Tom Pepperdine interviews Sophie Haydock about her writing process. Sophie discusses her research and approach to historical fiction, the method she applies to her writing sessions to ensure she doesn't get distracted and how her background in journalism made her appreciate the benefits of a good editor.

You can find all of Sophie's information on her website here: https://sophie-haydock.com/

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

And view Egon Schiele's artwork here: https://www.instagram.com/egonschieleswomen/

You can also support this podcast here: https://ko-fi.com/therealwritingprocess

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

https://twitter.com/Therealwriting1

https://www.instagram.com/realwritingpro

https://www.facebook.com/therealwritingprocesspodcast

Hello and welcome to The Real Writing Process.

I'm your host, Tom Pepperdine.

And this episode, my guest is the writer, Sophie Haydock.

Sophie is an acclaimed journalist who has worked at the Sunday Times

Magazine, Tatler and BBC Three.

As well as writing for such publications as the Financial Times, Guardian Weekend

Magazine, and Arts Council England.

Sophie has recently published her debut novel, The Flames, which tells

the story of four real women who have modeled for the groundbreaking

Austrian artist, Egon Schiele.

This interview was recorded at the start of March 2022.

Just two weeks before The Flames was published.

And this week are very pleased to say I'm joined by Sophie Haydock.

Sophie, hello.

Hi there, Tom.

Thanks so much for having me on the show.

Oh, an absolute pleasure.

My first question as always, what are we drinking?

So I have a rather strange preference for cut licorice root, which

I don't think is a particularly typical writers' drink, but for me it just

really matches, suits my taste buds.

So I drink it all the time.

Oh, wow.

I have a brewed mug in front of me.

This is my very first taste recorded for posterity.

What do you think of it?

Actually, it tastes a lot better than it smells.

I was a bit worried.

I was a bit worried about,

Yeah.

It's not as strong either, as a flavor.

Yeah.

That's actually quite nice.

I'm very pleased.

I was, I thought it was going to be this whole comic spluttering thing, but

I was imagining that from you as well.

For me, it began with the very mild Yogi teabags, you know, and then I've,

gradually gone on to the hard stuff, just constantly searching out the the stronger

and licorice So yeah, I've got about four inches of cut, licorice root and

I live in bristol and there's a lot of independent shops.

And so I, I went, you know, go hard or go home.

I went straight for the cut licorice root straight away.

Um, That's nice.

This is your writing drink.

This is what you write with?

This is what I drink when I'm, you know, I've had my cup of tea in the

morning, and then I usually have some of this really disgusting herbal tea that I

got prescribed by my acupuncturist, who I go and see at least a once a month.

So once I'm past those things in the morning, I move on to this

licorice tea, which I just keep topping up with hot water all day.

So I dread to think how much of it I get through, but I find it really tasty.

It is really tasty.

I'm really genuinely pleased about how tasty this drink is.

Yeah, I can definitely see, and I guess this is completely caffeine free as well,

so you're not going to get the jitters.

Yeah, that's it., I probably should Google it and check that there

aren't any really terrible side effects.

But so far, so good (laughs).

That's right.

Your skin looks good.

Your hair's still in, so...

Precisely.

Nothing to complain about.

And where I'm speaking to you now, uh, is this your writing spot?

Well, this is actually a very well positioned desk, which overlooks a very

busy and vibrant high street in the middle of Dalston in Hackney in east London.

So it's a really great spot for people watching.

I have buses going past all day.

I have people in the square opposite who you can tell they're real characters.

So this is the place with the best internet.

And if I need a bit of inspiration, it's definitely where I sit

down and spend a few minutes.

But my actual writing spot, and I think the place where I wrote the

majority of The Flames is a tiny room.

I live in a very small flat with my husband and it's the smallest room

in the flat and it's painted black, the floorboards are black, the sofa's

black, it's this really enclosed space.

And it feels, you know, it's very kind of womb-like, I think, and

it's great light in the morning.

And that is when I think I did most of the writing for The Flames, was the kind of

hours, the very early hours before work.

That, that space, which it gets really cozy as well.

There's a big radiator.

You close the door, it's a bit quieter.

So that was really this lovely cocoon type space that really enabled

quite a lot of that creative energy.

Yeah.

Nice.

And your job day-to-day is as a journalist.

So you're getting all the creative writing done first thing, and then

focusing on more factual writing.

Is that the best way for you to work?

That's absolutely right.

I find that I have to get up really early.

So when I was working in an office job, I worked at the Sunday Times for a long time

and yeah, getting up at kind of twenty past six and working for perhaps an hour

and a half at that kind of start of the day was incredibly productive for me.

And even now where I'm not going into an office and I'm doing more

kind of freelance journalism and working on my second book, I find

that I've got used to working at this very early quiet time of day.

That just has quite a magical feel to it because you feel like nobody

else in the world is awake yet.

Certainly nobody sending emails at that time.

So it's a really nice, it's a really nice way of getting the

best of your brain at that point.

No, absolutely.

And I think if you have a consistent working schedule, your brain can

easily flip into, right it's early morning, this is the creative time.

That's right.

I think the absolute worst thing you can do when you first

wake up is check social media.

So I know that my day's ruined if I wake up, grab my phone and check Twitter.

That's it, straight away your you're losing that lovely

thread of concentration.

