Tom Pepperdine interviews journalist and novelist, Josh Winning, about his writing process. Josh discusses word counts, notebooks and the importance of a good cushion.

You can find all of Josh's links here: https://linktr.ee/joshuawinning

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Hello, and welcome to the Real Writing Process.

I'm your host, Tom Pepperdine.

And before I introduce this week's guest, I need to confront the fact I've not put

out an episode in a couple of months.

It's just I've been sent a ton of books.

And I want to read an author before I interview them.

Now I'm not a man prone to exaggeration, but I've received like a gazillion books.

Uh, now some have been great and others are fine.

But I realize that if I want to build a trusting and loyal audience,

I need to make sure that everyone I interview is definitely worth your time.

So with that in mind, I'm really pleased.

to announce that this week's guest is Josh Winning.

I'm also pleased to say that I actually discovered Josh's book in

a bookshop rather than was sent it.

Uh, it's just, it has a beautiful cover.

Uh, it's really nice.

It's called The Shadow Glass.

And it's a modern fantasy adventure that acts like a love

letter to eighties fantasy films.

As much as Ready Player One loves 80 sci-fi, The Shadow

Glass loves eighties fantasy.

But it also has emotional depth and realistic characters.

Plus it's British, so while it's not been as successful as its American

counterpart, it's just better.

Now, I planned to get this out before Christmas and recommend it all as your

Christmas read, but I failed miserably.

So sorry, Josh.

Uh, however, it's a new year and I'm hoping that lots of you got Kindles

and book vouchers for Christmas, and are keen for new book recommendations.

So The Shadow Glass is definitely mine.

Also Josh is a great guest.

He's been a film journalist for 15 years.

So he understands what a good interview needs, far better than I do.

My broadcast education has been Spotify and watching YouTube.

But anyway, here we are.

Now I'm releasing this in a cold and miserable January, but it

was actually recorded in August.

So apologies again for all the references to the heat wave.

Uh, unless you're listening to this in the Southern hemisphere.

Or sometime in the future, when it's hot.

Then you're fine.

Anyway, here is the real writing process of Josh Winning.

And I'm here with Josh Winning.

Josh.

Hello.

Hello.

Thank you very much for being here, first of all.

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

Thank you for having me.

It's great to be here.

I'm a really big fan of the podcast, so it's brilliant.

Always good.

And, we are drinking a cup of English breakfast tea.

Lovely.

With a splash of milk, no sugar.

Yes, absolutely.

Yeah.

I'm not usually a tea drinker.

This podcast is definitely getting me more into tea, as more authors request tea.

And I've got Taylors of Harrogate English breakfast tea,

which I swiped from a hotel.

Nice choice.

I like it.

Yeah.

I sometimes I do coffee, sometimes I do tea.

I can switch a bit between the two.

Yeah.

I find that coffee is like my jet fuel if I am desperate to

just get a thousand words out.

But pretty much an hour later I'm done.

I can't do anything else.

Whereas tea is like my um, endurance drink.

Yeah.

If I want to spend a full day writing just topping it up.

It's a slow burn caffeine hit, caffeine released.

Yeah.

And your mug is very on brand there with a little "'Ello" creature.

Yeah, completely accidental.

No, I love it.

It's do you know the name?

Does that character have a name in Labyrinth?

It's just the little worm dude.

I think he may have been named after the fact, but for me he's just the worm.

That's what he says in the film.

Yeah, that's true.

Yeah.

Don't wanna go that way.

Never go that way.

So, Yeah, so this is definitely gonna be an interview where I think

cuz we're eighties children, we're gonna be doing a lot of pop culture

knowledge, reference riffing.

And if you're not an eighties child listener, I apologize.

Because I'm not going to explain it.

I'm not gonna contextualize it.

Google exists.

But obviously go watch the films.

Yes.

And then really appreciate the magic of The Shadow Glass,

which is just a fantastic book.

Thank you.

And I will talk about your process, but I did just really wanna say I really got

the Masters of the Universe reference.

A lot of people talk about Labyrinth and very much The Dark Crystal as

clear touchstones, but the fact that it's, coming into our world, I was

like, oh yeah, there's definitely a lot of the Masters of the Universe.

Cause my wife hadn't seen it.

Oh no.

I mean, it's really difficult to find over here.

Yeah!

So you've gotta really commit.

It's occasionally on FilmFour.

Okay.

But you can't buy it on officially released blueray or dvd.

M My copy I think is from the Netherlands.

But it's quite difficult to find.

And yeah, I was upset that it's not that easy to get, because I've also

run this eighties fantasy film club on Twitter, where every once in a

while on a Friday night a bunch of us to all watch the same movie and then

tweet about it as we're watching it.

And I really wanted to do Masters of the Universe.

Yeah.

But sadly, it's just not widely available enough for other

people to be able to watch it.

It sucks.

No, yeah, absolutely.

I was just trying to think.

Simon Brew, who does Film Stories, he did a campaign and did a

re-release of Sneakers because he loves that film and I love Sneakers.

I think we need to like, reach out to Simon Brew.

Cause like, cause clearly he, he's the man who can make these things happen.

And I think that Masters of the Universe really deserves like a lavish, gorgeous

art box kind of blueray release.

It really does.

I know that it's not the best film ever made, frankly, but

it's just such a cult favorite.

It's so colorful and different and weird.

You can see the references it's drawn from quite plainly.

What a fantastic villain.

Yes.

Oh gosh, yes.

Oh, it's just such a great feel good film I think.

Yeah.

But anyway, we're here to talk about your writing process.

So where I'm speaking to you now in your flat, is this your writing spot?

So normally I write in the office, which is the backroom of the flat.

And I've got it all set up to hopefully in invite lots of nice words.

I'm actually in my bedroom at the moment.

Okay.

Because it hits the magic triangle of quiet and away from

the cat and cooler than anywhere else in our flat at the moment.

We are currently in a heatwave, so yes, that's why I'm in this room.

No, that's absolutely fine.

Also soft furnishings are great for audio, so all good.

And are you someone who writes the same time every day, do you try and

keep it as a job in nine to five or is it just when the whim takes you?

