Zoë Richards: Rethinking Resilience for Writers

Zoë is the author of Garden of Her Heart, and host of the podcast, Write Damn It! An experienced coach with more than 35 years working on mindset, Zoë shares a ton of practical advice for writers including how to deal with self-doubt and rejection.

WE DISCUSS...

How stand up comedy helped Zoë's writing
How to rethink your attitude to resilience
Great tips for writing a synopsis
Writers' flow and getting started each day
Building characters using their childhood trauma
How to get people to show up at book events, and much more...

LINKS

Some of the following are affiliate links and may earn me commission...

GARDEN OF HER HEART

WRITE, DAMN IT! PODCAST

ZOË'S WEBSITE

SLOW HORSES ON APPLE+

HISTORY HITS WITH DAN SNOW

THE EXAMINER

TIMESTALKER

AFTER THE STORM BY GD WRIGHT

THE MOON'S A BALLOON BY DAVID NIVEN

BOA: WHIPLASH

MY BOOKS

THE GREEN ROOM

ME IN CONVERSATION WITH BEN AARONOVITCH AT OXTED LIBRARY

Thanks to: Emily Stay for production assistance, Kai Newton for the edit & Dominic Currie for the jingle

Transcript

0:00

Hello everyone and welcome to Mark stage creative differences. Day. I'm monthly live stream where I talk to writer friends about the little things that make a big difference to their craft and careers, in the hope that we can give readers some insight into the creative process and writers and other creative folks some practical advice that they can actually use. I'm Mark stay, author, screenwriter, and podcaster, and if you're joining us live, feel free to ask questions in the comments and take part in the conversation. And she's here helping me today. Say hello and say hello. I'm okay. Thank you. And as always, a big thank you to Dominic Curry for his jingle this month as a Halloween flavor. Let's hear it again. Hey. What? Now there's a slight change to the show this month. Now, those of you who joined us for last month's episode with LJ Shepard, wonderful as it was, may have noticed we had some, but but but but but but buffering issues. Such are the perils of live streaming. However, I was clever enough to record separate audio and video streams, and the version that went out live on the podcast on YouTube had none of those buffering issues. And sounds and looks absolutely amazing. All thanks to Kai. Come here. Kai, say hello. Kai. Hello, I'm Kai, I put stuff together, I edit, it's like Lego, but less expensive. Kai is my daughter's fiancé. They're engaged to get married. Please buy lots of my books. We have a wedding to pay for. He's put all sorts of soupy, washy things in there, and. And I'm paying him an absolute pittance. Okay. Yeah, yeah. So from now on, I'm going to treat these live streams as well, live shows. And if anything goes wrong, we'll just roll with it, maybe stop, start again, blah blah blah. And then the podcast and the edited YouTube, those will be the glossy edited version. But why I hear you cry? Why should I bother turning up for the live streams when I can get a glossy edited version? Well, for a start, if I should accidentally fall off my chair, fart, or spontaneously combust, or perhaps all three at once, then you get to see it live. Also, perhaps more importantly, you can ask questions of the guests and interact in a way that you can't do when listening to the podcast. In the gym or on your yacht, or while sitting on the loo. You can leave now. Kai. Okay. Thank you. Okay, okay. Thank you, thank you. Back to your editing booth. Thank you. Bless. Same. He's lovely. Really is. He says he's a lovely poison. He is wonderful. He's a keeper. His name? Yeah. Brilliant. And now let's meet our special guest. She is the author of Garden of Her Heart and host of the podcast. Right. Damn it. She's an experienced coach of more than 35 years working on mindset and teaching others to be expert coaches. It's only Zara Richards. Sorry. Welcome to the Creative Differences podcast. How are you today? Hello. I'm all right. Not bad at all considering this is my book. Yeah, but let's not go into the books. We're going to keep all positive. I know I sent you a few questions in advance, but there's something I noticed in your bio that somehow pass me by, and I. And you said I did 50 things in my 50s, which included stand up comedy. So first of all, tell me about the 50 things in your 50s and tell me about the stand up comedy. Well, I've got to say, Mark, if anybody's thinking of doing a number of things in the decade of an age, do it when you're 20 or 30. Don't wait till you left because there is a lot of things. And I didn't quite make it in my 50s because we had a pandemic. And so I did have to extend some things into my 60s. So some of it was really simple stuff, like there were cities I wanted to visit, some a friend challenged me, my wonderful friend Tony, who cycles to work every single day and does more than a thousand miles every year on his bike. He challenged me to do The Way of the roses, which is 173 mile bike ride from Morecambe Bay to Bridlington, and I didn't even own a bike mark when I went. Why not? I told you that. Yeah, so it's a buy a bike first ride I did on it. It was called carve my first bike before somebody pinched it. Right? Yeah. The problem was that I thought I'd done about ten miles and I'd only done for five. You know, it was it was hard work getting up to being able to do 60 miles a day, that that was tough. But we did it and we did it to raise money for arms for the Ms. Society, because my husband, Rob, has multiple sclerosis and the only person who didn't get off their bike to go up the hill coming out of settle was the man without a mask. Wow. He's cycled all there's a real. If anybody's ever done the way of the roses, they know there's this incredibly steep hill coming up out of saddle, and it is not one to be thinking, oh, you know, I can easily just cycle all the way up there. I was amazed Rob did it all the way to the top. I when I was 15 I did that London to. I've never been fitter than when I was 15. That was the fittest I've ever been. And going up and down the South Downs. I remember there was a point in that going up hill where I said, Mark, never, ever let yourself be talked into anything like this ever again. So I take my hat off to all of you for that. That is that's phenomenal. So yeah, I decided I would like to have a go at seeing what it was like to do stand up. So there's a fabulous couple of comedians locally, one who's now doing a national tour. He's doing a 2025 tour. He's done a 2023 tour. Literally national. I'm not some Avery. And then the other one. So anybody who's had kids may have actually come across them. As the father of twins, he did a big thing around being a father of twins and what that was like. And then another local one from my own town, is Ben Riley. And the two of them run this. How to be a stand up comedian course. And at the end of it, you have to do your set on stage. And so the first time I did it, my routine was all about my safety. Things in my 50s, but the second time. So I went around again saying to them, right, actually, I enjoyed that, but now I want to do it. Seriously. It's not just a case of doing it as one of my 50 things. So then that was about me being a mum because I was I think I probably still am. I hope Ellie's not watching this. I doubt that's true. At all. Sorry, but go on. It's true. It is true. I used to start my routine off by getting on stage and go, oh, hang on a second folks. I don't get my phone out and go, oh, it's okay. It's only my daughter telling me not to embarrass her. Let me tell you a story or two. Yeah, yeah, yeah. So I was in Manchester. Now, I don't know if you know this, but this rivalry between Liverpool and Manchester always has. No pulled me up a chair. I'd never knew it. So with that rivalry, when