You're losing that sense of being in this cocoon.

And I think the best thing I can do for myself is put my phone in another room

till at least eight or nine o'clock.

Just so that you get at least a couple of hours where you haven't got all these

other rather angry voices in your head.

And people shouting and this way that happens on Twitter.

Yeah.

And I think that can be very time-consuming and mentally

exhausting and all consuming.

So to have that almost purity of thought at first thing in the morning where

you just focus, nothing's diluted it.

Nothing's distracted from it.

That's really good.

And so you're working on your second book at the moment.

That's right.

Book number two.

Okay.

And so with your first book, you know, I've seen it quite widely reported

that you were inspired in an art gallery and it just really struck home.

This is really interesting.

I really want to explore who these women were that were painted.

Can you tell us was it similar inspiration that struck for the second book?

Was it a thing that was almost instantaneous or was it something

that developed over time?

Um, It was instantaneous, but for a very different reason.

My wonderful agent, Juliet ,Mushens was putting my first book out on submission.

And I'd been working with Juliet for a few months.

She hadn't mentioned book number two.

I probably should have started thinking about what my second

one was going to be about.

But of course you just have a kind of laser focus, first of all, on writing

it then on getting an agent, then you're gearing up for it being out on submission.

So for some reason, I just, I haven't even considered a second book.

And I certainly didn't think I'd be asked to to come up with an idea very quickly.

But Juliet sent me an email, can you just tell me what your second book idea is?

And I think I had about 10 minutes in which to come up with

something that could be plausible.

So, I, I knew that they very much want something of the same genre.

So historical fiction, looking at an artist.

That again, was something that I felt I'd felt comfortable

doing with the first book.

It was a big learning curve and it was a challenge, but like anything else

once you've done it once you feel like you're better equipped to do it again.

So I., I Googled quite frantically, you know, the names of well-known artists and

thought there must be another one out here with a really compelling dynamic story.

Particularly of the women in this artist's life who perhaps their

stories haven't been told before.

So within about five seconds flat, I had landed on the idea for book number

two, and it felt right, like in the same way that the first one with Egon Shiele

in the Courtauld Gallery had felt just really the right story for me, as soon

as I, as soon as the idea came to me.

Again for book two, as soon as I had the idea, I just

thought, yeah, this is the idea.

This is the right artist for me, and these are the right models again.

And I pitched it to Juliet, having pulled together, you know, all the relevant

information and she loved it and happily the publishers who ended up offering a

preempt for The Flames, loved it as well.

So I felt really reassured that at least I was on the right track

when it came to these ideas.

Yeah, no.

And it's you know, I think it's a fascinating way to explore the

voiceless subjects of paintings.

Where art history is so preoccupied with the artists and not those who are painted.

I think it's a fabulous take on things.

And so, I don't want to give too many spoilers, but with research,

did you find it was very limiting in art history or was it just there were

certain avenues that you had to go down?

Because I know that with The Flames, you had the original idea in 2015,

and obviously it's coming out in 2022.

I imagine a lot of the early years of that was research.

Do you feel almost that you have now, like a shortcut of the kind of places

to go for research or is it almost like, I've got to start that again

and it's going to be a long journey to get this book right as well?

Yeah, definitely the latter.

So, um, I think you know more than you think you know.

Or I certainly probably have many more tools in my toolkit this time around.

But it still feels very much like being at the bottom of mountain again, and

you're looking at the top and you've done it before and you're pretty

certain you can reach that summit again.

But yeah, you still have to put one foot in front of the other.

So I don't know if I'm more confident this time.

I think that those nerves still kick in and to use the climbing

a mountain analogy, there's still the danger of death.

There's still the danger that you could a trip and break an

ankle and get eaten by a bear.

I mean, there's so many things that can go wrong.

It's fascinating that you have to navigate that once more.

So with your research, where do you find your starting point?

Is it sort of finding as much as you can around the paintings themselves,

or is it that you just go into like biographies of the artists

and find the connections that way?

Yep.

So the first thing I do is just try and act like a sponge and soak up as much

information about the artist as possible.

And that certainly involves reading all the biographies that are available.

I treat it as I would do preparing for an interview in the world of journalism.

You do your research, you get your cuttings.

You make sure that you're talking to reputable sources.

So with Schiele, I tracked down and spoke to lots of scholars

and experts and enthusiasts.

People who were really willing and generous in sharing their

passion for Egon Schiele.

And once you've done that, I think I then tentatively step

into the world of fiction.

So if there are any books about the artist, Egon Schiele, for example.

There were only a couple of books that had been written

from a fictional point of view.

And I stepped into those very cautiously because you don't want

it to colour too much of how you paint the scenes in your head or how

you want to represent the women or how they're emerging in your mind.

So you step into that and you think I'm just gonna read it as quickly as possible.

Try not to take on board too much of that world and hold it very lightly.

Yeah, I think what I didn't appreciate until I read your work was

not only an incredibly famed artist.

But the time in which he was producing this work in Vienna.

You've got the First World War and then Spanish Flu and how it's

going across Europe, but it's really not known what's happening.

And I felt that was really well portrayed.

But at what point going through your research, did you go, wow, there's

actually a lot of major global events that need to be incorporated in this as well?

Yeah.

For someone who perhaps could have concentrated a little better during GCSE

history having to delve into the First World War again, and you think, oh really?