When do you write best or when do you try to write?

I have set writing days because I, as my day job, I work three days

a week at Radio Times Magazine.

So I work there Tuesdays to Thursdays on the film unit.

And so I have Mondays and Fridays as my so-called writing days.

And so they're the days that I really heckle myself to write.

Because I think you're gonna regret it on Tuesday, Wednesday, and

Thursday when perhaps you get the writing bug on those days and you

won't be able to, cause you've got other stuff to do during the day.

So Mondays and Fridays are my writing days.

I'm better in the mornings.

I think.

If I can get up, cup of tea, maybe go out for a 20 minute walk first.

Then come back to my desk, get my feet under the desk, and at least

try to get out a thousand words.

I know that Stephen King says, he likes to do 2000 no matter what.

Come, come what may he does 2000 a day.

And I'm happy with a thousand.

I feel like I've done something.

I'm not like sing go sing it on the mountains happy.

I always feel like there's more I can do.

And I'm quite bad at beating myself up if I haven't achieved more than that.

I do try.

Yeah.

I think with uh, word counts, it's an interesting beast.

Everyone's got their own take on it.

But I was in an audience listening to Ben Aaronovitch and he does

notoriously low word counts.

Like he will do like 200 words a day or like 500 words in a day.

But if it's the quality of the words.

If I don't have to delete those later, and it's just if I work out a plot hole

or if I just, get that scene and that the emotion of that character spot on,

doesn't matter how many words it is.

Oh yeah, And I think that, I think when I'm advising other writers, when I'm not

just beating myself up over my writing, I do advise other writers that every

little thing that you do does count.

So you could open up the manuscript and you could be feeling completely

uninspired that day, and a thousand words is ridiculously ambitious.

And so actually you could delete a word.

You could add a word, you could move a comma around.

Yeah.

And I think that there is value in just going, every little thing you

do is pushing this project forward.

I think, I think Jen Williams, who you've had on the podcast,

I think she's talked previously about like spending quality time

Yes.

With a manuscript.

And I think that is, it's not like empirically quantifiable,

but it's important for keeping the spirit of that project alive.

Yeah.

And when it comes to the initial genesis of the story and the idea,

are you someone who likes to write an outline and map out the plot before

writing the main bulk of the manuscript?

Or are you more just seat of your pants, let's sit down and got a

goal in mind for the end of the day and just see what comes up?

I do both.

I normally just wanna just start writing, just get the

ball rolling, see what happens.

But I normally reach a point where actually I do have to outline.

Yeah.

What I've tended to do for the past two books is I've got the title,

I've got a one page synopsis, and that synopsis either covers the

entire story and broad strokes.

It's one page, it's not in any detail.

Or it covers maybe like the first three quarters of the story.

But I invariably reach a point where I'm like, I actually just have to plan

now to see where this is actually going.

And stop and take stock of what I've done.

Because I end up, no matter what I do, I end up with huge wastage.

I always do.

With The Shadow Glass, I wrote and rewrote and I scrapped and moved

things around and but that was all during like the vomit draft period.

And so what ended up happening was I ended up actually with

quite a solid first draft.

Because I'd already scrapped a ton of stuff and moved things around

and outlined numerous times trying to get that first draft out.

So it's always a bit like flying by the seat of my pants.

Yeah.

I wish I had a clear route every time, but I don't.

And I think it is cuz every book demands something different.

Yeah.

So even if I go, aha, now I know what I'm doing.

Yeah, the next book comes along and it's nah, sorry, you haven't got a clue.

And you've got two projects on at the moment, and one's

contracted and, and one's not.

With the contracted one, have they required more of an outline and a plan?

They, it was really interesting.

So I signed a two book deal with Putnam books in the US, they're an

imprint of Penguin Random House.

And when we were starting to think about the second book, I said to

them, what do you actually want?

I've got a title and I've got a synopsis, but do you want a

full outline of the whole book?

And they said, oh, don't spoil it for us.

We want to go in as spoiler free as possible.

Just give us the general gist.

And I guess they were looking for the hook.

They wanted to know what the, what the hook is.

What's gonna make a reader pick it up.

And my initial pitch for them had the title that I'm still using, but it

had a slightly different vibe to it.

And they were like, we're not really sure if that's quite

current and different enough.

And it was kind of, we were talking about what is a Josh Winning book,

we want the same but different essentially, kind of thing.

And I'm like, okay, I'm trying to figure out the line of same but different.

And so I went back with a revised pitch, which they really

liked and said, yep, go for it.

So they have the one page synopsis, but they don't know the ending, partly cuz

I don't know the ending either (laughs).

And is that how you'd like to start your story ideas?

Is actually with a, like a hook, like just a scenario sort of synopsis idea?

When do you start developing the characters, the actual

world with your stories?

Yeah, it's it often is a concept or a concept and a feeling.

With The Shadow Glass, the concept was simply movie puppets.

And the feeling was a feeling of failure or a feeling of trying to,

to surmount a problem, but very much still in that nostalgic arena.

But yeah, it's often the concept and then I immediately start thinking

about who the main character is.

Why are they the one who is having this story happen to them

or why they're in this story?

With The Shadow Glass, the story didn't really come to life until

I'd figured out the main character's relationship to the puppets in the story.

And what they represent to him.

And why maybe they are the only thing in the world that

can help him grow as a person.

Yeah.

When it seems like he believes the opposite is true.

And so with my next book, which is called Burn the Negative, that book is

so much about the main character and it's entirely about her perspective.

There's no breaks from perspective whatsoever, and to figure her out, I

had to figure out what her deal was.

And so that's when I did do a really deep interrogation of her as a character.

And I found, I've talked about him before and I'm not sure I'll talk about him

again, but Will Storr, he wrote a great book called The Science of Storytelling.

And he talks about the sacred flaw, which is the thing that the character

believes about themself that is essentially like holding them back.

Or has put them a state of frozen immoveability or whatever.

They're stuck in their situation basically.

And the flaw tells them to stay there and the story confronts

them with that flaw and then we see how they react to it essentially.

And I really that I found that really useful for Burn The Negative, and

finding out who that character was.

