Tom Pepperdine interviews the multi award-winning novelist, children's writer, playwright, and screenwriter, Caryl Lewis about her writing process. Caryl discusses the importance of place as well as character in the creation of her stories, challenging the tropes surrounding Wales and Welshness, and allowing her writing to grow and develop by writing in different spheres.

You can follow Caryl's adventures on her Instagram here: https://www.instagram.com/caryllewis2/

Read her bibliography here: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Caryl_Lewis

And her screenwritng here: https://www.imdb.com/name/nm3385217/

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Hello, and welcome to the real writing process.

I'm your host, Tom Pepperdine.

And this week, my guest is the multi award-winning novelist, children's writer,

playwright, and screenwriter, Caryl Lewis.

Caryl was a wonderful guest and I'm so pleased we got a chance to speak

as part of a press tour for her debut novel in the English language, Drift.

Caryl's writing is so incredible that not only did her book, Martha, Jack

and Shanko win Wales Book of the Year.

But it's also taught on the Welsh school curriculum.

How cool is that?

Very excited to see her published in English.

Uh, there are also English translations of other books available.

So do seek them out.

Or just learn Welsh, it's a beautiful language.

Either way, this interview took place on a lovely sunny day back in March, 2022.

A happy, simpler time.

Let's go there now.

And this week I'm joined by Caryl Lewis.

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

We're very rock'n'roll, we're drinking lemon squash today.

We are indeed, and it's not as warm as it has been, but it's

still a nice, refreshing drink.

And I think for an interview, yeah.

It's beautiful.

It's beautiful today.

And yeah, I mean, I also live with the middle of nowhere.

So driving, you have to do a lot of so, um, harder drinks are kept for

evening consumption only around here.

Haha.

That's absolutely fine.

And is this a drink that you find that you drink whilst writing?

Is this a regular go-to or is it just because it's such a hot, lovely day,

there's a bit of different refreshment?

It's because it's my favorite squash.

I drink a lot.

I drink a lot of tea.

Really strong earl gray tea as well, when it's a bit cooler.

Which is probably no good for my teeth, but it's my caffeine go to.

Because I don't drink coffee.

Yeah.

Okay.

No, no, No.

That's great.

And I drink a lot of squash myself.

I just find I get a bit bored of water, but it's important

to drink a lot of water.

So yeah.

Having a bit of squash, it makes it a lot easier.

And where I'm speaking to you now, is this your writing space at home?

It is.

I'm in my office upstairs, which is in our farm house in mid Wales, halfway mountain.

And I'm looking out over the Welsh hills.

Lovely.

Very inspiring, very evocative, I think as well.

It's nice to just have a rural landscape, I think.

And how long have you had this as a writing space?

Uh, have you always had a separate room for writing or was it a recent thing?

I used to write at the kitchen table.

Pre-children I used to do that lot.

And then I found that the chaos was escalating with each extra child.

And I would find notes scribbled on my work and sticky fingers of things

going missing, so when we redid part of the house I decided to have an office.

And the reason it's upstairs is because I live on a farm

and I also help out with food.

When farmers are here doing jobs.

So I can choose when to take a break and come down rather than being interrupted

all the time, which is important for me with the flow of the thing.

But my desk is actually facing away from the window.

Because I think if I had it looking out, I would never get any writing done at all.

Yeah, And on your desk, you do you like to keep it fairly sparse or do

you have like little momentos and like talismans that sort of help inspire

the project that you're working on?

It's a complete mess, (laughs) but then I do like to work on

several projects at the same time.

So I usually have a mixture of research books.

I'm trying to look now.

I know I've got pens and pencils and hairbrushes and a million notes

books and some children's drawings and yeah, it's quite chaotic.

I won't lie.

And so do you have a notebook for each project or do you have a

notebook for the characters, one for world-building, one for snapshots

of dialogue and little concepts.

How do you break up your notebooks?

That's an interesting question.

I do have separate ones, but weirdly I tend to have just like a current

notebook where ideas for all the projects I'm working for at the moment live.

It's almost like currently what's in my head notebook, rather than

a separation of this is this project and this is this project.

It's ongoing business kind of thing.

So with that, is there like a contents page?

This book is on page 14 and this book is on page 20 or do you just make

sure that you have a dedicated page?

I wish so, it's all absolutely splats everything in a massive

jumble, but it makes sense to me.

Okay.

You have your system, you know where things are.

Yeah.

Okay.

No, that's great.