This is, you don't want to say boring, but you're like, I've really got to

go back and check what happened and the sequence of events and who took

offense at what and what dates involved.

So that really felt like, you know, you have a, a real desire

to educate yourself on the things that perhaps you should know.

And I think, yeah, there was, there was a great deal of, of that kind

of research and you can wear it, you can attempt to wear it lightly.

And I think that's a skill that writers get better at.

Uh, the temptation is to cram in every fact and every bit of information

that you've gathered and gleaned and really cram it all into your writing.

But that's obviously the last thing you want to do.

So it's really important that these things that you absorb them and

that you reinterpret them and let them come out in a very gentle way.

Yeah.

Uh, some of the research was before the pandemic.

Did you have to research through the pandemic as well?

Or was that by then you had the research done and you were actually

just writing the main book?

That's right.

So I got the book deal in May 2020.

You know, I've been waiting for publication for almost two years,

which has been this quite pleasant limbo land, I've got to say.

So by the time I'd finished the book at the end of 2019 and I

was approaching agents then.

So I think the pandemic was just coming onto the scene

as I, as I got the book deal.

And actually I'm really pleased it had emerged very gently in

that way when I did get the deal.

Otherwise I think I would have been incredibly worried that the pandemic

would have, oh, we don't want to publish this book or we don't, just

all the things that we were thinking back at the beginning of that process.

And I'm also very grateful that hopefully, fingers crossed this book will be

coming out in two weeks, 17th of March.

I guess we'll be in the past for people who are listening to this in April.

Just that I get to have a book launch, that's a real life event.

And that's something that I feel really grateful for as well.

Yeah.

And so when you were researching, it wasn't that you were just stuck at

home and having to research, you can actually go out and speak to people.

And so did you find that you were taking lots of notes and like they

would like folders or was it all a Dictaphone, actually interviewing

people in your journalistic style?

How was it the research collated and stored?

Do you prefer to write longhand initially or is it all computer based?

I like working on screen.

I love the copy, cut and paste element of these things.

I find it uh, I'm probably more of an editor, so I really like

being able to shape things as I go.

And yeah, I definitely did the old school interviewing with

Dictaphones and transcribed them.

And I kept lots of notebooks.

I really like scrappy old, plain, A4 lined notebooks that

I don't feel too precious about.

As soon as they're beautiful notebooks, I find that I don't want to write in them.

And that seems counter-intuitive.

I, I took notes.

I interviewed people.

It was lovely with an artist because you're allowed to be very visual,

and I would create Pinterest boards full of Egon Schiele's artwork,

which was really inspiring.

He was such a interesting and dynamic artist.

And I guess it must've been around then when I was gathering these images

that I realize nobody was posting about Egon Schiele on Instagram at that time.

So I think I set up the Egon Schiele's women Instagram account

perhaps towards the end of 2015.

I'd had the idea for the book, I'd started the research, and I just thought,

oh, maybe, maybe other people would like to see these wonderful images.

I started posting just one post a day and sharing these great artworks

from an artist who was one of the greatest artists of the 20th century.

And I think, yeah, it's grown really healthily in that time.

I think I'm on about 115,000 followers now.

It definitely helps that you're posting pretty explicit images, quite a lot

of the time, nude women on Instagram.

Yeah.

Nude women on Instagram goes down pretty well, who would have guessed?

So that really helps, but some of my posts have been censored.

I'm not surprised, they can be really explicit.

And then they do get taken down from time to time.

And in a way I like that because you think that Egon Schiele even a

hundred years after he lived and died, he still has the power to shock and

he still has the power to provoke.

And yeah, I think that's a really interesting element of who he was.

Yeah.

And touching on what you said earlier about having to step into the fictional

element to flesh out the facts.

How easy was it for you to develop a narrative?

Yeah, I think that's interesting.

And I looking back on how I felt when I started this process, I knew that I

wanted to tell the story of the four main muses in Egon Schiele's life.

Instantly they all just revealed themselves to be incredibly

compelling, interesting women.

They all naturally had incredible natural arcs to their lives.

So it was really easy just because the bare bones were so

interesting and it almost felt like interviewing them in a way.

I would probably approach it as I would journalism.

So I'd do my research then think of questions I'd want to ask these women.

And probably somewhere in my mind, I was almost interviewing them and

waiting to hear what they'd say about their relationships with Egon Schiele,

their relationships with each other.

There was a huge amount of overlap.

There's a huge amount of betrayal there, and I imagine jealousy.

And I think that's one of the things that can sometimes get left out of

the, you know, you read the history books and it says, oh, and then Egon

Schiele married this woman and you think yeah, that's the fact, but how

did that feel to his wife's sister?

And how did that feel to his sister?

And that people are so complex and there's so many emotions at play with everything.

And that's certainly true of the world a hundred years ago.

And you've chosen to, rather than having a one linear interweaving

storyline of the four women, that each women are given a focus.

Was that an immediate decision that you made?

Had you try to write it as a one narrative all through, or was it

always, I want to give a dedicated section to this woman's perspective?

No, I think very quickly, I knew that it was going to be that structure.

I just come back from holiday when I went to the exhibition at the

Courtauld Gallery, which is where I had the idea for the novel.

And on holiday, I'd read a fantastic book by Naomi Wood called Mrs.