And then the story doesn't write itself, cuz nothing is ever that simple.

But it definitely gives you a little bit of a, an idea of what to throw at them.

What obstacles would be interesting to read about for that particular character.

Yeah it's interesting.

Yeah.

Like you say, it's like the uh, flaw that they have to overcome and deal with that.

It's not a common thing that I think writers have consciously

for a central character.

And is it your desire to always have that character growth as a central part of

your stories and what sort of inspires that, is it things from life just

sort of like your own personal growth?

Or is it the reading that you have of other writers and

that you kind of aspire to?

I just think that stories are about change.

That seems to be the thing that keeps you interested, is the constant evolution of

both the character and the story itself.

And I think that the best story or the stories that I love are the ones where

everything feels new all the time.

So every, not, maybe not every page, but every chapter certainly

gives you something new.

And it's building on the foundation of what you've already got.

So I think that by the nature of storytelling, the characters have

to change, and if they don't change that is also quite interesting.

I think, the Sacred Flaw thing basically says that if the character

overcomes their flaw, that's like an uplifting story and a tragedy is that

they completely succumb to their flaw.

So yeah, I just I do find that's an interesting question.

But personally I just feel like I want to see the character, their

evolution from the beginning of the book to the end of the book.

And my thing is always, I always want my main characters to do something

at the end of the book that you would never imagine that they would've

done at the start of the story.

But I think it gives a nice arc to a story.

Absolutely.

I think it's also, I think it's also ingrained in fantasy and horror

storytelling, especially in movies.

If you look at the final girl trope, which bizarrely has now become this like

explosive pop culture movement where everyone's talking about final girls.

Like we've been talking about these guys since the eighties.

But it's that trope is all about change.

It's all about the supposed wallflower innocent character.

Discovering that inner metal and actually confronting the monster.

So I think that it's just innate to a certain type of storytelling maybe.

Yeah.

Absolutely.

And talking about fantasy and horror, the things you enjoy to write as well as read,

I loved in the Shadow Glass the world beyond and you know how you made that uh,

familiar, but it very much its own world with its own magic system and everything.

Is that something that you are keen to do in your future book?

Cause I'm not sure with Burn The Negative if there's that same

magical realism aspect to it.

But that level of world building, is that something you enjoy and

how did you go about doing it?

Yeah, I find that really fun.

I think I like it more as something that, like a pop culture relic.

I don't really feel like I'll ever write high fantasy novels.

I don't think I'm gonna be like the next Brandon Sanderson.

Not that anybody can possibly touch that throne.

So I think I'm more interested in interrogating the story within a story.

That definitely comes from growing up in the nineties where suddenly

we lived in this era of sort of postmodernism it was called.

Yep.

I love, love, love the Scream films.

I loved the way it played around with the Stab franchise

within the Scream franchise.

Yeah.

The way that the characters were like confronted with their doppelgangers

or like the pop culture versions of themselves, and they make jokes about it.

Like in the first scream, Neve Campbell says, I'll probably

be played by Tori Spelling.

And then in Scream 2, she is played by Tori Spelling.

Yeah.

I just find that stuff just really fun.

And so that's why with The Shadow Glass and Burn The Negative to a degree, I

wanted to find a way to play around with the fictional narrative within the

story that you are reading as a book.

So yeah, it was, yeah, it was really fun.

It was a big job.

With The Shadow glass, especially.

Because I wasn't just coming up with the story of the book.

I had to come up with the story of the film within the book.

Yeah.

And I also had to come up with the world within the film within the book, but also

the world of the book and how it views the world from the film in the book.

So it was very, it made perfect sense as I was plotting it and planning it all out.

But when you tried to explain it, it just sounds like utter madness.

Yeah.

There is the world within the film, but also in your book there are excerpts

of interviews with the director and there's internet forums and there's

critical uh, reviews of the film.

The DVD extras and sort of like commentary aspects.

So there is this meta level which is really interesting.

With that, did you have to do any research to get the tone of those aspects

right to, to make it feel authentic?

Or is it just as you're such a passionate fan and this is the world that you live in

as a film critic and as a film journalist, was it quite easy and fun to do that?

Or was it actually quite a challenge to get that authentic?

Oh, I'm glad that you felt it was authentic . It was just really fun.

I've been a film journalist for almost 15 years, and before that I had websites

where I wrote film reviews and I interviewed people for those as well.

So I've basically been doing film writing of some sort since I was 15, 16 years old.

Oh wow.

Okay.

And actually I have on my desk a couple of hard back notebooks

from when I was a teenager.

I think they're from the year 2000.

And they're basically scrapbooks where I would cut out pages from magazines.

I'd print out things from the internet, even just like film

stills from the internet.

I'd print out pages of the IMDB, like when the IMDB was just starting.

And I would paste them all into these books cuz I, I just

loved sort of possessing these things that I loved so much.

And so when it came to doing The Shadow Glass, I did a bit of

research into things like how are Wikipedia pages actually written.

Cause it's quite difficult to write that robotically and that clinically.

Cause they keep it very clean and very clear and

Yeah.

You can't write about yourself.

I've looked.

So I did a bit there.

I looked a bit into Reddit, cuz it's a Reddit article, but mostly

I just did my own thing really, which was, yeah, it was fun.

And it, I liked the fact that this whim that I had to do this, it ended

up being a great tool for just getting a ton of exposition in there in a

fun way that didn't feel like you were being told a load of stuff.

No.

And yeah, it was, you know, sort of fanboying out again,

very unprofessionally.

It's just, I've, I feel like I've seen a lot of that done poorly where sort

of people try and, oh I want to do this exposition, I'm gonna do it as

a newspaper article, but it doesn't sound like a newspaper article.

And it's just I don't think that would actually get past a copy editor, you know?

and it's just have you ever read a newspaper article?

Or you know, you have this uh, forum stuff where people are trying to

represent teenagers chatting on an internet forum and it's so cringe.

And I just think of oh, was it Steve Buscemi in 30 Rock where

he is like, Alright young people.

I'm, you know, sort of like, down with the youth, carrying a skateboard.

And he is got music band on his t-shirt and it's just tone deaf cuz it's

just oh, you are aware of this thing.