And yeah, cause a lot of authors I speak to, they tend to have the initial concept

stage just percolating in their head and when it's like ripe or ready or feeling

fresh that's when they go to paper.

So it's really fascinating to hear that at that concept stage,

you're already making notes.

Does that help solidify the concept to you?

Is that sort of helping build a structure around it?

I think about things and then make just brief notes.

You know, These are not fully formed.

These are just maybe images or feelings even, that kind of thing.

And then what I tend to do then is ignore the idea.

It's a bit like working with a horse, I don't know, but I got a

really grumpy Irish Cob, that is supposed to be for rounding sheep.

And he sometimes you need to turn your back on an idea and let it follow you

around rather than looking directly at it.

Cause I think things dissipate when you look at them too rigidly or

too starkly, and I think just let it follow you around for awhile.

And then you make a series of realizations along the way.

And these are the things that I might note down here and there.

But it can take years, it can take months in some cases, but it can take years.

So it's just that kind of collation of an idea and making

these realizations along the way.

But I don't have a notebook by the bed.

That's the one rule I do have.

Because I think there is a reason why you forget those ideas in the middle of the

night, because they're really rubbish.

Hahaha.

I think if an idea stays with you, then it is supposed to be because your

imagination is an incredibly good seive.

And it will get rid of the stuff you don't need over time.

When you're writing something, I tend to make my notes in the day.

Yeah.

I think there's a lot of you know, there's a bit of a joke cliche that writers, they

have these notebooks by the edge of the bed, they think, oh, this is amazing idea.

I've got to write it down and they wake up in the morning,

what the hell is eat gloves?

Why have I written eat gloves?

So blue hand?

So yes.

It's yeah, I think what people think of as late night inspiration

is just gibberish yeah.

Actually waiting until your mind is sharp and you can actually articulate

yourself is quite important.

And I think it is something that writers learn eventually.

But it's always nice to be reminded.

And so it sounds that the thoughts and feelings are kind of where the

story starts with you and it's a sense of tone that you want to inhabit.

Do you find that then formulates into a particular character or a space?

Do you find that you start world-building and then populate with characters

or you come up with a character and go, where does this person live?

Where are these events taking place?

I always start with worlds.

I fall in love with places and the textures and the colors of those

places and the feeling of those places.

And then it's not about randomly coming up with a character who'd inhabit that space,

but it's about finding a character with an umbilical connection to that space anyway.

Because I think that's how you make books that ground

characters that are believable.

In that the character comes from the place you don't impose

the character on the place.

Unless you're doing that deliberately, which I have done in the past, but

it's about growing from that world.

And what you're trying to say with that character.

But I find that when you're writing in two languages or I have written

a lot in the Welsh language, that character, language and place are all so

intertwined that you can't separate them.

So when starting to write in English, it was trying to

navigate those differences really.

But definitely with worlds and letting the world speak to you.

I'm a big believer in rather than going to a place and speaking at it,

which I think is what a lot of, it has to be done to Wales in particular.

It's actually spending time in the place and listening

to it and adopting its voice.

So that's the kind of approach I take.

That's really fascinating.

And I think, yeah, you're right that people tend to place things on top of

a space and rather than having well, actually that you do get authors that the

setting is almost a character in itself.

It's not something I read a lot of, but you're absolutely right.

That is a very evocative style to do.

Where you mentioned there, obviously you've written in

the Welsh and English language.

Are you a first language Welsh and do you write all your notes in Welsh?

Yes.

I'm first language.

I very rarely speak English, not at all our home, so it's just outside of the

house or when I'm speaking to somebody.

And I, and it's interesting because some of the notes for the

English novels have been in Welsh.

But it's not consciously done.

It's just something that you do without realizing really.

So it's a it's something that you do because you're

speaking with yourself somehow.

And Bilingual kind of suggests a level playing field.

But I don't think that's true, particularly when there's

such an imbalance of power between both of your languages.

And there are a million ways in which we drift in and out.

You have a bi- identity and it's how those languages play together really.

Yeah it's a new thing for me to learn.

But at the same time I think I fell for a lot of the cliches around

language and your writing voice.

In that, people will tell you that you have one language for feeling

in and another for thinking in or that you're a different person

in every language you speak.

But I think fundamentally you're the same person.

You're the same.

You have the same values.

You have the same world outlook.

It's just that perhaps that's expressed slightly differently in both languages.

Yeah.

Uh, So I mean, that's really interesting like having one language for feeling

and it's I guess it must be quite frustrating sometimes when writing

in English and like, I know the word in Welsh and I think when you're

working in a different language or your non native speaking language the

poetry of the language and having the cadence and the flow to evoke pacing.