Hemingway.

And that was the story of the wives of Ernest Hemingway and

each woman had her section.

So you got to see him as a writer through the eyes of the four wives that he had.

So I think when I was in the gallery, I connected first with Edith Harms

the artist's wife, because I found out details about her life that

really captured my imagination.

And possibly originally I thought I could write a book about her

and the different side of his story, seeing it through her eyes.

And as soon as I went home and Googled her name, I discovered that she had a sister

who was equally dynamic and interesting, who would also pose for the artist, which

is something that I found very intriguing.

And I discovered two other names, Walburga Neuzil, who Egon Schiele is rumored to

have met in the studio of Gustav Klimt.

And that was such a wonderful detail.

And she was a very loyal woman.

She stood by Schiele through his darkest days when he was

accused of immorality in his art.

And went to court and had a trial and was thrown in a cell.

So she was a very interesting character and there was also Egon Schiele's little

sister, Gertrude, who I saw paintings that he'd made of her in the nude.

And again, this just sparked so many questions in my mind.

Why would you take your clothes off for your brother like that?

I wanted to know about their relationship.

About the jealousies that might have manifested because of this intimate bond

that they'd forged in their childhood.

As soon as I realized that I had four compelling women I think I

had this idea in my head that I could do it in the same way as Mrs.

Hemingway.

And I could attempt to tell the story, but it probably would have

been easier just to tell one, one woman's story and one narrative.

I probably would've taken less time and been a bit more straightforward.

But I think it's always interesting when you have narratives like this,

where you get a piece of the picture uh, from each person and the character

has their own interpretation of what's going on with everything that's going

on in their lives and their history.

And that causes them to perceive and interpret events in a certain way.

I love it because people are so different and having that portrayal

and, and showing that, you know, one artist can have four women who are

very close to him, perceive him in very different ways, but he still himself.

And none of them are wrong, but they are different.

Yeah, I think you've expressed it incredibly well.

And you're absolutely right when you say that we all know that

truth shifts, depending on the perspective, depending on the gaze.

So I think it perhaps wasn't conscious when I started out, but I definitely

felt it whilst I was writing that to give these women the opportunity to paint

a portrait of themselves was perhaps something that hadn't been done before.

Their inner thoughts, their inner motivations, their private secret selves.

But I also wanted to give these four models the opportunity to almost paint

their own portrait of the artist.

So you see him, they take the paintbrush in, in a way, and they

paint this portrait of him that it does shift in different lights.

And you do get your loyalties and your sympathies, I think, for

him shift as you read the book.

And that was something that, that really mattered to me.

And it was really important that the image that we have of him at the end

of the book, when we close the book for the final time, is one that isn't solid.

And one that does have plenty of potential for the reader to

put their own thoughts into it.

Yeah.

And is that the, are you using the same structure for your

second book with the new artist?

Yeah, so I actually tried to do a much more linear one.

I thought I'm going to give myself a break here.

I've got a tight deadline.

I'm going to tell one woman, one woman story and tell it in a really linear way.

And it just didn't, it didn't have the same energy.

It didn't have the same dynamic interplay between the characters.

So I've had to, you know, this has slowed me down again because

I've had to go back and bring in.

There are three women in total who were integral to this artist's life.

And I find that structure has worked really well again, because you just

get so much, you see him so much more clearly, and it with so much more, yeah

energy and to, to get him from different perspectives, daughter, wife, and muse.

And do you feel that's something that also lends itself to when you do a, say

a profile piece on a person in the public eye today that you know, your journalistic

at work, but you want to see the multi-faceted elements of a celebrity.

And so do you go out of your way to seek different perspectives of them?

Yeah, that's that reminds me of some fantastic advice I was given as a

very young journalist by an editor who perhaps was the first person to commission

me when I came out of my journalism MA.

And he said to I think he'd sent me off to do a profile of Alexi Sayle, the

comedian, and I'd filed this piece and it perhaps wasn't quite up to scratch and

he sent it back with some really great feedback, but he said, I really want

you to scratch beneath the skin here.

You can do better than this.

I think you need to really scratch beneath the surface of who he is.

And I want to see a bit more in this piece.

And I have never forgotten that.

It was, you know, it's editing in the absolute best capacity because it

really motivates and encourages the writer to think a bit deeper and to

always find that element, in which there's more to a character or there's

more to a celebrity or there's more to a person than might first appear.

Absolutely.

And I think that's a really good way for people to have a complex

character in fiction, is to view them from different perspectives.

I think there's quite generic writing advice is to interview

your character in your head.

Maybe write a questionnaire that, you know, your character has to fill in.

But to think of actually how do different characters view this character and putting

yourself in the mindset of how would a lover view a character versus how a child

view their parent is obviously completely different, but it's still the same person.

It's people have their truth of their interpretation.

And I think as an ongoing way of structuring these stories it's a really

unique take, and I think it's a really fascinating deconstruction of an artist.

But it can also have wider implications on different types of fiction.

That if you have very character driven stories, to view it through

the prisms of other characters is a really great way of doing it.

So that's really exciting.

Thank you for sharing that.

I want to move more on to the daily grind of it as it were, as you mentioned

earlier, you've got this womb-like back room where you write in the mornings.

But having a day job where you're critically thinking

and putting words on the page.

