.

I think that's a great piece of advice, which I hope listeners

who are struggling with their writing can really take home.

But moving on from that more granular sort, like getting down to the day-to-day,

when you walk to the coffee shop, are there days where you just go and

there's just nothing or it's like too noisy or are you confident in your

writing now that you can identify those moments and you just go, you know what?

I'm gonna walk home.

I'm not gonna try, today's a wasted day.

Do you have days where you just don't want to go to the coffee shop or

do you always force yourself to go?

I always want to go.

But yeah, I know completely what you're saying.

And I think, there are some days where it's yeah, I killed it.

And then there are some days that it's really tough.

But I think partly why I'm so strict with my routine and why I'm repetitive with

my routine is there are certain things built into my routine that stop me.

So for example, I'll put my phone on airplane mode the night before.

So there will be no, no interference.

No one's gonna contact me and get in the way of me writing my words.

I'll turn off the wifi on my laptop.

So those are two things that I've done that will stop me giving myself

an excuse to not write the words.

So in a sense, like the airplane mode is only gonna come off

once the words are written.

Same with the wifi.

And I think some days, yeah, it can be quite a struggle, but, and

I think this is coming back to the previous question a little bit.

There are certain things in my life, like maxims or ideas

that have really helped me.

One is Murakami's, his first ever novel, Hear The Wind Sing, the

first sentence in it is, there is no such thing as the perfect sentence.

And to me, that blew my mind when I first read it, because I just

thought, Yeah, this idea of the writer achieving perfection, it doesn't exist.

The only thing that matters is progress, right?

Progress, not perfection, essentially.

So even if I do turn up at the cafe, even if 800 words is all I do, and it feels

like a struggle and I feel like it's crap.

It's still 800 more words than had I not tried.

Yeah.

And that that's the way I view it, is that any form of progress is great.

As long as you haven't deleted the whole thing, as long as

you haven't killed someone.

The day's going well if you make just even a tiny bit of progress.

Yeah.

Cuz it's those tiny increments of progress that add up to the novel.

And I'd say actually in some ways it's better to set your daily bar

low, so that you always achieve it.

Rather than trying to push it higher and higher, and then you're at

risk of feeling like you've failed.

No, that's great.

And I think uh, that helps us transition into that whole editing process.

And so once you've got a beginning, middle, and end, you'll do a complete

draft before you start editing and how do you start that redrafting process?

Do you print it out?

Do you read it all the way through making annotations?

Or do you just do a skim read and then go right, these are the

key scenes that I need to rework.

Like how does your editing process look?

Yeah.

I think once I've got a first draft and I've got it all

in, as a complete manuscript.

And maybe I've read over it and I've tinkered with it here and there.

At that point I feel a bit blind to it.

So I think at that point I usually open the door and try and get some

thoughts from friends who I trust, so people who are happy to read.

And some of those might be writers and we might swap stuff.

So, like, I've got one friend who's just a fantastic reader.

She's someone who I met when I was first living in Japan, and she works

for the Washington Public Library.

And she just loves to read and she doesn't want to be a writer,

but she's like a great reader.

So yeah, I'll usually share an early draft of the whole thing

with some friends, close friends.

And then I'll take what they're saying and then I'll factor that into the redraft.

You know, and sometimes you'll agree with them, sometimes you'll

nah, maybe not agree with them.

But usually though, if they're pointing at a place and saying

something, there's usually an issue there that needs to be fixed.

And so sometimes it's about working out what that issue is.

I do like to print stuff out and read it on paper, but I feel

like there's so many drafts.

There's so many redrafts and so many versions that I always feel really

bad cuz I sometimes I'll print one out and then I'll start working on it

and it'll be so different that if I were to go to that printout version.

Yeah.

You know what I mean?

Yeah.

But reading on paper is really good.

Um, And there should always be a point in the process where you do read on paper.

But yeah, I mean, sometimes I'll whack it on my Kindle and read it all.