Whereas sometimes it's just the events have to happen.

So did you find in your editing of your first English language book,

Drift, that to get the stylistic elements of your author voice, there

was a lot more redrafting to do.

Was it more of a challenge to, to get it to say, yeah, this is a Carol Lewis book.

And to feel confident that it had your author voice?

Well, I mean, What was interesting to me was people have described, those who've

read it, have described it as lyrical.

And in Welsh we have this system called Cynghanedd, which is an old

poetic system that we have in Wales and and it's all about internal rhyming.

So if you're writing a poem it has to rhyme and there are rules,

we are taught them in school.

But literature needs to sound as good on the ear as the messages.

It needs to sound beautiful.

And we take A levels.

So there are, you know, that seeps has always been there in

the way I write prose in Welsh.

And then when I started to write to write in English people

saying, oh, it's so lyrical.

But for me it felt freer because I didn't have to think about those things.

So I think there's a definite difference and a definite way

that you you use the language.

And I I read English at Durham and I remember the tutor saying I could pick

out your essay even with no names on them, but just because of the rhythm

or the way you use the language.

I think that's a second language thing, but it's, I don't think I over thought it.

I thought that the best thing is to do is just get it done, get it

out there, see what it feels like.

And it felt strangely similar in many ways.

Yeah.

And you've like you say, you read English at Durham.

You've had access to English.

You've known the English language for such a long time, was there something

particular about the story that you felt with Drift that you felt this needs

to be in English or was it just, I'm gonna write my next book in English?

What was the motivating factor for Drift particularly to be written in English?

There, there would have few factors really.

The first one was I think the inevitable invisibility of

writing in the minority language.

I think few people could probably name a Scots Gaelic

writer or, or a Catalan writer.

There's always going to be that level of invisibilities.

And I started writing in the first place because I was supported by a lot of strong

women and I didn't see them portrayed very much in the books that I read,

the Welsh literature books that I read.

And I decided I'm going to be the first girl to go to university and

I'm going to write them into books.

And that's what I did.

And then, I turned 40 a couple of years ago and we lost both of them.

My grandmothers.

And I had this intense feeling of the invisibility again.

And I felt that, you know, very, very few Welsh language

writers also writes in English.

You can count them on, you know, a few fingers.

And I just felt we need to be recognized and broaden what people think of as Welsh

Language writers, you know, the brilliance of Wales is that we have two literatures.

Yeah.

We have two languages.

Yeah.

And I think, just to take a seat to the table and have these conversations,

and then the novel itself came from running an errand in a local village

and hearing a guy speaking Welsh with a really distinctive accent

and finding out he was from Aleppo.

And and then it spiraled from there.

And what I loved about his story and his take on things was that he didn't

have any preconceived ideas about the value of learning a minority language.

He had taken refuge here and saw learning Welsh, and he speaks fluently,

as a natural part of integrating and respecting the land that took him in,

and of integrating himself and his family into the fabric of society.

And he saw language as something that, and I think sometimes we think all

learning language should bring you financial awards or it should give

you job opportunities or whatever.

But he saw the home mak ing value of the language.

And I just thought that was so brilliant.

And I think, there is a horrible trope around Welsh, any minority

language, that you're somehow insular or that somehow that you're

narrow-minded or whatever it is.

Yeah.

But I look at my children and their friends and they have six languages

between them and the one they speak close often together is Welsh.

Yeah.

You know, they have Hindi, they have Spanish, they have French, but the

one they speak together is Welsh.

And I just think that it's such a wonderful thing.

And I don't think it's a coincidence the areas where the hype sensitive people

speak Welsh, voted to stay in the EU.

Cause they have a natural affinity to small countries with different languages.

So, um, it all came from there really.

And wanting to write something that spoke about a modern image of Wales.

And to show that Wales is a colonizer and a colonized country,

and the discomfort of that.

And the difficulty of that, and the prickliness between the two languages.

And it's about having useful discussions and bringing

representation to the table as well.

It may just be a symptom of getting older, but discussions

about Britain's imperialist past.

And in that, specifically the exporting of the English language and English

values and having to confront that.

And, as we're doing this interview, Russia's taking a stand to try and reclaim

a lost empire and it's not going well.

But it's just as outraged the Western majority of the world is,

this is what Britain used to do.

You're just seeing it with modern weapons on television and on the internet, but

all the outrage that people are having, it's just this is what Britain used to do.