Do you have any set targets when you write, do you have a timer on that's

whatever I can do in this time period, or is there like a minimum word

count that you set yourself per day?

Yeah, I think I am a huge fan of the Pomodoro method.

It's something that I don't know if you're familiar with

it, but I'll explain what it is.

It's a really smart method.

A way of helping you focus and it's a 25 minute timer.

So you, I just set it on my phone, I'm constantly going around saying,

Hey, Siri, set a timer for 25 minutes.

In fact, I think its just heard me.

It's just setting a timer for twenty five minutes.

It's so used to me doing that.

But you concentrate for those full 25 minutes.

So you don't check your phone, you don't check Twitter, you don't

answer any calls that come in.

Even if you just sit there for 25 minutes, staring at a screen that is far better

than your concentration, your precious concentration constantly being diverted.

The idea is that you do a 25 minute Pomodoro, you have a five minute break.

You do another 25 minute Pomodoro.

And I think the idea is that you do up to four and then you take a longer break.

And I really connect with this way of working, because I just find that you can

stack them up during the course of a day.

You've had a good day if you've managed kind of six Pomodoros or whatever.

And I roughly try and say anything between 300 to 500 words in a Pomodoro.

So to be honest, if I hit anything a normal day is probably

between 1000 and 2000 words.

2000 words would be a really good day.

1000 would be a nice day, but even 300 words in a day is just so much

better than nothing because you do need to keep your brain active.

And it's so easy once you, once that fear of writing kicks in.

And I think every writer has that.

That little scary bit of you that thinks I can't do this.

And the minute that you've gone a day and then two days, the monster

just gets bigger and you really feel like you'll never be able

to write another word ever again.

So the more you can trick your brain into getting the words out

every day, the absolute better.

Yeah.

I think there's a lot of masters of fiction who go on about how the

first draft is for the writer alone.

And, it will be the worst draft and take comfort in that this is

the worst telling of the story.

Yep, that's where I'm at now with book two, just, I will not let anybody

see that, but I know that it's there.

Yeah.

But that interval uh, focus, I think Da Vinci is someone who was

very famed for, I'm not sure what the ratio was with him, I think it

was slightly different, but he was definitely someone who had that interval

focus then break , focus and break.

Yeah, and he didn't have Twitter.

No.

And yeah he got a few things done.

Yeah it definitely does work for some people.

And I think for people who've not heard of it before, haven't

tried that having a blitz period.

Whether it's, 10 minutes, 15 minutes, 25 minutes, and then a shorter

break and then going back to it, but being quite disciplined with

that time management can often find it's a far more productive route.

And I think like you, when you've got that early morning segment

before you go out to work, to have that strictness about your time is

a really effective way of doing it.

So that's really good.

You mentioned that you had about how such a dark room that

just has light in the morning.

Are there certain things that you need around you, any kind of

writing totems, maybe a clicky pen or anything on your desk?

Or do you work in complete silence?

Do you like to have the radio on what's the atmosphere you'd

like to create and what do you like to surround yourself with?

Yeah, I think as much silence as humanly possible

is really important for me.

I'm perhaps a little unlucky because my husband is a music producer.

So he is constantly making some kind of noise, whether it's deliberate or not.

So yeah, I often have taken to wearing these large headphones and playing,

it's not white noise, but I think it's called green noise now where

you just get the sound of a forest and the rainfall and it's great.

It really does block out so much of the noise of the city

and the noise of a household.

But other than that I think very few tokenistic things.

I like as rubbishy pens as possible, you know, really basic notepads.

Otherwise I just I freeze with the kind of perfectionism of it all.

I do have a really nice ink one of the things that I use really nice is that

a Kaweco, it's like a fountain pen.

So really fancy, nice fountain pen, which I treated myself to the

ink in a whole range of colors.

So I've got like red and green ink and blue and think it's got

purple in there at the moment.

Yeah, I think really the quiet thing is nice and the, the nicest thing is

when a cat comes and sits next to you.

I think that's the writer cliche, isn't it?

All writers love a kind of snoozing cat by their side.

But other than that I'm pretty basic.

And I think that's probably the best way to be.

And do you, cause it's something you do before you go to your day

job, do you get dressed before you have that writing session or is

it pajamas for creative work, and outdoor clothes for journalistic work.

Yeah, that's a good idea actually.

A good question.

I think, I think it probably when I was leaving the house more.

I think it was very much pajamas, keep us warm as possible, a big blanket

and then get dressed and go to work and that felt like a lineation.

Yeah.

Division.

And now now it's I'll probably stay in something cozy and then when I've done

my writing, I probably try and get out and go for a run or do something active.

That gets me out of the house.

And then I really like getting dressed.

I really very rarely have slouch days where you just don't

leave your pajama vibe behind.

And I think it's really important for your mental health, especially

after everything we've been through in the last 10 years, two years.

I feel like, you know, it's been never ending, but you really do need to, I

need to just keep up that structure.

I think I respond very well to structure and almost, I almost set

myself a bit of a timetable each day.

So that I don't end up just sitting doing nothing, wasting

my time or procrastinating, which is the worst thing you can do.

Very easily done in today's day and age with all the technology

we surround ourselves with.

uh, I want to go more in depth into what you were saying earlier about almost like

imposter syndrome and doubts of writing.