But you haven't like lived and breathed it.

And when you've got a Reddit forum on there, I was just

like, yeah, I've been on forums.

This feels like the kind of chat I'd see.

And it was just, you've either spent a lot of time on forums or

you've really done the research to see how forums are handled.

That's why I say it just felt really authentic, but I guess what

you are saying is that, yeah, this is just your life on a page and

it really is.

I did, I know, that's the thing, like I went on a podcast a couple of months

ago where they wanted me to present a weird bit of research that I'd found

while researching The Shadow Glass.

And I was like, Oh, I didn't actually really do any

research for The Shadow Glass.

Yeah, because it was completely lived experience.

And it really is like a distillation of everything that I've either

loved or done professionally.

Which is, yeah, it's great.

It was like, oh, okay.

That's a really great use of what I've learned so far.

And so going into your second book Burn the Negative, is there

enormous pressure to, is it like, oh shit, now I have to research.

So how's your approach differing with the tricky second follow up?

So my trick for the tricky second follow up is just do a different genre.

I've done eighties fantasy with The Shadow Glass.

And Burn The Negative pivots more into nineties horror.

So that was my way out of that, basically.

But it's got the same mixed media setup as The Shadow Glass.

There definitely is a feeling of like, people are gonna say, oh, it's not as

good, or I prefer The Shadow Glass, and I'm just gonna have to just accept

that probably is going to happen.

But then you're gonna get horror fans who had not read the Shadow

Glass, who are then gonna come to this and go, oh, this is great.

It's gonna resonate with a different audience.

Hopefully, yeah.

Cause I'm equally a fan of nineties horror as I am of eighties fantasy.

Yeah.

So I would hope that is conveyed through the writing.

Yeah.

I think that, the type of eighties fantasy, and it's covered in The Shadow

Glass of how dark it was compared to Children's fantasy more recently.

There are some little dark elements in How To Train Your Dragon, but it's nothing

to what's going on in The Dark Crystal.

And so yeah, I think that when you've got that sort of darkness kind of

ingrained, but because also I feel that the people making it had a

horror love, in some of that fantasy.

Yeah.

That when The Princess Bride is directed by the same guy who did Misery.

So, you know, He's perfect example.

And so you get that.

So when you're a little older and when you're a teenager uh, coming from that as

a youth, you, you are of like naturally going into the more horror side of it.

And you have got all the Nightmare on Elm Street films that you

couldn't see but heard about as a kid, you now have access to.

And I think I went on a similar trajectory.

Yeah.

So many of those kids things were terrifying and I think they were a

gateway drug into the horror genre.

Yeah.

When you got older.

Absolutely.

The Lost Boys.

Fright Night.

You've got those Yeah, sort of transitional sort movies.

Even the Goonies, I re watched The Goonies last week, and that's

got some really dark stuff in it.

The Fratellis are terrifying.

Yeah.

Also, just some of the like, Adult language that

Mouth.

Mouth, yeah.

When he is speaking Spanish and he's saying where all the drugs are kept.

And it's just like, did not pick up on that when I was young.

Also, you can't get away with a pirate called One-Eyed Willie in the modern day.

And like the very first scene is a guy pretending to hang himself in jail.

Yeah.

I think that was actually cut out on British TV when it was on.

It was on tv.

But yeah, it's there's some dark stuff in there.

There really is.

And yeah, even Indiana Jones.

Temple of Doom is a pretty much a horror as, as much as you can.

Yeah.

Yeah.

No that's really cool.

Again, is this so you've not had to do much research because

it's more of distillation and it's more recent, I guess.

Like going back to the nineties, back to the eighties?

I had to do research into sort of American geography a little bit.

Because it's all set in LA and I have been to LA a fair bit, so I

know the lay of the land there.

But yeah, like in terms of the surrounding areas, cause the characters

do start to move a little bit outside of LA, I did have to research.

So like, I've been to the Mojave Desert, but I just remember being in it.

I don't remember how you got there or what actually happens there.

So I did a bit of research there.

And like weirdly um, I can't, I won't really spoil what this research

was, but there were moments when I did some research and it fitted so

perfectly to what I was trying to do, or it fitted like the name of

something I'd already come up with.

Or like just the vibe of the thing.

Oh, I just was a bit freaked out actually by, I was like, is this book writing me?

Like yeah, it was really bizarre.

Oh, absolutely.

Yeah, sometimes you just get these amazing historical details.

GV Anderson is an award-winning, short story writer we've had on, and

she found a diary of in the Second World War which listed the air raids.

And so she could actually tie up like certain raid with

certain events happening.

And so I love that stuff.

Yeah.

But yes, we won't spoil it, but it's nice when those things happen.

So it's set in the nineties, I guess, if, if it's got these details.

No, modern day.

Okay.

Yeah, so the plot, the spiel for the plot is, it's about a journalist who is sent to

LA to report on a horror streaming series.

And on the way there she discovers that it's actually a remake of

the cursed nineties horror film that she star in as a child.

Oh, okay.

So it's playing around with like maybe a bit of Poltergeist.

It's it's very much about cursed films, like interrogating what it means to

be a cursed film and that kind of stuff, but also like child stars.

So yeah, hopefully it's like a fun new way of looking at quite

a familiar thing, essentially.

No, absolutely.

And you said earlier, so people might not like it as much as The

Shadow Glass and having that fear, is there any kind of imposter syndrome?

Now that The Shadow Glass has hit and it, I feel it has

resonated with a fair few people.

And you are getting that sort of feedback from the audience.

Do you ever have like periods of doubt with Burn the Negative where you're

like, have I misfired here or, you know, how's it getting through that book?

You know, if you get imposter syndrome?

Yeah, the imposter is always there.

It's the gremlin on your shoulder, whispering in your ear.

It's just always there, no matter what.

And you spoke to Joanne Harris and she said that she constantly has imposter

syndrome in all areas of her life.

And I completely relate to that because you never feel like you've made it.

My friend was saying to me, you've made it with The Shadow Glass.

And I was like, I haven't made it.

I've made a book.

Yeah.

I haven't made it.