And people used to say, oh, but yeah, the British empire was great.

It wasn't all great for all people.

And I think there's more, certainly from my perspective, that there's

a willingness to learn about the problematic elements of the past.

And I think like you were saying there with Brexit, there was a idealistic

view of a perceived past that was based on the winners, not based on the

reality and based on privilege rather than on empathy and understanding.

And how from being this great power, actually retreating from Europe and

actually becoming smaller and people are actually waking up to the fact of just,

oh, we're not as influential as we used to be people aren't listening to us.

And actually France is doing a lot of what we used to do and Germany is

you know, the power head of Europe.

And it's just oh, we've lost a place at the table.

And yeah these conversations about where people stand in the world and yeah.

I think it's really fascinating that for people who are outside of Britain, coming

here and then going to Wales and going, this is the language that everyone speaks.

Okay, this is the language I learn.

And not seeing that there's a hierarchy and people say, well,

you'll earn more money if you speak English or, there's more prestige in

English because that's a narrative that's been forced for many years.

That sort of English is somehow better because it's spoken by more people.

But I love the fact that this is someone comes to a corner of the

world and just, I want to integrate, so this is the language that speaks.

And again, I think a hot topic at the moment is in Wales is changing

the names of houses and farms, and because they're difficult to say.

And it's such a difficult thing because it's cultural erasure.

It's if taking the long view, we are taking those names away from

our children and our grandchildren.

But again, it's this kind of attitude of speaking at a place

rather than listening to it again.

And it's so problematic.

And I think it's fair to say, in the past so many kinds of tropes around

Wales and Welshness as, you know, being the the rugby and the daffodils and

the sheep and the quiet and the, you know, the slightly daft characters.

A bit stupid and i t's infantilization of culture.

And this is what happens when somebody else is controlling the narrative.

And I find it really strange.

So again getting diversity of Welsh writers out there

dissipates some of that, I think.

Yeah.

Oh, absolutely.

I think the best way to understand a culture is to have

it represented in front of you.

And I think, yeah, again, these are conversations that

seem to be happening more.

Again, just snapshot in history, we're talking just after the Oscars and

Encanto winning best animated feature.

And that being very culturally appropriate.

People from that corner of the world going, they've done their research.

This isn't just set in America and a lot of the reviews was, oh, it's challenging.

It's a minority story.

It's very challenging to watch.

I was like, but it shouldn't be, and what's great is for kids,

they don't see it as challenging.

Cause everything's new, they're just absorbing.

So they're just understanding culture.

And they have the curiosity that, yeah, these old stuffy movie critics don't have.

It's just making them aware that a minority group exists.

And yeah, the, exactly what you're doing with the Welsh language and Welsh culture.

Again, I think growing up, it was my dominant view on in media

and in fiction and in culture was Welsh as the comic relief.

They were always funny characters, silly characters.

Little Britain would be the TV show where you had Dafydd,

the only gay in the village.

And you didn't have them as the strong, heroic lead.

That again, that is again control of the narrative.

It's very difficult to break that down and it's very difficult to,

but the only thing you can do is a) to write in your first language.

And, I've done that for a long time and I try to provide works that will

hopefully stand the test of time.

Some of them are the curriculum, Welsh A level and this kind of thing.

But I think also, I think this is what I realized that actually the

conversation needs to go wider.

And need that representation, because if I'd read another book

about Wales and the wild empty hills, I might just about scream.

Cause the hills aren't wild and empty, they're only wild and empty if you're

blind to a culture and the language.

Because those places are full of history and the history of it's people.

Yeah it's frustrating, but it's also, a great great thing to get

involved with and try and shift.

Even in a little tiny way, if you can.

I want to talk to you more about genre with your books.

Do you want to incorporate more fantastical genre elements in there, or

do you feel that human interest and you actually want to sort of have an authentic

portrayal of Wales as you see it?

Um, well what I think is really interesting about this is if

you write in Welsh, in the Welsh language, you write everything.

And there is a strong culture of eisteddfod day, which are cultural

compositions that we have every year from the age, you can get on

the stage and recite a little poem.

And I massively respect it.

To take part in the eisteddfod, you might write a poem, you will

present a prose piece, you will maybe do a script for a stage play.

You will also do some kind of dancing.

You'd present a piece of artwork.

And this kind of goes on.

There's the Urdd Eisteddfod until your early twenties

and then there's the National Eisteddfod that's held every year.

So weirdly in Wales, the writer is a writer.

So it's tempting to say, oh, it's all economical.