you've got even the slightest hint of a Scouse accent and any Scouser will say I have. And my mum was from Plymouth, so I was corrected if I said where she'd go, what if I said kiss it with a purse? So I was corrected my whole life and so I haven't got a proper Liverpool accent as a result, as you can tell. But marks can tell. So I literally got just the slightest bit of applause. So when I did Manchester Lip Festival and I got to the end and I got a massive round of applause, I picked up the mic again. But I ain't got hung up. Folks, I've got to say thank you, because last time I was on stage in Manchester, nobody applauded. But it was great fun. I admire stand up comedians tremendously because it's one thing I've done a lot of theater, but that's someone else's script or sometimes my script. But you know, it's usually shot and it's usually been worked and worked and worked. I mean, we've we've seen comedians like when we lived in Epsom, people like Lee Evans would come to town and do start their routine with and they would hold sheets of paper. And if you said, oh, that doesn't work, he'd toss it away. And the tickets were like a tenner. It was great. Yeah, you're workshopping it. Every comedian I know has, you know, died of death on stage, and, I'm I've, I've, I did enough of that when I was doing it. Right. So it's, Yeah. But also speaking vaccines because my son, just graduated with. Yes, we have a fully qualified, unemployed actor in the house. That's wonderful. He did classes on accents, and he's. When he needs to do Scouse accent, he says a can of Coke, and he says, yeah, I kind of joke. That's his trigger. It's a bit like, I don't know if you remember Tom O'Connor years ago, comedian on telly. Yeah. And he used to say, if you want to do a Northern Ireland accent, all you have to do is pull your lecturer tight and you can't have a Northern Ireland accent, but, you know, you get a muscle structure, you know, as, as you, you're area that you were brought up in. Yeah. And different accents are in different parts of the mouth as well. And it's all, it's all very strange. I because I grew up in a London working class family, and Claire knows when I'm on the phone to my family because I've become a Cockney gaze all of a sudden. But you know, when, when I'm, you know, because I went to school in Surrey, when we go and see my family in London, my nan would say, we don't talk like our Stewie, you know? So I was I can see that the posh one of the family. But anyway, before we offend any more regions of the United Kingdom, let's talk about the reason you're here. Azari is Garden of Her Heart, which has been called a warm hug of a book. But then you did name your protagonist, Holly Bush, which I think is just cruel. So just tell us. Tell us about garden of Her Heart. And Holly has never forgiven her parents for giving her that name combination. Her sister Rose and the cat lavender. So you know, her mum clearly had something of a sense of humor. So the story is about recovery, it's about community and it's about purpose. And Holly is somebody who's got both physical and mental health scars. She's at a very low ebb because she had an incident that happened in work, and work was a travel agents. She has been offered a free holiday and told that she can go literally anywhere. And so she chooses to go up the road from home, which is in south Liverpool, up the road to Formby, to a retreat and is dreading the idea of a retreat. I won't say why, but there is an example of when her mum took her on a retreat when she was 17 years old that, maybe wasn't quite what she was expecting, but it was certainly for women of a certain age, let's put it that way. So she goes to the retreats, almost immediately, regrets it. Then starts to think of going home. And as she thinks of going home, she actually ends up finding herself doing a little bit of weeding in the kitchen garden that needs a lot of TLC. And through the kitchen garden, she goes through her own recovery, but also helps other people on their own journey to recovery, too. And then there's a hint of romance. But I would say it's more about friendship than it is about romance. The romance is more about helping Holly remind herself that despite her injury, she actually can still be attracted to somebody else. And what I noticed in the book as well is you use journal entries all the way throughout, which gives us a lovely insight to to Holly State of mind. Is that something stressful? Is that something that you've used and also took about that as a as a literary device? How did that help you at all? Probably worth saying. First of all. So I am a suicide survivor from a long time ago. So I went to the doctor at. My method was to go down to the beach, and I was intending to drive into the sea. I won't describe any more than that. That's sufficient for you to know about, because I then went to my GP who suggested not to give me any drugs, but actually that he should give me a script of going out and doing something like walking on the beach. So I don't think he quite got what I mean. He was lovely. I've got to say, I was very fortunate. I did have a very good GP, but talking Therapies was also offered and I don't know whether you've noticed, Mark, but I don't really have much of an issue with talking, but also because I'm a trained coach, I'm used to the kind of questions. So I can intellectualize, if you ask me, the kind of question that's asking talking therapies, I know the question already. I can give an intellectual response to it. So I'm not actually going to get into that subconscious, deep conscious, unconscious mindset. I'm going to actually be dealing with this at a very conscious level and give you an answer that's just off pat. So journaling is something that I found is quite helpful. And I also found that for Holly that it was a really useful tool. Not only that, it shows her progression because it starts off she's barely writing anything. The counselor has suggested to her that she's carrying on doing this as daily pages and she's going, yeah, yep, and she's not. And then gets to the retreat and does end up doing it as daily pages and starts to actually share more with herself, let alone sharing anything with the reader. So it becomes a device for her personally, I don't know if you noticed, but the weather gets better. The amount of hours of sleep gets better. What she wears starts to be more specific to what she's doing as opposed to as we are when we're depressed, just picking up the thing that's on the floor, right? And just throwing that on because it's the nearest thing to your daughter doesn't have a floor drive, might not have the floor, but I when I was writing this, I had a dream in my head, Mark, and I thought, don't be ridiculous. No publisher is ever going to do that. And my dream was that every journal page would look like it's out of a notebook. Yeah, I never said anything to the publisher because I thought, don't be ridiculous. It'll cost them more and they won't want to spend more than they have to. And what happened when I saw the proofs? It had the journal entries as if they're on pieces of notepaper. And I absolutely love that we had the same vision without having the conversation, which I just think amazing. It really helps pace as well, and it helps with tone. So if you have a heavy scene, you can have a light little interlude with the journal or whatever it is is a brilliant device just for, just keeping the momentum going and alternating the pace and everything. It's, and it's and I love my capture. It's really masterfully done. I think it's one of the reasons why people are really falling in love with this book, because it's it's so easy to read, which is, the biggest, one of the biggest compliments I think a writer