There's always that sense of, you're gonna be found out or you

are going to disappoint people, or you've lost the spark, the ideas.

They're not coming as easy as they used to.

But I'm heartened by authors like Grady Hendrix.

Yes.

Who I think he, he tweeted recently saying writing books gets harder

because the more ground you cover, the fewer tricks or little things

that you've picked up over the years.

The fewer of those you have left and you have to come up with new ones.

You, I think you're constantly, I feel like you should always be on

receive mode rather than transmit mode.

I think that it's important to constantly be refueling your, your reservoir of

ideas, or reservoir of creative energy.

Looking for things that are interesting to you, learning about things.

Cuz I think that does help to start to hush up the imposter.

I've not published many books, but I definitely think generally as a

writer, I've reached a point where I know I can write competently.

And that's quite a nice feeling because it's okay, whatever I manage

to get out today, there might be something in there that's usable.

So that's nice.

You're not battling with the language to the same degree that you may

have been five or six years ago.

But there, there is always that feeling of, oh this one

isn't coming together properly.

Oh, I don't know about this one.

And it can happen a day after you've had a great writing day.

Yeah.

It's just a constant fight with the imposter, I think.

I don't imagine it'll ever go away.

And do you have any sort of like writing rituals or any sort of good luck charms

that help you through difficult bits?

Or is it just you just need to step away from the computer and

maybe just go and watch a film?

Yeah, I, I often go out for a run.

I'm not a very fast runner.

I don't run very far, but I do it and it clears my head and sometimes

I have a little idea on a run.

I mean, most runs I go on, I do have a little sort of aha moment.

And it can be as small as oh, that chapter I've just written actually

that needs to go a bit later, I need to put something else ahead of that.

Or it can be, oh, I've been worrying about how I'm gonna get that information across.

What if I do it through this new character?

And come up with a new character.

That's a good way of getting over the stresses of trying

to be creative sometimes.

And actually that sort of brings a question to mind, that if you

are working three days a week and getting ideas on runs, are you

someone who's a prolific note taker?

Do you have a little notebook that you take out or when you are at work, it's

just oh, this is something when I'm back to writing on Friday, I'll put it down.

Or do you have an app on your phone?

How do you record these ideas?

Or do you just try and keep them in your brain in the hope

that if it's good it'll stick?

I have notes everywhere.

If I haven't got my notebook on me, then I will write into the notes app on my phone.

And if I haven't got that with me for some reason, I'll create a new draft of an

email in Gmail and I'll just write a few notes in there and then save it to drafts.

But it does get a bit confusing cuz I'm like, I'm pretty sure I had a

really amazing idea related to this one thing, but where the hell is

it ? Nine times outta 10 I spent ages just trying to find that idea.

And when I do find it, it's actually rubbish.

But it's a bit of a chaotic setup, but I guess it's I know that I've

written it down somewhere just in case.

Yeah.

And having notebooks.

Do you find now that especially having your first book published and out

in the world, are you now getting lots of friends and family buying

you pens and notebooks as gifts?

I've always very nicely had people buying me notebooks.

Always.

The notebook that I used to plan out The Shadow Glass, that was

actually a notebook that my mum bought me when I was maybe 18, 19.

Oh wow.

And I hadn't touched it.

She passed away when I was 21 and I hadn't touched it for years and years,

cuz I just didn't feel like there was anything worthy of that notebook.

And for some reason with The Shadow Glass, I was like, I think this is

the time to use this one actually.

But yeah, I can have a notebook sitting there empty for years without using it.

And then maybe the right project comes along and I'm like okay, let's do this.

Nice.

And do you have a favoured pen?

Do you like clicky pens or just like a standard Bic pen, or fountain pens?

Or is it just whatever's to hand?

I like the gel roller pens.

Just cuz it's, just the ink just comes out and it glides across the page.

Yeah.

Biros can be a bit sticky, a bit sort of scratchy.

And they can come through the other side, if I'm getting like really quite angry in

my writing, it can come through the side.

So I tend not to use biros.

And I haven't used a fountain pen since I was about 12 years old at school, so

definitely not going down that road.

Yeah.

No, that's fine.

Some people I think can sometimes fetishize their writing implement, so

it's always an interesting ask, I think.

And yeah, I don't like Sharpies either.

Yeah, like often if I go into a shop and say, would you like me to

sign a copy of the book for you?

They'll try to give me a Sharpie.

And I'm just like, no, get that thing away from me.

That will destroy books.

Yeah.

So I use like a red gel pen to sign books.

It seems just nicer, I think.

Nice.

That's good.

Yeah, I have this theory that there's so many sort of pens and notebooks.

It would be such a personal thing for writers that I would never

dream of buying a notebook or pen.

Cause I feel like that's in hand.

They know what they, they want and it also just, like you say, having that

this is the one for this project.

It's a very personal choice thing.

And you can have them that they're empty for years.

So it's my theory and I wanna push this out into the ether

that it's booze and loungewear.

Ah, interesting.

Generally, and maybe not so much booze now.

I think after the pandemic people are more health conscious, but a favorite beverage.

Yeah.

And so it if you like English breakfast tea, some really nice sort of tea,

maybe a tea pot, but also comfy clothes.

You work from home.

I think a lot of people can now relate with working from home and a nice

elasticated fleece brushed cotton.

It's oh, you're a writer here, have some cotton pajamas.

Absolutely.

A nice cushion.

A lovely cushion.

Very much appreciated cushion.

I have noticed when I speak to, cuz obviously this is just audio

only, but I do have a visual.

There is a camera on.

That when it's a writer who's been doing it like maybe 10, 10, 15 years

and they're speaking to me from their writing desk, they have the most

epic gamers chair that they write in.

And I was like, that's actually, it's not typewriter anymore.

It's not even really, a nice laptop.

It's the chair that you are sat in for hours of day, writing.

This is the thing.

This is, I feel like this is like the dark secret of writing that nobody ever talks

about, is actually how damaging it can be to sit down all day for hours and hours.

When I was sort of like, 13, 14, I was a gymnast.

Oh wow.

I could hike my leg above my head.

I could do the splits both ways.

I could do back flips, cartwheels, all the, you know, all the good stuff.