You, you write lots of things because that's what you need to do in a

minority language to make living.

But that's not entirely true, it goes deeper than that.

And there's a concept in Welsh called y pethau, which means "the things".

It's not very poetic, but what it generally means is The Arts.

And if you're interested in one kind of the arts, there's a presumption that

you will be interested in all of them.

So you have schools very early to embrace all the genres and all

the different kinds of writing.

So I found myself in my Welsh language work, I write I'm a lead writer on a crime

series that sold to 60 other countries.

And then I write picture books.

I probably most well-known for writing novels.

And adapting those sometimes to film as well.

So I bought the sensibility to the English publishing world a bit naively really.

Cause I didn't realize that you tend to go down one lane and stay there.

So I found that a bit strange to start off with, but I have a great agent

who allows me to to be who I am as a writer and write different things.

But I think it's an interesting cultural difference.

Yeah, no, absolutely.

And I recently had a conversation with an author about how often English writers

when they're trying something new, if they're going to a different genre they're

often suggested to have a pseudonym.

And it's just, oh, your audience will be confused because they've

got to associate your brand.

And yet working in a minority language, it's I just want all of the markets.

So yes, I'll write kids books, I'll write a drama I'll write plays.

So yeah that's very different.

And again it's my ignorance but that's really useful to learn.

I think it's healthy.

Dare I say it for writers because you're not sitting there thinking

what's my next adult novel?

What's my next, you're not winding yourself up.

It takes the pressure off because you're working in different spheres

and you can allow ideas to grow.

And it naturally, I think also means that you'd have longer periods

between writing say adult novels, if you're doing other things in between.

And I think sometimes that's a good thing.

You don't want to write too much.

It's because what have you got that's new to say?

You need to grow.

To write well, you need to have experiences, you need to grow as a person.

You need to, go through some stuff.

I think sometimes that pushing, especially when you're starting out

so that you're young, to produce can be, you don't want to burn out.

It's a marathon, not a sprint.

Absolutely.

Yeah.

That's definitely something that I like to say.

And I think people who sometimes aspire to, to be a published writer,

the length of time it can take to produce a full length adult novel,

they fall at the first hurdle.

Because after a couple of weeks, oh, I want to be done by now.

it does take a long time.

And yeah.

Yeah, I was also just talking about the fact that you work in

what I perceive as many different genres and styles of writing.

Scripts and children's books and things like that.

Do you approach them in the same way?

Talking earlier about sort of you'd come up with the world building first.

Do you have it the same approach to a script as you would a children's

novel and or what are the differences in your approach to those projects?

I begin with a central idea.

And then I will let them percolate.

It's slightly different if you're working in a team, as per a crime

show or something like that.

You tend to have more face-to-face meets and there's more story lining

going on and that kind of thing.

But I've been really lucky in the projects I've worked on.

They've allowed me pretty free reign to colour in the characters and to give them

some depth, which has been brilliant.

But I think it's, you know, it's the same approach.

You just have to respect the genre and you have to respect the reader and

you have to respect a four year old child reading a picture book as much

as an adult reading the latest novel.

It's all about due diligence.

It's about research.

It's about doing the best you can and enjoying what that genre can give you.

And experimenting and playing with it as the years go by.

But it's, yeah, it's the best job in the world.

And yeah, I think you just touched on something there

about researching the genre.

Because a lot of people when they think of writing research

it's, oh, it's a crime book.

I might need to speak to the local police station about the police

procedures and just like learning about different investigative techniques

and or the classic thing of forensics and learning about what, you know,

what can be done there.

But actually the tropes of a genre and what the audience expects and how

they're structured, how they're paced.

Like you said with a four year old, they want a familiarity and

repetition and making sure that they don't get confused and that

they can easily grasp the concept.

With that, is there a genre that you have yet to write or you're about to

write that you're really interested in researching and learning about?

I'm doing something slightly different with my next novel.

Because you know that when you stop learning, you might as well stop writing.

And I'm just playing around with the voices in that in a

way that I haven't done before.

So that's really interesting to me.

Genre wise, I think what writing different genres as you do with in the Welsh

language allows you to do is to find out pretty quickly what you don't like.

And it also allows you to um, you know, working on this crime

series is to investigate the tropes and then undermine the tropes.

Hidden is the series, it's not a who done it, it's a why done it.

And then it looks at themes of rural poverty, not the Welsh

Tourist Board version of Wales.

It's the, it's people's lives and neglect.

And rural poverty and these kinds of themes.

So it's taking a genre and finding something fresh in it.