Do you find that it comes in waves throughout your writing or is that

almost like a wall when you're a certain way through a project?

Cause you say that you're kind of a bit overly critical of yourself now.

Yeah, I think that's, again, a really interesting question.

And I think with the first book, the first book weirdly was the

first book I'd ever written.

I'd been a journalist for more than a decade when I started it.

So I knew how to write and I knew how to structure things and I've been

edited by some really brutal editors, especially at the Sunday Times.

So you really, you know what works and what doesn't and you know what's going

to get the red pen, someone crossing words out and anything too flowery.

I think the first time round, I didn't know, you don't know

anybody's ever going to read it.

And even now I'm slightly mortified that the sections in there that

I remember writing just thinking, oh, no one's ever gonna read that.

And then of course, it somehow is out in the world a handful of years later.

But I feel I think with the first book, I was very surprised and it's

almost like a photograph developing.

You know, you know, the old fashioned photographs where you take a picture,

you take it to go and get developed and you wouldn't know what you

were going to get at the end of it.

That must seem so old fashioned for the listeners today, especially young ones.

But it felt like that with the book.

I was writing and I didn't know if it was good or not.

And it was only really when you start putting it out into other people's hands

that you get a sense of, you know, you start to see how people respond to it.

And you start off gently, your mum reads it.

She's really enthusiastic.

And then you might start entering into competitions.

And I remember when The Flames won the Impress Prize and I

thought, oh, this is weird.

Like this is really odd that something I've written has captured

people's enthusiasm in this way.

And you still, you know, you still got this kind of slight doubt.

Oh, it's just a good idea.

And maybe they really were fans of Egon Schiele, and there's still that kind

of slight, you know, yeah, I think it is doubt in the back of your mind.

And again, when it comes to getting an agent, all the feedback you

get is something that's completely separate from you as a writer.

If that makes sense.

When Juliet Mashens said she wanted to represent me, she was my number one

agent who I wanted to represent me.

So again, that felt really like people are responding to this

writing in a way that I don't feel is a reflection of me necessarily.

And then I got a preempt from Doubleday.

At that point I was like, oh my God, I don't know what's happening here.

Like it felt so otherworldly and all that was like a wonderful

trajectory with that book.

And now that I'm in book two I'm thinking again, like this is terrible

and I don't know what I'm doing and you know, and I've really got to imbue these

characters with some kind of poignancy.

And it feels this time, you feel like you've pulled the wool over people's eyes.

Last time it's all a surprise, you don't know how people are going to react.

And you're pleasantly surprised when the responses so enthusiastic.

But this time I'm feeling like, oh, I'm going to get caught out.

And they're going to realize that I don't know what I'm

doing or that I'm winging it.

And again, speaking to other writers, especially other debuts

who have got a two book deal.

Everybody is in this kind of pit of imposter syndrome, feeling like

they've accidentally taken something on that they don't deserve, or they

don't have the skills to execute.

But hopefully that won't be the case.

Yes, I have absolute faith that it won't be.

But I do want to talk about your editing process.

Especially as you are approaching it now in your second book.

You mentioned earlier that you send things to your mom and then you

know, you've had brutal editors in the past and all this feedback.

Do you have beta readers that once you've finished drafting it yourself it goes

to them first or is it that it will go to the editor at Doubleday and then

once they've drafted it, you almost have the readers as proofreaders really?

How's your editing process, who reads it first?

Well with book number two, nobody has read it yet.

And my mum keeps pestering me saying what am I going to get to see this?

I've not seen it.

So I think it does feel different because I've got an agent

now and I've got an editor.

But I still think I would like to get somebody's feedback before

I show it to these people who really know what they're doing.

And are the kind of gatekeepers of great literature.

So I feel that, yeah, I haven't been in a position yet to put it in anybody's hands,

but I would like to fall back on some of the people who were generous enough to

read The Flames when it was developing.

And they're usually friends, writers.

People who who you trust or who, people who you choose because you

think they're going to fill in different gaps and oh, this person

loves art, or this person doesn't love art and won't know about the artist.

And you kind of want to cover all your bases, I think.

Yeah.

And when you rewrite yourself, before you start sending it to the friends and

family, are you someone who writes through a full draft and almost like scraps it

immediately and then writes a second one?

Or is it you constantly reworking scenes?

How do you go about rewriting in your drafting stage before anyone sees it?

Yeah.

So with the first book, The Flames, I wrote and I tweaked

and I edited it as I went.

You know, you have to get one scene perfect before you move on to the next.

And that was a really slow process.

And obviously the scenes that you've worked on a hundred times are the

ones that are the absolute worst and that everybody says you've

got to edit over and over again.

So, this time strangely with book two, I have just I've written through.

I don't even read back what I wrote a paragraph before.

I don't even know, what I dread to think what I written at

10,000 words and 50,000 words.

I just haven't read it.

And I think in a way that will be quite fresh.

Because I, I did the research, I planned out the scenes, I planned

out the structure of the book, so I knew where it was going and I knew

how I wanted everything to develop.

But I'm almost as intrigued now to go back to the beginning and read it that way

and think, oh, I'll cut that or I'll turn that into somebody else's perspective.

So it's a completely different way of doing things.

And I wonder if once you've written five books, you get into the swing of

things or whether each one has its own kind of fingerprint and is different.