You know, that's also handy.

I think just seeing it in a different format rather than just on the

screen, yeah, can led you to things.

But I'd say that the real heavy lifting starts usually when I've

shown it to my agent or to my editor.

That's when we start hearing things like, Does it even need

to be set in space at all?

Shouldn't it all be set in 90s Seattle?

Yeah.

Which you deal with when those come in.

Yeah.

Yeah.

Yeah.

And have you had the same editor for all five manuscripts?

The first one never saw anything, but I have the same

editor as The Cat In The City.

And they also edited Four Seasons in Japan.

For that scrap manuscript in the middle, that was also the same

editor who said, I don't think this is the right thing to follow, and

I trust their judgment implicitly.

And they also wrote a very good email explaining why.

And as soon as I read it, I was just like, yeah, okay.

So there's a lot of trust in that relationship.

Cause I always think the editors are almost the unsung heroes of writers.

Absolutely.

And how did that relationship, but also, was that someone

that you met through your PhD?

Was it on the course or what, did they come later?

No, yeah, they came later.

So, So the first person, I suppose, I met with my agent and yeah, I met my

agent just at the sort of tail end of doing the MA in creative writing at

UEA and that must have been in 2016.

I met him and just instantly clicked with him.

He's fantastic, similar taste.

He's also like into sci-fi and yeah.

So that was great.

He was always completely supportive of the book.

But he obviously was the one who submitted it to Atlantic,

who was my first publisher.

And that was where the manuscript got in front of Bobby, my, my editor.

Yeah.

Nice.

And so was it the same kind of thing that you had with your agent that

when you met Bobby it was just like, oh, you get how I approach writing.

What, was there something that you could sort of tell, like, you are

my editor, you are definitely the person I'm gonna trust with this?

Yeah, it was the same sort of thing.

I read their notes or their response to the book.

And I met with them and I just instantly was like, yeah, this person

gets what it is I'm trying to do.

Because I met with the publishers and they had questions for me and I had

questions for them, and I just felt really comfortable with that team

who we did The Cat And The City with.

And you're completely right in what you said earlier about unsung heroes.

Cause I feel like the publishing industry is just full of unsung heroes.

And I often think about it, you know.

Say for example, like you send off a manuscript to an agent, but maybe

it's not the agent who reads it first.

Maybe it's an assistant who picks it from slush pile.

That's true.

Yeah.

They're the one who is like, I love this.

And they take it to your agent and you never even get to thank them.

You never get to meet them and say, you change my life.

And I feel like that too, even still, I think about Four Seasons

in Japan and I think about all the people who've worked on it.

And I know a lot of the people who have worked on it.

But then there must be a ton of people at the publisher who've

done things towards it, who I'm not aware of and I would love to thank.

And I just, I drive myself crazy thinking about these kinds of things.

I'm sorry.

No.

That's right.

Actually.

Think of the little details it reminded me about in Four Seasons in Japan

and I, this may be something that you did in The Cat And The City as well.

So I have, I haven't finished it, so apologize in my ignorance: photographs.

Yes.

And drawings, which just really elevated the reality of the story.

And firstly, you know, those your photographs and drawings and

was that always a thing from the start that you wanted to include?

Or how did that get featured into the.

The manuscript?

Ah, is it crazy if I don't wanna admit that they're my photographs?

Cuz I, I I don't wanna take them off from my characters, but no I'm glad that you

like that element because I love that too.

I love what books can do on the page.

Audio books are great and everything, but one of the magical things about

printed book is all of the visual elements that you do with it.

And so I was really excited when you said you were a photographer earlier

because I was also a photographer.

That was one of the things that I was doing out in Japan.

But I was doing travel stuff mostly.

And I think it really brings the verisimilitude, not to get too

English literature on this, but it really ups that sense of reality.

Yeah.

And I just love books that do that.

And I remember doing an event for the The Cat And The City because I had a similar

kind of question and I said when I was young, I really loved the Jolly Postman.