can get, actually, a lot of people. Oh. Asked if it's easy to read. It must have been easy to write. And that's very the case is it is okay. Yes. Okay. Well, it's fair to say, though, Mark, that I actually wrote the first draft very quickly. I was rejected by my favorite agent and her response was, if you write anything else or if you do a rewrite on this, I'd like to see it because you're clearly a good writer. So I thought, well, I'm not losing that opportunity. I, you know, I've got to do something, but I'm not sure I'm ready yet to rewrite this other novel. So I'll apply my learning in writing something completely different. And then I'll go back to the other novel. I applied my learning and it was Garden of Her Heart. And when I got to the end, I thought, oh, this book's actually got legs. I need to do something with this first. So it was quick to write initially, just three months. But I do think some of that is also my the job I've done. I could be told on a Thursday, I need a report from you by Tuesday. In fact, I've had one occasion where it was 5:00. I need a report from you 9:00 tomorrow morning, and I didn't finish it until 330 in the morning. So I've had situations where I've had to just pull it out the bag no matter what. For exactly. When I've been writing reports, I've been writing for the most senior level of exacts. And so you've got to do the best work you possibly can in the shortest time that you can. And I think that's been incredible training for me, for then being able to sit down and apply myself to what I'm writing with my novels. Until you're published, you don't necessarily notice it until at least you're working with a publisher. You will have radio silence for months, and then suddenly it's so you want this, so you want that. Can you serve this book to us by Thursday so we can have a bio of this? Can you do is this not. We're going to have a synopsis in a minute. Can you do this? And suddenly you're like, where were you six months ago when I was twiddling my thumbs, you know? So it's. Yeah, that's that's what a lot of, traditional publishing can be like. But before we move on to that, I want to discuss and we sort of touch on this, a little, but I want to talk about resilience, both in terms of writing and in life. I mean, it's been a very tough year for a lot of my writer friends. The industry seems to be paralyzed by indecision. We keep hearing the phrase survive till 25 signs. So it's almost as if this year has been written off, and maybe some good things might happen next year. I mean, I know you've had various highs and lows in your life, as well as your writing career as well as, you know, as someone who's, you know, worked with, with, with other people and coached people, what let's talk about resilience. What what are the strategies that you found helpful? Well, first of all, I want to get onto my soapbox for a moment because it fucks the heck out of me that people seem to have repackaged resilience. As to being about toughening up, this is a tough industry. You're going to have to toughen up now. You know what? If I was in a tough marriage, I'm not, I have to say, I hasten to add, I have got a fabulous husband. But if he wasn't fabulous and if he was somebody who beat me, if he was somebody who used coercive control or some formal psychological process that was damaging to me, I don't want to toughen up, to carry on and have more of that. If I was in a job, which I have been, where I have been bullied by my manager, in my first week in one job, I had a manager who turned to me and said, I've been asking myself, what questions did I ask you to interview? That led to me appointing you Zoe to we. I said, you told me on the phone that it was a unanimous decision to appoint me. I won't mention her name, but, you could have a look at the character that I've got at the beginning of my novel. I know who she's based on that scene. That scene felt very real. Oh, yeah, it's definitely based on the manager I had at one particular hospital. Again, you know, if she's my manager, don't tell me to toughen up. That's not resilience. And so folks the heck out of me that we've got this repackaging of what resilience is into something about it's my problem. I've got to do something with me. Not that at all. We're all programed differently. We're programed from a very young age. So how are we? Are what happens to us up to the age of around about 5 to 7 years old is going to impact on how we manage situations in later life. Equally, if we are neurodiverse, we're going to have different approaches to things like whether or not we are, rejection sensitive. And the more we are rejection sensitive, the harder the rejection process is. I can take rejection. If you've ever done Myers-Briggs, I'm a teacher, which means that I'm somebody who I can look internally for my own validation. I don't need to have an agent tell me my work's good. I love it when my agent tells me my work is good. If you are watching, please tell me, because you know I need those strikes. And when my editor puts me. I love this Jasmine. Keep going. Tell me that you love a line, but at the same time, I'm not somebody who is desperate for that external validation. If you are again, if you don't get that, then it's going to be harder for you. So the most important thing when it comes to resilience is, first of all, knowing yourself. Know what things knock you know what things you struggle with. Know what makes it easier for you to manage something. Maybe it's the group of people you put around you. Maybe it's journaling. Maybe it's going out for walks after or before something happens. It can also be so something like this I know a lot of people struggle with the whole idea of any form of performance, be that a performance that's about a podcast or be that upon performance, getting up on stage, and the reason that they feel that they haven't got the resilience to do that is simply that they've not prepared. And so preparing yourself, which isn't always about notes but notes can help. It's knowing who you are in this situation. So we're writers as a writer, who are you as being Queen Bey in another life? And in fact, the book team is called Tell It to the bees. And it's about that whole thing of with Queen bee in different places. But we're not always queen bee, so we can find ourselves in a scenario where we're not queen bee. I have absolutely been a queen bee in my work life. I am not a queen bee in writing, so I need to understand this, this Zoe Richards, who's this person here and now, the better I know her, the better. Now in this position, the better able I'm able to prepare her. So I do things like have you come across tapping you ever heard of tapping emotional freedom technique? Yeah. It's it's I have yeah I've come across that. Yeah I've not. But tell me more because I think don't just do something like that. There's a lot of celebrities who use it. Basically those who get stage fright, they will find that the Michael Ball is a really good example, where he actually vanished off stage because he got stage fright, and there was an occasion, I think it was the night that played in the Royal Performance, Royal Variety Performance, and he was standing backstage and he was starting to sweat and he was getting panicked about it. And another performer who I unfortunately can't remember who it was said, actually, I use tapping. And so I tap before I go on stage. Now, at this point in my life, I was already using tapping, but I loved to hear that people who are famous use it. So I mean, there's people that you can learn it from. There's a guy I follow, he's called Brad Yates, he's on YouTube, and he does a video on pretty much anything and everything. So I've used what he does for sleep. I've used it for attitudes