And now I can barely stand with my legs straight.

Because I've spent so many hours sitting at a desk and it's a real fight.

I do yoga pretty much every day and I do like little exercises

or stretches that, that help.

They're are pain and they're boring, but I do them.

Yeah.

And it really is a problem.

It's a constant battle.

Not only the imposter, you've got your back or your legs or

your hips seizing up as well.

Yeah, so get a good chair.

Yeah.

Good chair.

Possibly a yoga mat.

Possibly a voucher for five free sports massages.

You've got my favorite author, buy them some Deep Heat.

There we go.

That, now that, that's the real writing process, that right there.

And we've talked about the vomit draft and getting things

out and you mapping things out.

Once you've actually got your draft into a shape that you feel like, okay, I'm

ready for someone else to read it now.

Who's the first person to read your manuscript?

Me, because what I do is I actually read it out to my partner.

And he's a writer as well?

Yeah.

And he's doesn't write fiction novels, he writes choice game adventure type things.

Okay.

That you play on, on your phone.

He puts me to shame because his books end up totaling about a million words each.

Because there are so many different choices you can make.

And I'm there going, I've just hit 40,000 words.

Sorry, my phone's ringing.

Okay.

I've just canceled that call.

Actually, weirdly, that was my boyfriend.

How bizarre.

That's it.

You know, summond.

Me talking about him, yeah.

The beast has been summoned from his lair.

Yeah.

So I read out to him first.

Just because he's got such a great grasp of story.

It helps on so many levels.

Cause it means I can hear the story out loud for the first time.

Yeah.

And my boyfriend can give me feedback live.

We read a chapter, then he'll give me his thoughts on that chapter.

He's great for picking up on things that I would never have thought of.

Like deleting things that maybe make things more mysterious

without being elusive.

And things like maybe slight sensitivity type stuff.

Yeah?

Maybe if I make a bad joke, he's like, nah, I think that actually

probably is quite offensive.

So I'm like, good to know now.

So that's my first port of call basically, is reading it out to him.

Then I'll give it another scrub.

And either I'll send it to a friend, a writer friend who's sort of like, I call

him my alpha beta because he's just great.

He's the first person I trust with this sort of like wobbly newborn

thing that I've just pushed out.

Sorry that was really graphic and disgusting.

That didn't go where I was expecting it to.

But he's great.

He's just a great editor and so he'll give me his thoughts.

And then I'll send it to my agent or to my editor.

Now that I'm in this two book contract thing, I'll send to my editor.

And this, it's a funny thing because now that I have that slight safety net

of these professional people who are far and above more intelligent than

me and know their stuff really well.

Knowing that they're there is great in some ways, cuz I feel like

they will help me to make this the best thing it could possibly be.

But there's also the twin fear of, I'm gonna send them a pile of crap

and they're gonna realize, there's the imposter again, they're gonna realize

I'm not what I, they thought I was.

Or there's this thing of a slight thing of going, oh, that'll do.

Because someone else is gonna help me fix it.

And actually that's a weird thing that I've noticed happening recently

where it's like, no matter what I write, it's gonna get changed anyway.

And I have to really shut that voice up because you can't reach that point

until you've taken the previous steps.

Yeah, so that's a funny situation that I'm finding myself in at the moment.

Yeah, I think it's one of those, again secret parts of the writing

process, is the relationship with an editor and having that balance

where, yeah, you've gotta trust them, that they're right and that their

criticisms are going to make it better.

But at the same time, you can't be overly reliant on, well, I've got an idea.

I've bashed out some words.

Can you make it into a best selling novel for me, please?

Yeah.

They're not gonna write it for you.

No.

But yeah, it's...

I think editors are the unsung heroes of anything.

Yeah.

Books, TV, movies.

They really are.

Because an editor is there to support you and their job essentially is to help you

figure out exactly what you were trying to say and maybe didn't quite manage to do.

So my editor on the Shadow Glass was Craig Leyenaar, who's, he

was a Titan, he's now left.

But he was fantastic because he would just ask questions.

And be like, I'm not really sure about this.

And I would be like, oh, obviously this is what I meant.

Oh, okay.

It wasn't obvious.

Let's figure out a way to make it obvious.

And he was great for pinpointing with surgical precision.

Yeah, something that wasn't quite doing its job in the book and

helping me to figure out how to make it do its job, essentially.

Yeah.

And the book is a hundred times better for his input.

Before that, it was a hundred times better for my agent's input.

Yeah, all these people.

You start to feel a bit like, don't tell me the book's good if you liked it.

Yeah.

Tell all these other people who were integral to creating this thing that

just happens to have my name on it.

Yeah.

I think it's where I think of musicians and producers.

And it is just that flourish.

It is just that polish and yeah, it is as much as people perceive

an author as writing in isolation.

There are these little collaborations going on.

And yeah, an editor is there to make the book the best it can

be, and when it really clicks that's where the magic happens.

Yeah.

And they're the ones who bought the book in the first place.

They're the ones who, who let you in the door.

So the book literally would not be there if that editor hadn't taken a chance on

you or given you a contract, you know?

Do you feel that working as a journalist for as long as you have has made

you more robust to being edited?

Because I guess, a lot of people when they're writing a debut novel and they

get that first bunch of feedback, some people might want to go have a cry or a

stiff drink and a couple of days quiet reflection before taking it on board.

But I guess you've had your writing analyzed and critiqued for over a decade.

Oh yeah.

Like a hundred percent, being a journalist helped with the sort of

the nuts and bolts of being an author.

Definitely.

And I think that when you're a journalist, well, with Total Film, we don't write

in the first person, we write in the third person because we are Total Film.

So when you're writing a review, you don't say, I love this because

it's, Total Film loved this because of et cetera, et cetera.

So you are always looking at this thing as a collaborative effort.

And you are all there to create the best thing you possibly can.

And I definitely think that's shaped the way that I view the editing

process for writing books as well.

Yeah.

Where it is a collaboration and the end goal is to make this thing the

absolute best thing it can possibly be.

And it's in your interests to do that.

Yeah, no, absolutely.