Do you remember that?

Oh my God, yes.

Yeah.

You could take the actual letters out.

Yeah.

Had all the different handwriting and everything.

Yeah.

And I just thought that was the most incredible thing ever.

And so I, I said that was like one of the inspirations behind some of the

more, yeah, weirder elements of, yeah.

the the stuff I write.

And someone was like, oh, I thought you were gonna say like

Kurt Vonnegut or something.

No, it's Jolly Postman.

No, that's fantastic.

Yeah.

And it is just like you say, it just builds a reality of the

world that you are crafting.

And I'm not gonna go into the plot narrative of why, but it's just

these pictures appear later in the book, so it just, there's nothing to

indicate this is a semi picture book.

So when they suddenly appeared, it was completely true to the narrative

that you were crafting but it was just like, oh, this isn't

something you see in every book.

And um, yeah, and that, that's a great reference point.

I'm gonna remember that for a long time.

And it's just, it shows that good ideas can come from anywhere.

You don't have to look at the greats for a great idea.

Yeah, it's like just one thing to add as well on, on the photographs, and

it ties back to something that you were saying earlier about I think word choice.

And I dunno I'm being really in inarticulate now.

One of, one of the things I found as well is photography it's a

wonderful storytelling media.

I love it.

And my problem, I think, and I dunno if you feel like this too, is that

sometimes as a photographer, the things that you love are not necessarily the

things that you must use in your career.

Yeah.

And I feel like I took that lesson when writing a book.

It's not about me, right?

This book is not about me, it's about my characters.

Even the thinking about the photos that they would choose

versus the photos I would choose.

Like getting into that mindset and just thinking, okay, how would my

character, what photos would they upload?

Cuz I know the ones I would upload, they would be the ones that showed me off

as being such a fantastic photographer.

And I feel like we can get like that with word choice as well.

Yeah.

It's great that we have writers like Nabokov.

I love Nabokov, but I think not everyone can be like him.

Like we can't be as amazing and prolix and articulate.

I think though I also love writers where you don't even notice them.

You don't notice them because you're so engrossed in the story, in the characters.

And I think as soon as a writer's using a, an overly complex word or something

that, that shows more about them than it does about their characters.

That's an issue, I think.

Yeah, and I think it can be the same too with these kind of non-textual things

that I try and use in, in the book.

I think sometimes I have to reign in a little bit because I'm being too gimmicky.

I mean, it certainly didn't come across in the final book.

So, you've successfully avoided that, in my opinion at least.

And when you've finished a manuscript, it's like it's edited.

Bobby signed it off.

It's like, okay, we're, we're good to go.

Do you get a sense of relief of just okay, I can put that to bed, move onto

something else, or, because there's always that percolating idea that you wanna move

onto, or do you get a sense of grief of, I spent so long with these characters and

I'm sending them off into the world, I won't be spending time with them anymore.

Do you find it's, more of a relief to finish or grief to finish?

Oh, I always think as well that there are so many false

ending endings with writing a book.

That initial first ending that you think oh, I've done it.

There's a lot of grief, there's a bit of relief.

I definitely feel both.

The grief thing's real though.

I think, especially when you're not quite sure what it is you wanna work on next.

I probably dwell on the grief more.

Mm-hmm.

I dwell on it until I've set in my mind, okay, this

is what I'm gonna do next.

And then usually I'll be like I'm gonna write this thing, and then it'll

come back with more edits or whatever.

And then you have to go back into it again.

Yeah.

And then you work on it and then you feel that relief.

And then maybe you have to go back into it a couple more times.

So, yeah.

It, I'm hoping to feel relief with this one where it's published cause

it's published next week It's very difficult to take stock and

yeah, appreciate what you've got.

Yeah.

I'm not sure when you feel it, it's finished.

Cause obviously you're saying with Four Seasons In Japan it's

more like the release date is when it's okay, it's definitely done.