Totally.

And that's what you've got to do, really.

I think it's just a find, find the difference in it and find what's

going to make it engaging once again.

You've got to know the rules to break them.

I think, yeah.

Absolutely.

I'm going to play with an audience.

With Hidden, what we do a lot is really spend time with a bad guy,

and, play with the audience's kind of perception of what is the bad guy, w

would you have done the same at the same situation or the same pressures on you.

And just the morally ambiguous ideas around evil and that is

more interesting to me than let's run up here and shoot somebody.

You know what I mean?

That's not my kind of crime.

So it's it's such a joy because there's always something new.

Yeah.

And with researching sort of crime for example, have you got books on like how to

write a crime novel or crime writing for dummies, or is it more of just absorbing

as much of the genre as possible that you read loads of books or watched loads of

crime fiction and just through osmosis, just go, oh, I can see the patterns?

So do you want to learn in a more natural way or do you actually have how to guides?

Interestingly, I think this is controversial.

I find it's really important to know your stuff.

You need to read the classics of the genre.

You need to watch a lot of crime, but not too much.

Because I think you could find yourself really easily emulating people and

trying to maybe react off something.

Rather than actually what I want to say.

Sometimes it's good to look inwards as well, rather than try and gain

inspiration from the outside.

So it's knowing your stuff.

It's just making sure you, you watch enough, but not overwhelming

yourself to the point where you feel like you've got nothing else to add.

You know, and on the series we had chief inspector and he was great

as well because he, he knew that it's also a television program.

Your DNA results are not going to come back in a couple of hours, but

he could, he would allow us to kind of yeah, you could get away with that.

Cause otherwise it becomes incredibly restrictive to the point where

that kind of spoils the story.

I remember once, writing my second novel, I need ed to know how quickly

strychnine would kill somebody.

It was a really funny conversation with my GP.

Who thought maybe I had some.

The marriage is fine.

My marriage is fine, but just (both laugh).

But yeah.

Then I I love it, I love all that stuff.

What's brilliant about it is people love to talk to you about it.

You know, their job and you will have so many details, so many more than you asked

for about poisonings and things like that.

But it's yeah, it's great.

And with lot of research, lot of notebooks of planning out the the world and the

characters, with your actual plot do you write a very strict, structured

outline where you have the beats?

Or are you more, what's known as a pantser of just writing by the seat

of your pants and just sitting down and going, okay, I want to get here.

I've got like an end goal in mind.

Let's start writing and see what happens?

I don't make many notes on plot at all.

And I think that's my style really.

Just the way I've always done it.

I will write on a piece of paper, 1-60 the numbers, and

then may be a word or two, maybe.

But they tend to be not plot development, but feelings or symbols or maybe a snatch

of dialogue, some things like that.

And then I won't start writing until I've written three

quarters of the novel in my head.

When I do sit down it's it happens really quickly, the actual writing of the work.

And thank god that I actually work like that, because with three kids, if I

have to sit down, write a chapter and then have to do it again and rewrite it

and rewrite and then do another second.

I don't think I could have carried on.

Through having the kids and doing that as well, it wouldn't be possible.

So it tends to be kind of storm gathers, sit down and it pours out.

And, if I'm in one of those moods, it can be 10,000 words today, but then I may

not write then for another three months.

I'll be with you one of the things of course, but you

know, that's how I approach it.

Yeah.

So there can still be structural work to do on the plots after

the first draft is complete?

Not too much.

It tends to be, the only thing I don't know when I start

writing is how it will end.

Because I know what's going to happen until up to about three quarters of

the way through, and then I don't know.

And the reason for that is if I actually plotted out everything, I'd

find it incredibly boring to write.

I think it's takes that aliveness out of it.

Cause I want to find out as well.

And I want to realize why this character does this and what happens then?

So it's it's what makes it interesting for me.

And then I'll finish the draft.

And then it's normally about going back and filling in the gaps and

ironing things out, maybe taking a thread out, putting a thread in.

And God, it's not a finished thing.

God, by far, but I think it's just the product of having

thought about it for two years.

You know what I mean?

And I think if there's ever a time that I sit down and there's nothing

there, I've convinced myself there's no such thing as writer's block.

I think it's more that you haven't done enough thinking.

And you're not ready.

So that's the approach.

Maybe it's a psychological way of coping with it, but it,

but that's what I tend to do.

I think, yeah.

I think it's easy to avoid writer's block when you have multiple projects on the go.