about money, I've used it for interviews. I have sat doing presentations to senior execs where I've got chief executive me, you know, online like this. When we moved everything on to teams in the NHS and I would have my hands below the desk and I'd be tapping, even though I feel nervous, I decline completely. Love, honor and accept myself. It's okay and I'll be doing this. It's okay to be nervous. The nerves are a positive thing. They're telling me that this is something I want to go well, I'm okay being nervous. I am in control of my nerves. I'm okay. And I just say whatever comes into my mind that helps me feel better. And then it's you. Calmer. You feel fine about it. So that's one of the tools that I use around resilience to help myself. You know, even though rejection stings like heck, it's okay to be rejected because that agent wasn't right for me. Yes. Yeah. Very good. So it's fantastic stuff of that kind of nature. But the other thing that I think is really important within the writing world, though, is to know the industry as best you can. I still don't know everything about the industry of masses. More to learn, but I'm making sure I learn about it and then I'll know if it's right for me. So I know self-publishing at the moment? Absolutely not. For me, I'm not saying it will never be, but it's not for me right now. Whereas for somebody else, they'll be sitting there going, don't, don't make me go down the trap publishing rate. It's just not right for me. And we need to know and understand that for us, rather than following other people's dreams. Because when we follow other people's dreams, we're feeling the discomfort of it. Because not only is it not our dream, we're not prepared for it either. Well, I've worked in this industry for about 30 something years and I still haven't figured it out. That's all. Fantastic advice. Fantastic question. Now let's get on to something. Something really controversial. You recently tweeted, am I weird in that I quite like writing a synopsis? Yes you are. Can we discuss what it is you like about writing synopsis and any top tips for writing them? Again, I think it might be my career that helps are the reports I would write. I always had to write an executive summary to the report, so that meant that I had to take something that was anything from a 3 to 6 page report. So we are talking short compared to a novel, but often my reports would start at 20 pages, and then I'd whittle it down to what's the real crucial information these exactly need to read. And then I've got to produce something like about a 102 hundred word, a summary synopsis of what the reports about, but one that is going to make them want to read the rest of the report. Because they receive so many reports, they're not going to want to read it. So I do have an advantage, don't I? Do you use, Scrivener? I do indeed, yes. Big fan. So, you know, on the way I've set mine up, you know, on the top right corner it has a little box that says synopsis when you're writing each chapter. Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah. So I just write a sentence or two in there about what's the purpose of this chapter. And then once you've got all of your chapter 1 or 2 sentences, I mean, the idea of it being there is for the corkboard, but actually forget the corkboard. It's a place for you to then gather. So I've just written a chapter today, and the chapter is to to raise the emotional stakes in the story. So I've written a couple of lines in into that little corner box that's headed synopsis and then when I come to write the synopsis, I just pull all of the sentences out. If I can't necessarily add anything to the synopsis through adding in what that chapter is about, then it doesn't need to go in the synopsis. So is it moving it forward? But also if it's not moving the story forward enough, do I need the chapter? So it helps me to do that kind of thing as well. Somebody just put, oh, that's genius coming on the screen. That's genius. Why have I not been doing that? Very true. I'm asking myself the very same question. It's so brilliantly simple. It feels like cheating. Almost. But it's also, it's one of those tools that I've used noticing, you know, when you when you maybe if you're carding, you read it and you go, okay, is this moving the same forward or whatever, blah, blah, blah. But then it's kind of it's already there. You're already grading the scene or gauging whether or not it's working hard enough. So that must help you in the edit as well. Yeah, massively. And I've got to say, I am somebody who hates the first draft, loves writing the edit. So give me an edit any time I love doing that. But again, I think that's possibly why I like writing a synopsis, because you've told yourself the story in the first draft. You've now fallen in love with the story in the edit, but falling in love with it at that stage rather than in the first draft gives you an element of objectivity. And I think when I couldn't write a synopsis was when I wasn't being objective. Brilliant thing. You also said those where you're talking about emotional stakes, and for me, synopsis has to be a roller coaster of emotions. I think the mistake a lot of first time synopsis writers is and then this happens, and then he goes to this place, and then they meet here, and then she says it and it needs to be. He is astonished to discover she is distraught when it's revealed in a tragic. But you know, I think you need to, you know, lean into that kind of hyperbole. Is it just to say, look, look over here, there's something really exciting going on. You're missing out. You need to know more. Essentially, when I sent my synopsis for garden of Her Heart to my agent when I was querying her, that was a three page synopsis, and I managed to get that down to being one page by the time we were swapping to commissioning editors, and that was literally just me through me saying, come on, Zoe, you can do better than this. You can write exact summaries. What's the shortest version possible? And I just kept on trimming it down, trimming it down until it was like, actually, so many of these words are unnecessary. It's interesting. In, Joe Moran's book, first you write a sentence, he talks about how we've created sentences that have become a word to us. So I'm not going to necessarily be able to think of one now, but incredibly important. What if it's important? It's already incredibly, yes, but we wrote the words together into being. It is single word. So we stop noticing that it is actually now two words. So where if we rolled words together to make those multiple, you know, multiple words into one word, yeah, we can now take that one word out of it and say, that's the one word I need in my synopsis. I remember when they were teaching at school, Emily, they took about wow words, what they and they get you to do. And I remember saying to Emily, those are all the words that an editor will take out of your manuscript when you write a novel. And those are all the story words. You know, keep it simple. When you sent that synopsis in the book was already written, so you were drawing on they were already written. Because sometimes in film and TV you have to write a synopsis for something that isn't written yet. I have just done that. How did you tackle that? So book three I came up with the idea when I was on my solo walking holiday in the Italian Apennine Mountains and, a brilliant place for the brain to go off on one. And when I was at the Manchester Lit Festival, I was there with my publisher and I said to her, oh, whilst I was walking, I came up with this idea, to which she went, oh well, I've got. So I said to my agent, when we send in book two, I'm thinking that if she thinks that she wants to have it, she actually needs to