And it, there, there have been journalists that I've worked with who are precious

about their copy and that's, that's fine.

That's just the way they are.

But I think that it's beneficial to everyone if you are open to the idea

that you are not perfect and maybe that isn't the best way to do something.

Yeah.

And it's a personal opinion might be a bit controversial.

I feel that there are certain authors that when you get to a certain height

of fame and power, uh, or no not power, influence that maybe they get to a point

where they go, I know what I'm doing.

And so the editor then is just more of a proof reader than an

actual collaborative partner.

And I think you can tell when those relationships change and an author

suddenly goes oh, they're not writing as, as well as they used to.

Because the ego has got to a certain point and Yeah, they've parted

ways with an editor and now they've just got a proofreader there.

And I think that's a lesson for any author that just fight for the good editors.

Make sure the good editors are well paid as well.

Cause I think that's a absolutely a thing I see on Twitter at the moment.

And as someone who has no skin in the game, I can get on a soapbox and say this.

Is that there's a lot of editors who are overworked and underpaid

and they're leaving in the industry.

And the industry and books and readers and authors are suffering for it.

Absolutely.

God damnit pay them a decent wage.

You've got two projects on the go.

I think we've talked about Burn the Negative a fair bit.

You have a personal project that I, I appreciate you may want to

keep quite close to your chest.

But is there anything about that, is it a different genre again?

And what was it that sparked off, okay, I've got this under contract,

but I need to start working on this other project just for me?

So Burn The Negative is in, in layout.

So the next book I'm working on is book two for Putnam, and then

I've got another one, additional to that, which is out of contract.

So I've got two projects that aren't Burn The Negative on the

go right now, which is nice.

I like being able to like, jump between projects.

And they're at different stages of development, to use like a film analogy.

So the one that I'm currently reading out to my partner is a YA, so it's a

different market to Burn The Negative.

And the characters themselves I've had for years.

I think I, I had a first attempt at writing them for NaNoWriMo in maybe 2018.

And I got about 50,000 words in and I didn't really know, it

didn't feel right for some reason.

And it's complicated cuz it's about teenagers with like

special abilities, essentially.

Okay.

And that just makes things so complicated.

It was birthed out of my love for TV shows like Charmed and Buffy the

Vampires Slayer, and like Roswell.

All those great nineties SFF shows.

Yeah.

And it's only when you really start to try to do what they

did every single goddamn week.

That you realize how difficult it is.

Cuz you're trying to do the interpersonal drama stuff.

You're trying to do plotty, pushing the plot stuff along, and then you

throw in special abilities as well.

It's just like another added complication that you have to consider.

And in some ways, that stuff is really fun.

And it's almost like a way of externalizing your characters'

internal world, because their abilities can be used in an emotional way.

Which is what I've tried to do.

But then it also throws up problems like, if they're being attacked and they've got,

they're telekinetic, they can literally do anything to defend themselves.

So I've been having fun trying to come up with the rules for these abilities

that they have and what their limits are.

Because without limits, it becomes like Eternals, the Marvel film,

which I really didn't like.

So yeah, so it's been, it's been a fun long process on that one.

And basically I kind of shifted genre.

I was writing it very much as a fantasy, but it's become more of

a small town mystery, which seems to be working better somehow.

I think yeah, sometimes when you have these big ideas, but put them

in small town environments and just get those interpersonal stakes.

Rather than like, the world is going to end.

It's more yeah, those sort of like personal development things.

Yeah, and I had to find the town.

I can't really write until I have the setting really clear on my mind.

And so the town, when I first started writing it, the town was just this

sort of like bland nothing town.

Middle America.

You've seen thousands of those towns on movies and TV.

And I was just a bit like, there has to be something more to this

town, especially if there are people here with special abilities.

And so when I came up with something I've never seen before, with this town.

And suddenly it became somewhere I wanted to be.

It became a town I wanted to write about and be in with these

characters, and it really launched me into writing for that one.

Okay so, uh, is it based on a real place or it is just like the

concept of that Middletown, the like political, societal standpoint of it?

Yeah.

It's it's not based on a real place.

So there's something that happened to the town on the millennium

that has had like ripple effects throughout the rest of the story.

And the main characters fall into uncovering what happened.

And it's a physical thing that happened to the town, it's like a,

it's a visible thing that's happened to this town that people are either

ignoring or trying to bulldoze over.

There's lots of different agendas flying around.

Yeah.

It's like a, it's fun it's complicated.

And that means it's both a joy and a pain to write (laughs).

Yeah, I think clearly, it's just like pushing yourself

into different genre as well.

But also, like you say, it's, it is a different readership.

And yeah, I guess when it's a standard novel where it's not

pitched to an age group, you don't have to filter yourself in language

or violence and things like that.

But when writing younger, it's not just taking the swear words out, it's

having people that they can relate to going through the challenges that

resonates with people of that age.

So how's that challenge?

Has that been something that you've had to research, like reading a lot of YA?

Oh yeah.

Like I've read a fair amount of YA anyway, and there are books

like Clown in a Cornfield by Adam Caesar, which is brilliant.

It's a slasher novel, very much inspired by nineties slasher movies, but it's a YA.

And he goes to some real extremes in that book that you might not

necessarily think you would find in YA.

Yeah.

And it's brilliant.

It just doesn't hold back.

And books like Harrow Lake by Cat Ellis and she did Wicked Little

Deeds as well, where sort of small town weird Americana type stuff.

So I've definitely got those two in mind while writing this.

I think there is a slight feeling of worrying about writing teenagers,

how they talk to each other.

You know, I've watched a bit of the new Gossip Girl TV series and

um, the way they talk to each other is just completely outta my grasp.

I just can't write that kind of dialogue.

But I think I've read somebody talking about writing teenage dialogue and I think

it might have been um, Sadie Hartman, who's a big horror person on Twitter.

And she kind of said, I hate it when writers use slang that immediately

dates whatever you were reading.

So I I'm steering clear of anything too slangy and just trying to have

the characters speak in a way that's authentic to their personality

rather than worrying too much about if I'm writing authentic teenagers.

Yeah, also I wanted to ask, cuz obviously you have these characters

that go through big change.