Yeah, cause obviously you said that, sometimes you can write a

whole chunk and then not write for three months, but it's not that

you're not writing for three months.

It's just, you're benching that project while still working on other things.

And then just letting it percolate in the background.

I recently had and there'll be interesting for the listeners, cause I'll probably

release these out of order, but I've just had an author talk about composting.

Uh, And so that you put all the ideas that you mash it all down and then you leave

it until it becomes fertile soil and ready for the sprouts and the story to grow.

What you're describing there I feel fits that analogy really well.

You're a composting pantser, if you've learned something about yourself today.

Um, so, So when you go and pick up your kids you can go, yeah,

so this is what I've learned.

And yeah, we've gone on many tangents today.

It's brilliant.

But I w I do want to get onto your daily writing sessions.

So obviously you've mentioned how you've migrated from the

kitchen table to an office.

Working on a farm and having multiple kids, a lot of chaos around you.

How do you structure a writing session?

And especially when you're working on multiple projects, is it just when you've

got a spare five mins, you go right.

I'm just going to my writing desk.

Or do you actually go between these hours no one talked to me.

And you have a set allocation per day?

Um, it's, it's organized chaos.

That's how I like to think of it.

I mean, lockdowns were a challenge because obviously I want to give

the kids everything that I can.

And what I do in the summer is I'm with them all day and then maybe

eight to nine o'clock at night, I will start writing and then write to

one and two o'clock in the morning.

But I hate working that way to be honest, because my mother was a song writer and

she wouldn't even think about starting to write songs about 10 o'clock at night.

And she was just like she was she was an owl, and I'm not.

I only do that when I have to, when I absolutely have to.

And so it tends to be when they're at school and I've finessed the art of

grabbing a couple of hours here and there.

But I think the way my style of writing in that, when it comes

it comes in a big chunk helps.

And I try and because I'm working on different things I find an hour

here to there to do with them.

But it's the only time I found it difficult and I think a lot of

parents will relate is, when those storms are coming until you're

desperate to get this thing down.

That's when chicken pox will come, you know?

To get yourself to the point where you're ready to write it again, after you've

calamine lotioned a child for the week and a half is really difficult to get yourself

back in that head space where you were.

And that's the most challenging thing, but I mean on the whole, I

fit it around the children and I try and share it with them as well.

I try not to tell them to go away.

I mean, They, they have in the past kind of read under my desk while I'm writing.

And, I try and normalize it.

And they're pretty good in that because they've always seen it.

They sometimes they'll just spend, so they'll come in and

they'll go, I'll come back.

And they're quite good like that, bless them.

But I did have, when they were younger, a time where I would, this sounds

insane, get into the playpen with my notebooks or laptop and then I would

let them, them run around the farm.

I would be, it was like inverse playpenning.

I would be confined and they would just go for it.

So they had quite free range when they were younger, but yeah.

All good fun.

Yeah.

So you don't stick to word counts, page counts, so you don't have any sort of

like daily targets or anything like that?

No

Clearly not because you've had great success.

But we've covered it a bit, but with the rewriting of your work, once you've got

it to a point that you're happy with, who's the first person that reads it?

Do you have beta readers or do you have anyone that you trust

before it goes to an editor?

Um, It depends what it is.

Yeah.

It depends what it is.

I've got a fantastic agent that I send, I really respect her judgment on things.

And we have a brilliant relationship where we have a shorthand by

now, where she knows what to do.

And also, I think it's a process of learning yourself, being accountable, and

picking up notes and, as I said before, it is always a process of learning.

So there's that.

And then sometimes I'll send something to my mother.

Because she knows me very well, and she's a fairly good cry indicator.

And she can be quite frank and I will know, she doesn't need to tell me.

I know from her reaction, but as well, I think, back to being accountable yourself.

I think, if something works or if it really doesn't, there's no harsher

critic of a writer than themselves.

And I know when something's not where I want it to be.

It bugs me and it's almost giving it to somebody to tell you what

you already know, so there's a bit of that going on as well.

But sometimes somebody will come up with something you just genuinely hadn't seen

or hadn't thought of and that's brilliant.

And when you've got a project finished, do you have any kind of momentous

celebration or is it just that's done onto the next, or pick up something else?

Because some people can feel like a sense of grief when they finished a project.

They've had that idea percolating and composting for so many years.

And they've had it for such a long time, that not being able to

spend time with these characters.

It feels like a loss.

Some people are just working to a deadline and it's a sense of relief that

they don't have to work on it anymore.

So yeah, what's the kind of emotional output when you finish

a project and do you celebrate?