see the synopsis of book three then as well. And Claire said, absolutely, yes, let's get that in. So you need to get me a synopsis done by the end of the weekend. That was Friday. So she had and that's one where it was like absolutely loving doing this. I know exactly what the story is. I have just changed it a bit today, and that's purely because I realized that person X needs to actually be people Y, and the emotional stakes go up when it's people Y rather than person X, so it's just changed it marginally. But otherwise the story is the same. And the thing that again, a lot of people won't know about. And I was on a panel with someone at the same Comic-Con this weekend. I forget who it was who said this. They sent in synopses of that, a three book contract. Book one was written that do synopses for books two and three, and they sent them in and they bore so little relation to the finished product, but no one complained. I think there's this thing where you feel like, well, argh, am I committing to? Is this, is this like, you know, Moses coming down with the tablets? Is am I committed to this outline and this synopsis for the duration of the contract? It's like, no, you obviously you're going to come up with better ideas and and go off in different directions and tangents. I think if you can just release yourself from that, that worry, then it really frees you up to, because I'm about to do that with, a TV thing. You know, we've written a couple of episodes, we've got a vague synopsis for further seasons, but they want seasons two and three sort of plotted out, and there's a part of me going, oh, but there's also no one's going to remember this. And three, if the thing takes off in three years time, we're eventually filming it. And I was going to go, hang on, hang on. This doesn't bear any relation to what we bought. They just care what's in front of them in the now. And hopefully it will be better than what you initially pitched as well, because it all grows from that initial seed anyway. So yeah, just just don't don't stress it people. I think that'll be the the title of this episode. Speaking of stress, I want to move on to, the roller coaster story of an event you had Preston at the listener. Zoe's burying a head in her hands here. I thought this was fantastic. And I know a lot of authors will have been in this situation. Where? Well, I'll let you tell the story that ticket sales weren't going in the direction that one might hope. No. And and the delight of not being told by the bookshop it was, you know, a large national chain, folks, I won't mention which bookshops I think I already have, but I can kind of alley. Oh, yes. And there are, there are many of them in the UK and they both begin with this particular bookshop. Didn't tell me until, well, when the email came in Thursday, I didn't see it until the Friday because I was busy doing something else. So I saw this email on the Friday saying only two tickets have sold. The event was on the Tuesday. Now I'm one of those people. If you tell me something 2 or 3 weeks ahead, I'll just work on it. And, you know, that kind of person. I will fight to get something happening, but tell me with a few days to go. So I emailed back and I said, this is a real shame. Any chance you can give me until Sunday lunch time and I will get those ticket sales up? And, the first answer back was, we can give you till this evening. And I said, well, I don't think that's reasonable to be honest. I think I need to be given until Sunday, but I can guarantee you by the end of Sunday, you know, whether or not the event's going ahead. And that gives you time to tell other people. So I went on to social media and I did what my daughter tells me to do, which is be vulnerable. She always says to me, mom, be vulnerable. Stop being somebody who's a clever clogs in those things. Thanks, Ellie. And so I was vulnerable and said, well, you know, at least I know I'm not going to turn up to nobody being there, because I've been told ahead of time that I haven't got sales, but I've got until Sunday to say if we can increase the sales. This is where you've got to say the book community and the writing community is phenomenal. I had people retweeting. I had people sharing, on stories on Instagram. I had people saying, right, I will buy some tickets for you. One woman in Australia who I know but five tickets, knowing she would never get that book, five tickets, a few people that I don't know at all, and some a couple that I do know but one, two and three tickets. So there were tickets that were purchased to be gifted. But I was told by I nearly said what the W was. Then I was told by them that it had to be bums on seats and not just ticket sales. So that meant I had to work on getting the ticket sales right and people shared, and people offered to do what they could to help get the word out there. And I just kept on posting about it, kept on posting about it, and we got to the point where there were 31 people there. However, I've got to say, reasonable adjustments were not applied at worked on special educational needs and disabilities. So this does bug me a bit that unfortunately the particular shop, it's upstairs, they have no left. No, it was closed. They could have brought the chairs downstairs. But in the moment my publisher arrived, I turned to say hello there. When I turned back again, they two people, one of them with a wheelchair, unfortunately had left. But I would have liked it if the bookshop had done reasonable adjustments. So any booksellers listening, please think about what reasonable adjustments you can do, because it's not fair. And yes, okay, the small print did say it was upstairs and there's no left, but it shouldn't come down to that. It should come to reasonable adjustments. So that's my one bugbear about it. So 29 people there in the audience, and it included people who have no idea who I was at all, as well as a couple of friends who traveled quite a long way to be there for me. So yeah, I'm incredibly supportive. And, you know, it's taught me that you're never on your own, really never on your own, even if it had just been people because of a load, a message saying, this has happened to me. I'm talking some big name authors who messaged me to say, this has happened to me. So to know that you're not on your own, on anybody out there who's going through this sort of experience. I saw on Twitter today, somebody who turned up to their library for a, reading and I think it have been a signing as well or something, and nobody came at all. I mean, it's heartening to know that actually happens to a lot of people. It's not the fault of the author, Sam, to me. So you know what it's like to what I think the other thing that's important to learn is, and I'm perhaps spamming a little bit at the moment because I'm honest with you. So I've been reposting about this. I've got some events coming up. I've been doing a lot of posting about. Those people will unfollow if they're not interested, but other people who are interested will follow. They will share and they will come along. So, you know, we need to not be scared to market. I could not agree more, I totally agree. Yeah, there's that seems to be kind of a shame amongst certain kinds of oh, we mustn't pick ourselves up. And it's like, well if you're publishers not doing it and the venue isn't doing it, who else is going to do it? And you know, I learned that lesson quite early. I did a, I did a thing at the Bradford Literary Festival, which, to be fair, Bradford Literary Festival is when it comes to politics, nonfiction, that kind of thing. It's fantastic when it comes to Thai novelizations about robots, perhaps less good. And, I remember I went to the beautiful Waterstones in Bradford, which is the most gorgeous