And did you find with you know, I guess because it's the one that's

completed, The Flames, when you were editing that and working through

different perspectives, like you just said there, oh, I might change that to be

coming from someone else's perspective.

Did any of the characters either Egon himself or, any of the sisters or

wife and muse, was there any character that your maybe opinion or perspective

of them like radically changed through the drafting of the book?

And actually the person you envisioned them being and you know,

as you wrote your first draft, to who they ended up being portrayed

as in the end, radically shifted?

Or was it all to plan?

You mapped out what you wanted these perspectives to be and

you kind of stuck to them?

I think the woman who changed the most during the book was Adele.

So we meet her when she's a very young woman and she has

the whole world at her feet.

She's from a wealthy family, she's well-educated and she has high hopes to,

in my novel, she has high hopes to marry this charismatic artist who has moved into

the apartment opposite their's in Vienna.

And I wrote her in a way that we see her when she's an older woman

and her life has not turned out the way that she might have hoped for.

So I have a huge affinity with Adele because you see her life

over a much longer timescale.

But when I wrote it originally, and perhaps what took the most time in the

original version of The Flames was I had Adele as an old woman and a young

woman, the scenes were interlinked.

So you found out a little bit more about her as an old woman, as you found

out more about her as a young woman.

And it was this really intricate, impossible quarter of the book.

And actually the biggest thing that changed when Doubleday took it on

was that my wonderful editor, Kirsty, who I have the most amount of respect

for, because I think she's fantastic.

She suggested separating out the old Adele and the young Adele.

So I had to unpick all this stuff that I'd really invested in and

that I'd really cared about.

And some scenes that I felt so passionately about got cut because

they slowed the story down.

And it was, I don't know if difficult is the right word because I thought

it was the right decision, but Adele really changed as a character for me.

And I think in a way I'm intrigued to see how people respond to her

because I almost had to take a step back from her as a character because

I feel like she she shifted from what I'd originally envisioned and

her stories shifted from from what I perhaps first intended it to be.

But I think the book's far better because of it.

I think the structure is really beautiful, the way that Kirsty

envisioned it with these four women framed in their own portrait.

And I thought that was just genius.

So I don't have any, I don't have any resentment about the suggestion.

But it does, it does change how I see that, that character now.

And with Kirsty as your editor, had you worked together before in any

capacity or was this the very first time?

No, this was the first time.

And Kirsty had received The Flames on submission from Juliet and she

offered a preempt, almost instantly.

So she was really passionate about the book.

She was really clear about what she saw for the book and the characters.

And, I just I agreed with everything that she said because she was so warm and

she was so insightful and she delivered these verdicts with such tenderness.

She was really careful to not hurt my feelings.

And I felt like saying to her, I've been shouted and screamed at.

Anybody giving me a compliment when they're telling me to change my

work is a really alien thing for me.

I guess writers who've worked in the newsrooms of national publications would

recognize that that we're not used to tenderness and politeness in that way.

Positive reinforcement.

Yeah.

Positive reinforcement.

I was like, this is nice.

So that was great.

And I'll be working with Kirsty again for book two, and I just hope

that we continue to have that really fantastic working relationship.

Yeah.

And I guess like journalism, like you say, it can be pretty brutal at

times that you do develop a thick skin when it comes to criticism.

Cause it's all in service to the work.

That's right.

And I'm brilliant at being edited.

I just, when I got my copy edits, they warned me authors sometimes

feel a bit prickly about this and I was like, bring it on.

I'm so grateful that somebody is going to go through my book with

a fine tooth comb and correct any grammatical mistakes or factual errors.

I was delighted.

I was so grateful and so open to that process.

And the same with Kirsty, I just I know what it's like to edit other

people, other journalists work.

I edited, for example, when I was I worked on the Sunday Times Magazine

and I did some sub editing there.

And I edited some of the best journalists in the world, AA

Gill, Lynn Barber, Christina Lamb.

And the best writers, the best journalists were always the

ones who gratefully received the edits that you suggested to them.

And that the worst ones, honestly, every time would be the ones who would say

I put that comma there for a reason.

And you'd be thinking, it doesn't look like it and you don't really know

what you're doing with your commas.

So I think graciousness goes a long way and gratitude goes a long way

in the editing process, both ways.

And I guess with working at the Sunday Times for as long as

you did, that working to a deadline uh, you know, and obviously that

pressure of getting final things.

Cause now that you've gone from your own book, that was then put out to market.

And like you say, you finished it and then it's been a couple of years

before it now comes out to release.

To writing the second book and there's a delivery date for

your draft and things like that.

How is it writing creatively under pressure compared to journalism?

It's a deadline that's far broader, but I guess because you didn't

have that pressure for book one, is it a lot more stressful?

Is it just an enjoyable challenge?

How are you dealing with the deadline aspect?

Well, I think it very feels like a real privilege.

Like I do like structure and I do like having deadlines.

So for me to have a second book and to know that it's the

sooner that they receive it the better, does keep me on my toes.

But also working through a pandemic has felt to me like a uncreative period.

When you're looking at the news and you're seeing all the terrible

things that are happening and the world shut down in that way.

It was really difficult to then go and churn a thousand words onto a

page and feel like it's a joyful light process imbued with a bit of magic.

The first time I did the book, the first book, I went off to Vienna I went to

galleries, I went to the British library.