I find myself in more in the bereft camp of things.

That kind of sad loss, and I carry it around, maybe a

copy in my bag for a while.

It's a bit like, like a comforter, it's really sad.

And then as time goes by, you get excited about another

project, your work in progress.

And then you can find you've left your little copy at home, and then

you are oh, I'm ready to move on.

So there's that.

But I try and treat myself to something, as a little carrot.

Be it something, a book or something.

Piece of clothing that I admired for a long time, it's just that

little kind of treat and an acknowledgement of right, you've done

that now and that you can move on.

I think that's important and maybe a glass of wine and a night out

with girlfriends or whatever.

And it's just yeah, but it's funny when you're a writer there's no

office party, there's no celebration.

It's just that you have to be happy that you're satisfied.

And then if you've done all the time to achieve that feeling, then

you deserve a glass of Prosecco.

Yeah.

Oh absolutely.

My wife's a great one.

She always has a bottle of Prosecco in the fridge.

It's like, you never know when you need to celebrate which is lovely.

And I've got to wrap up cause I'm aware you've got a schoolrun to do.

So last two questions.

It's my belief and what we've discussed this quite a bit that writers continue

to grow and develop their writing with each story that they write.

Is there anything that you can think of from the last project that you

finished, that you're now applying to a project you're working on now?

Yes.

I wrote a book called See It, it's a middle grade fiction book,

and it's my first in English.

And because of the nature of the audience, there is much wider.

There were some sensitivities that I wasn't aware of.

I think I've applied this new knowledge to the new one.

And then of course there's countless things.

You're always learning.

It's bringing the plot further up to the surface in middle grade things.

I'm doing that at the moment as well.

So yeah, it's a constant, every day's a school day.

And the final thing I'd like to ask, is there one piece of writing advice that

you've either read or been told that you find you always seem to return to?

That just always seems to apply to your writing projects.

I remembered my English tutor, when I did a MA in writing.

Patricia Duncker, the novelist, and she said and I think it's important

to remember that she said, there are millions of people who can write,

but very few with something to say.

Yeah.

And I think it's such a good thing to think about when you starting out,

because you know, to have s omething to say, you need to have lived experience.

You need to channel something and you can sense it when you read novels.

They're good, they're well constructed, the characters are okay.

Maybe a few laughs, but it just doesn't say anything, you know.

It may be there's nothing meaty, it can feel a bit hollow.

And I think sometimes you have to really look, you know, as well as,

finding inspiration and reading about writing and all of that, you really

have to look inside yourself and think what is, what do I want to say?

What have I got to give?

And if you're not giving that . People will sense that and your work will

be shallower than it should be.

Yeah, absolutely.

And certainly that's a common thread I feel that with the successful writers

that I've spoken to there is that conscious thought of, it's not just the

entertaining narrative and the story, but the theme and you know, there should

be a learning for the characters and it should be learning for the reader and..

And the writer.

And the writer.

Absolutely.

And yeah, every day is a school day.

You have to learn.

Your readers have to learn and don't forget the characters

need to learn as well.

That's great.

I'll end it there.

Thank you so much for being today's guest and yeah, I can't

wait to read more of your work.

Thank you very much.

It's been a pleasure.

Absolutely.

Lovely.

Thank you.

And that was the real writing process of Caryl Lewis.

Wasn't she lovely?

I feel personally, I learned a lot in that interview.

Namely that I need to read more Caryl Lewis books.

So thank you again to Caryl, and for being so generous with her time.

I hope you all got a lot out of that interview, too.

Now, if you want to learn more about Caryl, she is on Instagram.

So you can keep up with what's going on with her there.

I've also linked to her Wikipedia entry in the show notes.

So you can see her entire bibliography.

Although it doesn't have Drift on there, ironically.

And I've linked to her IMDB page.

Just so you can check out how much she's done.

Now, there's no episode next week.

I've learned after seven months of podcasting that I need

a bit of work-life balance.

In the past two months, I've been to two conventions, my mother's 70th

birthday, had my aunt pass away, suffered with two weeks of COVID.

And taken my wife to hospital with a suspected broken ankle

after falling down the stairs.

In that time, I never missed an episode.

Then before I knew it ,Kenobi was released on Disney+ the boys on

Amazon Prime and the final season of Stranger Things on Netflix.

So, yeah, I'm taking a week off because I have priorities.

I might go and see Top Gun: Maverick as well.

Speak to you in two weeks.

Thank you for listening.

I may you always keep waiting until the world ends