bookshop you've ever seen in an old Wolfville or something, isn't? It's just beautiful marble columns. No one turned up, so the manager wheeled out his son, this poor kid who was just sitting out the back minding his own business, got wheeled out in front of me and I had to sign a book for him. I was a bookseller in the 90s, and these events peaked. And it was, you could just have an author turn up and you would for some reason, get 20 to 30 people just turning up. And then they all stopped coming. And it sort of coincided a bit with social media, I think, as well. You know, they, they, they found other things to do. So, it's really tough to get anyone to turn up to a book event. I always promised cake, which helps. So, yeah, maybe consider cake and booze. I talked to Collins along, actually. Calling the caterpillar the talisman of great events is the column caterpillar. Yes. Wonderful. Well, thank you so much for sharing that, Zoe. I really appreciate that. Now we're going to get on to our regular questions, which you ask all of our authors and we'll, we'll, we'll go through these. What small thing has made a big difference to your creative process? Just sitting down and writing? The only thing that ever stops me because I find I get more creative the more I write. Yeah, yeah, it's a bizarre thing, isn't it? So if I sit there and don't write, the writing doesn't get done. And the creativity doesn't happen either. You can't just sit down, not do anything, get up and walk away. It's just embarrassing for all concerned, even if you're completely on your own. So yeah, turn up sharp, tap some keys, see what comes out. I couldn't think of anything to start today, and I actually wrote Need Something about Hunter and his gang days, and perhaps something about when his dad used to beat him up. And that's all I've written into one of the chapters, but it immediately made me go, oh, in that chapter there, I need to do. And I just went off Stan and couldn't stop writing. What's the thing that makes you think you're ready to start writing on a project? The thing that makes me say, just go for it. I've got to know what the ending's going to be right? Once I know where this is going. And I think, again, that goes back to reports that I used to write. So what do I want out of this report? I want the execs to give me 3 million pounds for autism services. I have to say, spoiler alert I never got 3 million pounds for autism services for children. It never, never happened. Great report. So we want the best we've ever seen. Now we haven't got any money for you. Yeah, that didn't work. However, the process worked of knowing that's my ultimate aim, that I need them to know that that's what we need, what's going to get me there. And so it's the same thing with I'm ready to write. Once I know where I'm going, I might change the ending. But if I've got a sense of where I'm going, then I can get started writing because I'm working towards something. It's like when you drive, isn't it? But when I went to Nottingham, I can tell you that it's not in Northampton. And the next turn off is Milton Keynes. So it's a long drive from near Liverpool to go. So I didn't use a map that day because I thought I knew where I was going. Big lesson learned there, but it's very much something that the, the, the arc of any character, though, isn't it, that your character will think they know what they need, but the story delivers what what they actually actually need. You know, they have wants and needs, and that's very much the arc of a of any good story, I think, is what you don't you don't always deliver what the character actually desires. And actually that's another part of what I'm aiming for. So I feel like I need to know what happened to the character at either 5 to 7 years old or 15 to 17 year old dry. So 5 to 7 is when we we sort of cements our reaction to trauma. It doesn't necessarily need to be what we as adults would define as a trauma, but it was something that traumatized the child. So it could be so an incident that genuinely did happen to me. It could be sitting in the hall with the girl next to you, sitting on your kingdom summer dress and peeing her pants. But because she's sitting on your dress, she wears your dress as well. So that traumatized me. At five and a half, six years old. So doesn't need to be a massive trauma in your life, but that cements your reaction to trauma. I was stubborn and I wouldn't change out of my dress. Incidentally, because I'd been brought up to know that you don't touch other people's clothes. You don't. When you go to a jumble sale, you don't touch other people's clothes because you don't know where they've been. My mum thought she was posh. We weren't. We were working class. But that was my mother's high sense bouquet moment. I love it. So the trauma of the way we react to trauma at 5 to 7 helps to inform who will become, but also 15 to 17. That's where we are starting to form, absolutes for early adulthood. And so who we are and what happens to us at 15 to 17 years old will help to inform who we become later in adulthood as well. So if I know one or other or both of those for a character doesn't have to be all characters at this stage. But if I've got my main character and I know what's happening, or I've got the antagonist and I know what's happening in relation to 5 to 7, 15 to 17 may not even feature in backstory, but I know in my head and it helps me to understand the character better. Now, you do know that everyone who's listening to this now is thinking, what happened to me when I was five, six, seven years old? Well, well, Emily's growing up. And similarly when you're a teen as well. But you're right, it might not end up in backstory, but it is. I mean, I'm just thinking there's there's a moment in the end of magic where I flashback to when Sandra bring my protagonist was was a child and it's just thought, yes, of course. Yeah. So that's genius. I love that second genius moment in the show. This is a yes. That's actually mindset coaching. So I've used a lot of coaching techniques to help me understand my characters. I've got into the headspace coaching my characters effectively. How do you know when you're done? Because it gets to where it's meant to get to. So I have my first drafts. My first drafts are I write short, so I'm aiming for roughly 70,000 words for first draft to have a final piece. So Garden of Her heart, I think is just shy of 90,000 words, but that was 70,000 at the end of the first draft. Now I miss some bits out and I understand better about story structure now. So book two, all my bits were landing. Book two, by the way, was book two, version two point out because I had to set aside 1.0. So it's almost it's book three, really. With that, I was hitting the beats in all the right places, and when I came to do the edits, I was able to tick. Yeah, I've got the beats there on pretty much all of them, you know, within 1 or 2000 words. But then I would understand, well, what's missing in the edit. But yeah, I knew when it was done, when everything was hitting the beats at the right point, and when I'd landed at the place I needed to get to the book to one point so I couldn't get to where I was trying to get to because I, I created through the story too much admin. So now needed lots of other people to explain stuff at the very ending, and they hadn't had points of view, so it was now too much telling and not enough showing. How do you remember that idea that you have at three in the morning, if indeed you do have ideas at three in the morning? Well, here's another technique from what I do with my coaching. So I'm one of the things I'm trained in is neuro linguistic programing and NLP. And one of the things within NLP is anchoring. So like this morning I woke up, I