You know, I did all this lovely traveling and research and it just

felt, I felt like it was so expansive.

And obviously the last two years, we've all been shrinking so much.

Our horizons have been shrinking and I think it really affected me.

I think I felt quite stagnant.

And I think the word that I've seen other people use is this kind of languishing.

You know, we're kind of stuck in this state that doesn't feel very creative.

And I think in the last few months I've really come out of it.

You know, as the world has started to pick up pace again, and things have opened up.

I can really feel that creativity returning, and it does feel like

it's flowing much more easily now.

And I want to ask as well, as someone who has built such a following

on your Instagram account for Egon's muses and his artwork, how social

media benefits you as a writer and would you do something similar for

the new artist or was that just an isolation thing that you did for that?

And as a writer, do you see benefits in social media?

Do you feel that it's a, it's an essential platform to build an audience?

Or is it just a distraction?

I think, do you know what?

I don't feel like it's essential.

I think it's really nice.

I don't know if I did it purely from a strategic point of view to sell

books, I think I'd be disappointed because I think it's relatively

well-known that that platform doesn't necessarily sell a huge number of books.

So it's not going to catapult anybody into a bestseller position.

But also I think the thing that has been so wonderful is the community that is

born out of a social media platform.

Especially one as large as Egon Schiele's Women.

So I've had conversations with all sorts of people who are passionate about the

artist who want to let me know what they think about his paintings, his drawings.

I've been DM-ing with Hollywood A-list celebrities who happen just to be fans

of Egon Schiele and just wanted to tell me how much they love my account.

And that's just been, you know, you just think it's such a vibrant way to

connect with people that you'd never normally get the chance to engage with.

So for that reason, I'm really happy I've done it and I'm going

to keep doing it, but I don't know if I do it for another artist.

I think, I think that's something that I might see how it goes.

Oh, that's fair.

And just to wrap up with my final two questions.

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

with each story that they write.

Was there anything that through the process of writing The Flames, which you

really was like, oh, this is a lesson.

And that you've consciously then taken the learnings of The Flames

onto your, your latest book?

Is a conscious thing that you're incorporating second time round?

I think perhaps one of the things I learnt from working

with Kirsty was to, to keep things simple, to keep a relatively

contained storyline in one area.

This jumping back and forth between timeframes was something that she

suggested wasn't going to work as well for my book in particular.

She said it can be confusing for a reader to constantly be moving around like that.

And I think there's truth in that.

I think, keep it simple, whilst also trying to tell the most compelling

story in the most persuasive way.

So it's just trying to find that balance of that.

And in all your writing, you mentioned earlier about scratching

beneath the surface and looking at the character, but is there one piece of

maybe like technical writing advice that you've been told or that you've

read that you feel really resonates with you and that you try to apply

with every bit of writing that you do?

I think, I don't know if there's advice, but there's definitely, you

have voices in your head or you have people who perhaps not always the

most sympathetic people, perhaps old editors who you might just have sitting

on your shoulder who are saying, oh, don't write that or red pen that.

And I think that sits very strongly in my mind.

Just this idea that what I think is a beautiful sentence, isn't necessarily what

is going to connect most with the reader.

There's very much a few, there's a handful of people, some more

sympathetic than others, who edit me as I go and that's probably...

is it healthy?

I'm not sure.

Whether it's healthy or not it's the way it is.

Exactly.

Yeah.

Okay.

That's all we have time for Sophie, but just thank you so

much for being my guest this week.

Thank you, Tom.

You have asked such incredible questions, things that I haven't

ever had to think about before.

Certainly some things that I've never had to articulate.

So it's been such a pleasure to talk to you today.

That's very kind to say.

Thank you.

And you've answered them beautifully.

So that's great.

Thank you.

Thank you.

And that was the real writing process of Sophie Haydock.

Did I purposely leave in all the compliments on my interview questions

because she's a notable Sunday Times journalist who has interviewed some

of the greatest authors alive today?

Yes.

Yes, I did.

Thanks again to Sophie for being a fantastic guest and providing

a great launch for season two.

You should pick up a copy of her book immediately as I do feel this

is a book that's going places.

As mentioned multiple times throughout the interview, it's called The

Flames and it's available from all good book shops right now.

So pick your favorite and buy it from there.

If you'd like to keep up to date with Sophie and her work, the best

place to find her online is Twitter under the handle @Words_by_Sophie.

And if you want to see lots of drawings of naked ladies, only because we've discussed

it on the show and it's historical culture, then check out Sophie's

Instagram account @egonschieleswomen.

Links in the show notes as per usual.

And this season, I'm also going to be ending these episodes with a request.

And the request is to follow my Kofi page.

It's the first place for news about the show and there'll be exclusive

content for people who donate.

I'm still determined to run this podcast ad free, but I also need

to stop making such a considerable loss with every episode.

So if you support the show with a donation of one pound or more,

I promise to give you a shout out on the show as I thank you.

And I'll give you a follow on your social media of choice.

Just put your handle and which social media platform you're on

in the comment when you donate.

To start us off, a big thank you to the poet, Helen Sheppard.

Previous guest on the show, all round top human being, and

very first donor for the show.

Thanks Helen you're awesome.

Right, that's all for me this week.

And so let's fade in our favorite outro song.

With a slightly amended sign-off.

Keep writing.