But there's like your edit, there's the book proofs and all those like

versions that you have to go through.

Maybe looking at different colors or type faces and all that jazz.

But when you have a sense that you've finished the main chunk of work, the

main manuscript and it's sent off to be printed, do you have any kind of rituals

of just okay, now I can have champagne, or now I can buy myself a new gadget?

Or do you have any sort of thing that you'd like to do

once you've finished a book?

That's, yeah, that's a good question.

Like the character in Misery, does he, what does he do?

He has like a cigar or something.

Yeah, I think it's champagne.

Yeah.

I don't, I think I like to just take a moment and just think.

Wow.

But I think that that moment comes when you get the final hardbacks.

I think that moment of just wow, this is a thing.

Like how it's a real thing.

Yeah, how did I do it?

Like I pulled it off.

I think also like maybe some writers are different and you would know better

than me cuz after interviewing so many, but I'm such a controlled freak, so

even when I'm getting my proofs, the proof pages, I'm still reading over it.

I'm still fusing on it and I'm still saying no, like this line

here, like this line break is wrong.

Yeah, so maybe some other writers have already detached and moved on onto their

thing, whereas I'm still not letting go.

I'm still.

Yeah.

I'm gonna paraphrase and butcher a quote here, but it's great art

is never finished, it's abandoned.

It's true.

It's true.

I have two last questions.

My listeners will know exactly what I'm gonna say now cause

it's verbatim every time.

It's my belief that writers continue to grow and develop their writing

with each story that they write.

Was there anything in particular that you learned from your last story that

you're now applying to your latest work?

That's a good question.

Yeah, that's a really good question, I suppose I, I've already talked a

little bit about the scene thing, so that's definitely one thing.

But I'd say if you consider the whole process of trying to get a second

book published, the main thing I've learned is that failure, what we

perceive as failure or rejection is sometimes a point where you can learn

a lot and my theme for the second book that I always wrote was failure.

It was this idea of, I just had a second book rejected.

First book did well and I didn't see that coming.

Maybe I did, actually.

A lot of my friends were like, don't worry, it'll be fine.

And there was a side of me that was like, I'm not gonna be fine,

this is gonna be difficult.

The biggest thing I learned though is that you just keep going.

Even when you have setbacks, even like rejections or things don't

go well, you just keep going.

You just keep doing the thing that you love.

And don't worry about, what goes on in the background.

Just keep doing what it is what it is that you enjoy in life.

Yeah.

I think that's probably the most important thing I've learned.

Mm-hmm.

And I think we've covered this through a lot of the conversation, but I always

like to say is there one piece of advice that you find yourself returning to?

There's like one thing that resonates with you when you are writing that you know,

might be in a quote or just something that you always try and keep in your head.

Oh yeah.

There's quite a few.

There's quite a few, like a lot.

Just say a few quickly.

So one would be Kazuo Ishiguro.

I was really lucky to have a masterclass with him.

And one thing he said stuck in my mind, which was that his writing

changed for the better when he stopped thinking about his characters in

isolation and started to think about them in terms of the relationships

that they have with each other.

So he started to consider relationships as characters rather than

characters as isolated individuals.

Yeah, and I really love that.

It's something I think about a lot.

Another one was Elizabeth Strout.

She said she said her writing changed for the better when she stopped judging

her characters and just let them be.

And I really love that.

I really love that.

I don't think I have ever judged my characters.

I just let them be, and I love them no matter who they are and what they do.

And I think that as a, as an author, that's what you've gotta do.

You, you can't be stacking the odds against certain characters.

You have to let all of them exist and be.

Yeah.

Yeah.

I mean, The other one was that Murakami, at the first sentence.

There's no such thing as perfect sentence.

Gosh, yeah.

Stephen King's got a ton of them in On Writing.

Yeah.

There's so many.

I think so many.

Yeah.

Yeah.

Yeah.

Oh, can I ask you a question?

You can indeed.