it was actually 5: 44:34

00 in the morning and I thought, I've put branches in there. You don't use branches. But when it comes to doing a wreath it needs to be a twig. So I squeeze my thumbnail into my little finger and then I suddenly thought, why is it got all the stuff in his arms? And why didn't you use one of the trunks? Oh, right. Okay. So then the next thing is the trunk. And so when I then sit down at my laptop, I'm then going, okay, there was something on this finger. What was that one that was. And I'm pressing it and go, oh yeah, that's the Twix. And then press on the next one. That's the trunks. When I'm walking in the mountains, I do exactly the same thing as sometimes I've got eight different things that I need to remember when I get back to the car, and I then go into my notes and I go through each finger, and I remember each thing that's that's that's witchcraft. Sally, I am a witch. I am a witch. When I was 15, my Nana asked me, my Nana used to live on Pendle Hill. She was Welsh, but she left the Pendle Hill. Wow. And when I was 15, my man said to me. You do know you're a witch, don't you? And she wasn't joking. That's a great answer. I love that though. I absolutely love that. Is that no. Can I have another genius point? But that's a hat trick. There we go. Free one. So there we go. What's the biggest mistake you've ever made in your writing career? Doubting myself so many years ago and I'm talking. I think, around about 22 years ago, Writing Magazine had an offer from an agent that you could send in up to 3000 words. So I sent after her 3000 words, and she came back. And now I reflect backwards and it's like, oh, she gave me such incredibly good advice, but I didn't get the well done. Zoe, you are a Gold Star student. So because because I was brought up with the coercive control of you are not good enough unless you are the star student. When I came home second in the year, I'm sure you can guess where this is going. Second, in the year, out of 145 kids and I said I came home, I came second in geography, and my dad's answer was, what are you going to do next year to be first? Oh, and there wasn't a smile in that response. So I was always expected to be the best in class. So this agent didn't make me best in class. So I believed I wasn't a writer and I didn't write for a few years. So I would say anybody who gets rejection, remember, first off, if they give you a nuggets, they stole the nuggets. You might not be able to accept what they've told you today, but at some point you'll be ready to accept what they've told you. And that, she told me, was write what you know. I can tell that you're writing something now that you don't know anything about it. So either write something you already know about or go and research what you're trying to write about. And I took it as being I'm no good at writing. She wasn't telling me. I was no good at writing. She was telling me it was obvious I didn't know what I was writing about. And there are two distinctly different things. So anyone listening who's thinking, oh, I'm useless because I've had a rejection, what are they telling you? And then secondly, it's only their opinion. And if you are 100% sure you're right and you've written good stuff, keep going. But I think we've always got room to improve. Now, listeners, if you're thinking this is incredibly good advice where I can get more of this, you have a podcast, don't you? So let's give that a quick plug. Show it. Tell us about write, write, dammit. Well, yeah, it's called write, dammit because I needed to remind myself to write. Dammit. And I actually did the podcast because the government created something called Integrated Care Boards, and the one I worked for was told it was for establishment and needs to reduce its numbers. So a load of us were made redundant. Nobody's ever made redundant in the NHS, so it was a bit of a shock to us all. And I was doing a job I loved with colleagues I adored. And so I thought, well, I can't sit around and do nothing whilst I'm looking for a job and bear in mind my kind of job. I was the only one in the country, so not the kind of job that you can get lots of work doing. So it was very, very difficult for me to find an identical job. I was having to reinvent myself. So what I did instead was start a podcast, and I learned what I could and discovered that if I could do seven, know if I could do eight podcast episodes? I was doing better than most because the majority of people stop at seven episodes or three months of running a podcast. So I said, right, I'm doing it for four months, and I'm going to do eight episodes. So we're now on episode 127 and it's 18 months old. Yeah, that's the this is episode three and I've still got the world to live, so I think we're doing alright. Yeah, you've done one before though. I think you'll keep this one going for sure. What's bringing you joy at the moment? It can be books, movies, TV shows, music, games. What's making you happy when you're not writing? Well, something that's made me very unhappy is that I don't know how long it is until I've got to wait for the next series of Slow Horses. I know. Well, at least I've got a new series let me stream as I kind of see stuff left, right and center. But yes, there is another season coming that was confirmed straight away. Yeah, we love Slow Horses on this show. Yeah, yeah. I'm enjoyed listening to the podcast History Hits with Dan Snow, which is a brilliant, but particularly for people who are historical fiction writers. It's a brilliant podcast, so that's good. And I have just started to read The Examiner by Janice Hallett, which is brilliant. I love her writing and the fact that she has reinvented the epistolary. So, you know, she's not writing boring old fashioned letters anymore. She's using what modern day people use. You know, what's up? Messages, voice messages. Mislan has got exam stuff in it as well. It's it's very interesting style of writing. But the other thing, and probably the thing that's bringing me most joyful is walking in the mountains. It's my it's my happy place. And I've just walked from one village to another in the Apennine Mountains and had an amazing time, particularly the time. So I did one of my walks where it was literally inside a thunderstorm, thunder and lightning happening all around me. It was so exhilarating. It was incredible. More evidence, if we needed it, that Zoe is a witch. I think this is some sort of weather goddess, I think. Yeah, literally inside it. I have to peel my clothes off afterwards because I was soaked. The skin. Oh, my waterproofs failed to be waterproof anymore. And if people don't know this, if you get your waterproof boots too wet, they smell a cat pee. So you leave them at the reception and ask them to pin them because you can't bring them home in your suitcase. Yes, thankfully, that was the last day of walking. Brilliant. Thank you sir, I'm just gonna quickly whizz through the things that are bringing