Do you find yourself having moments of reflection and questioning your own

life and the way that you behave around people, that you go, oh, actually this

is almost a form of therapy for me.

And writing YA, have you really had to revisit your teenage years

and, you know, have you now got a new perspective on your childhood?

Oh man.

Getting deep now.

I know, we're really going there.

I do remember being a very shy, quiet, nervous teenager.

But all of the characters I loved on teen TV shows were the opposite of that.

So that's what I write, essentially.

Like, whenever I've written teenagers, I haven't written

what I was like as a teenager.

Cause frankly it's really boring, you know?

So I don't know if it's made me reappraise my past.

I think the Shadow Glass made me, I was conscious that I was writing

it around the time that I was spending a lot of time with my dad.

The book itself is about this complicated relationship between the

main character and his deceased father.

And I was spending a lot of time with my dad at that time because

there was some family stuff going on.

And I think I only really realized a couple of weeks ago that I think The

Shadow Glass is me coming to terms with my dad's mortality, essentially.

And thinking he is gonna be gone at some point.

You know, it seems like he's been around forever.

Especially after my mum passed away.

It's like dad has been this constant presence.

And the older I get, the older he gets.

He's 71 now.

And it's a bit like, yeah, he is gonna be gone one day and it's

like a, it's such a big thing to try to understand, and I think the

Shadow Glass played a part in that.

What was the rest of the question?

Sorry, I went on a tangent.

Yeah.

No, I think you answered it.

It was just having characters that go through change, do they change you and

have you felt that you've had change?

I do think that my characters helped me examine a portion of myself, definitely.

In, in The Shadow Glass, Jack his philosophy or his flaw is basically,

if I don't commit to anything, I can never fail at anything.

And I don't know that I go quite that far, but I do think that

committing to something is a big deal.

Even just committing to publishing a book is a big deal.

It makes you visible, it makes people think they know you or you're

approachable and people wanna talk to you.

And I enjoy interacting with people, but at the same time, I do find it

hugely anxiety inducing as well.

And like when I do events and stuff the attention, the pressure of the attention.

It takes me a long time to depressurize when I get home afterwards.

And it's not like I'm, Stephen King or V E Schwab or anything.

I'm not getting that much attention.

But just the fact of it does make me anxious.

So, yeah, I find it interesting to think about a character and then figure

out how I relate to them and then how I would like to explore that person.

Definitely.

And I've definitely changed, you know, when I think back to 10

years ago I was going out clubbing.

Don't do that anymore.

Even the thought sitting in the pub sometimes is a bit overwhelming.

Yeah.

Okay, I'm gonna go onto my final two questions, cuz it's on the same sort

of theme of learning about yourself.

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

with each story that they write.

Is there anything that has now shaped the way that you are writing and approaching

your YA and your second contracted book?

I'm definitely writing shorter, initially.

The Shadow Glass, the first draft was ridiculously long.

It was about 110, 120,000 words.

Wow.

I did a second draft that cut it down to 94, 95, and that's

what I pitched to my agent.

And then when we pitched that to Titan, we'd cut it down to about 83,000 words.

Okay.

But then through my edits for Titan, it went back up to 94,000 words.

Yeah.

So I'm very aware of the, the length thing.

And I'm also aware of the fact that I need to know the skeleton of the story.

I need to like excavate that skeleton, you know, I'm like

bloody Sam Neil in Jurassic Park.

I need to find that, I need to find that buried skeleton

before I can add any meat to it.

So the first draft of this YA thing is like 44,000 words, which is very short.

You know, that's basically just over a novella.

But I know when it's done, it'll probably be about 75, 80 because I need to have the

skeleton there to figure out which bits to amplify, which bits to add meat to, which

avenues maybe I could have gone down and there's room to now and I haven't yet.

So I think that's definitely something I've learned is beneficial..

There is part of me that's like, it's too short, it's too short.

It's never gonna get published, you're never gonna be able to add any words.

But I will be able to add words, through the various stages of editing, and

I'd rather it was lean than bloated.

Yeah.

And I think if it gives you focus on what you are trying to say, it's not okay, how

can I make this as concise as possible.

It's going, how can I illustrate this point to its fullest.

Yeah, absolutely.

And what's missing, I think it's easier to see what's missing once you have

a complete version of that thing.

Yeah, absolutely.

And as someone who's written basically their entire adult life,

and you've um, mentioned people who've inspired you in writing

books and the advice they've given.

Is there one piece of advice that really resonates with you, that you always

keep in mind with your own writing?

I think it goes back to the lean thing where I'm always

thinking about condensation.

Not the stuff on the windows.

Um, I had a, a great tutor at university.

I did a screenwriting module and she worked in soaps.

She worked on EastEnders.

Oh, wow.

And brevity was really important to her.

And we wrote a short script as part of our module.

And she was great at saying, could you combine two scenes?

Could you combine two characters?

How could you find a way to make this both move faster and feel less unwieldy?

And so I'm always thinking about condensing things down, trying to

make scenes really earn their keep.

Mm-hmm.

I think that's probably something I've learned from journalism, is

basically the, the mantra of every word has to earn its place on the page.

And that's literally because you're being paid by the word, if you are working,

if your freelance, you know, you, you learn self-editing and self-discipline.

And also they're paying me money for this, so do I need that word in there?

Is that actually earning its keep or is it just sort of, I threw it in

there and it's not doing anything?

So yeah, condensation is a big thing.

Excellent.

That's all we have time for this week, but uh, Josh Winning I have

to thank you so much for being my guest on the Real Writing Process.

Thank you so much.

It's been great to chat to you.

And that was a real watching process of Josh winning.

His debut novel the shutter glasses i don't know.

I fully recommend you buy it read it and then buy copies for all your friends and

family I assure you every word has entered the place on the page Also you can now

pre-order his next book Burn the negative It's released under the 11th of july 2023.

so audit now and that's your summer read sorted And if you'd like to hear more

from josh then i do recommend you follow him on instagram he does instagram live

chats with other authors and they're very good Uh, He also has a link tree page

with all those links in so that's in the show notes and it links to everything

he does and what's coming out It's great And uh that's it for this episode