What is the weirdest drink that someone has made

you drink for this podcast?

Um, The one that I was scared of, that I thought I wouldn't

like, but actually ended up did liking was licorice root tea.

And that was really, I had to go out to a specialist shop to buy that.

And I was like, what am I about to drink?

Because I don't really like licorice.

Yeah, but it's actually really nice.

But then I did look it up afterwards and drinking a lot

of it can be very bad for you.

So it was one of those things like I still have it, and any guest who comes to my

house and sees all these teas and it's just like, why do you have all these teas?

And I'm like, podcast.

And my wife hates it cause I don't drink tea, I drink coffee.

But as I said, oh, but if someone says, do you have any herbal tea?

I'm just oh, come this way.

That, that's been a amazing not forseen benefit of the podcast.

Yeah.

Yeah, my older brother he has his own company, but weirdly, he

keeps a whole cupboard full of random teas and he's really proud of them.

He's like what do you want?

I got anything.

Anything you want.

I think it's one of those things, cause it keeps for

an inordinate amount of time.

So it's like you can build these collections and they

be completely drinkable.

And it's not expensive.

And it is just a, again, it's accommodating other people and

being considerate to other people.

It's just whatever you want here, I'm here.

That's a great musing ending.

I really appreciate a fantastic chat, Nick.

I hope you've enjoyed it as much as I have.

Yeah, no, it's been great.

Great.

Thank you.

And thank you very much for being my guest this week.

Thank you for having me.

And that was the real writing process of Nick Bradley.

Nick is on Twitter and Instagram.

And also teaches creative writing at Cambridge.

So whichever of those three is easiest for you to contact him.

Please use.

No judgment.

But yes, I do strongly recommend his latest book.

Four seasons in Japan.

If you'd like characters and stories, it's definitely worth a look.

It's out now in the UK and as his first book was translated into 14 languages,

it should hopefully be available in lots of other countries soon as well.

Now, if you're still listening, I'm going to guess you're either driving,

busy with your hands some other way or interested in me and the show.

If it's the last one, I should probably mention why there's not

been many episodes this year.

Firstly, as I ranted about in the intro, I've kind of been overwhelmed

with submissions and I know people don't like the silent treatments.

I've tried to read as much as possible to give a broad selection of authors

to the show, but also to get feedback.

However, that means some really unsuccessful reads.

Books that started well, but ran out of steam by the end.

Some that were very terrible from the beginning, so I

didn't read the whole thing.

I could just read a couple of pages.

Well, not.

Not a couple of pages.

I've tried to read a hundred pages if I can.

If it's a real struggle then of course.

It's a no.

But it's just I can't I interview people where I don't love the book.

Uh, I do have authors that are on a "one to watch" list.

So if I thought the book was fine, but it didn't really grab me,

but I feel that they might wait something better in the future.

Then I haven't like blacklisted them.

So, uh, there are people where I've gone, not this time.

Also, don't like talking about it, I've had some health stuff that's

made concentration difficult.

That slowed me down.

And I need to apologize to a bunch of authors I've interviewed, but

not yet published the episodes.

As I just got overwhelmed with the backlog and panicked a bit.

However, doing this episode kind of reinvigorated.

And I've had some blunt conversations with PR people and publishers, so

I'm now being sent better writers.

So that's, that's a good thing, I think in the end.

Also I want a quality product to you.

And I feel, especially with this episode and a few others, I've

got planned to release soon, that quality is definitely high.

Also, you may have noticed that there's no ads on these episodes.

Yes.

I pay for all of this myself.

I also transcribe every episode for the deaf and hard of hearing.

And that takes time.

So I also need to earn money elsewhere, eat, sleep, spend time with my wife.

And if that means that this time intensive labor of love it's temporarily

sacrificed, then that's what happens.

I am going to get back to more episodes soon though.

I've got some really good ones to share.

But anyway, that's all for this episode.

And if you've listened this far, I love you.

I miss you.

And I hope you keep writing.