me joy this month. And, the first one is, I was lucky enough to go to a preview of the film, Time Stalker, which is a film by Alice Lowe who, people might recognize from Horrible Histories. Garth Moringa, the brilliant sightseers movie, which she co-developed with Ben Wheatley, and her own directorial debut, revenge, which I also highly recommend. But Time Stalker is this wonderfully twisted rom com where Alice's protagonist, Agnes, keeps falling for the wrong man, dies in horrible ways, and is reincarnated again and again. It's brilliantly funny and inventive, and, as is typical for any British independent film, has been shown in approximately seven screens across the country. But the good news is you can preorder it to watch at home. From the 11th of November. I've just done it with Apple. It's like 999 and cheaper than a cinema ticket. So. So enjoy that. I really, really enjoyed that film. And this is a major talent. I just got back from holiday where I read quite a few books. But after the storm, by GHD. Right. It's a proper, twisty turny thriller that keeps you hooked, right? I mean, I'm talking about last page as a wallop right at the end of that. And it's it's the premise is terrific. It's every parent's nightmare, which is you're looking after someone else's child and that child dies, and it's, it's a shocker. Absolute shocker. It's. And you are flipping the pages as you read that one. And the thing is, he's an ex-cop. So all the procedural stuff is really good. It's really, really solid. My 5 a.m. read because I tend to wake up, mind buzzing, and I tend to. I like to read on my phone. David Niven's, the moon's a balloon, which totally lives up to its reputation as one of the best celebrity memoirs ever written. Now, I know a lot of the stories have even been enhanced or adapted a little from reality, but it's so, it's funny and it's heartbreaking, and it's. And I'm gonna have to move on that bring on the Empty Horses as the second one. So I'm definitely be checking that out. And terms of music. I loving the new album from Boa. Whiplash. Now, speaking of resilience, this is a band that start has been going since 1993. They reached the heights of playing Glastonbury. They've endured all the ups and downs of rock band, but then they started their own indie label and taking control of their career and their new album, whiplash, is a bit of a comeback. It's just full of insanely catchy tunes. Now, full disclosure the drummer in the band got on the right there in the picture. Lee Sullivan. I went to school with him. I've known him since I was about ten years old. I perform with him and, he's banged up at the Edinburgh Festival in 1990 as well. I'm just over the moon to see him about doing so well. So those are my reps for the, for the month. You'll find links in the show notes to all of these recommendations as well, if you want to check any of them out. Zoe, thank you so much for being such a wonderful guest. This is this has been a shock. You know, we pull out little clips that we're going to put on social media and, this might be the one where we have every single, you know, utterance that you've spoken going out. There was a little clip. It's been wonderful what's coming next from you that you can that you can discuss? Well, it's with my publisher at the moment, I don't know exactly where we're at, but Tell It To the Bees has been written, and it's based on the idea that, it's in the head about when the Queen died that they beekeeper. So she was a beekeeper. When a beekeeper dies, the bees have to be told. But there is a lesser known idea as well, that when Irish women were told gossip to make sure that they didn't tell others in the village, they'd go and tell it to the bees. And it's that version that I've used in the book. So instead of using journal entries, I've got Georgie going and telling it to the bees. So she goes and has little conversations with the bees. So that is written. I'm waiting to hear back from the publishers, and I am writing book three, which there's a bit of a spoiler in the title of this, so I'm sorry that I'm gonna have to spoil it for lovers of Garden of Her Heart. It's called a Christmas wedding at Pinewoods Retreat. So it happens at Christmas. It's our wedding, folks, and it's at Pine Woods Retreat that, tell it to the bees premise as well is a terrific one, and again, feels quite witchy to me, so it feels quite witchy. You'll find that there's just that little hint of neuro linguistic programing coaching witchy nurse that goes through all of my novels. I'm loving it. Witchy ness without being obviously witchy. That's the thing. A huge thanks, to Zoe for coming on the show. It's been absolutely brilliant. Thank you so much. Right. Let's talk about the green room. Twice a month, I run live sessions on zoom where you can ask me questions about the craft of writing your working process, or just the business of publishing the sessions. A fun, informal, and chatty. I thought they drummed for half an hour. They're all running for about an hour so far. You could send me questions in advance. They're recorded live and saved on coffee for exclusive access to Green Room supporters. There's no long term commitment either, with anything of this, you know, you can support just for a month or for longer if you want to just pop in and pop out whatever works for you. My goal is to be able to give supporters advice that's going to make a real difference to their writing and career, because the way I see it, having worked in this industry as a salesperson, bookseller and author for over 30 years, I've made every mistake so you don't have to. I also, just a quick note I'm going to be in conversation with someone called Ben, runner, which is going to be Oxford Library, 26th November. Unsurprisingly, tickets are selling fast. Let me just say he won't be yelling at me. He's a kitten, Ben. He's absolutely lovely. He's he's a brilliant, brilliant, brilliant author. He's fantastic in public, gives great writing advice as well. So, you get to check that out and come along. Now, speaking of weddings as well. Sorry. We've got I've said my next book is a bit of a spoiler because, the cover revealed this week for The Corn Bride, which is the fifth, which is of Woodville Book, and Harry Gold Hawk has delivered an absolute beauty. This one's darker, more mysterious, says a touch of folk horror there. Does that mean that terrible things are going to happen? Well, it is the last book in the contract. So, let's save out, you'll find links to all of those in the show, notes and comments and stuff. So, do check those out. So. Yes. Oh. And I do have books. I got books you can buy them for good bookstores if you want to sign a dedicated copy of anything, come straight to my store, which is@woodville.com as well. Robot Overlords is available to rent or buy as is. Welcome, which is also on Sky cinema. And a big thank you today. Thanks to Emily for production assistance. Thank you Emily and to Kai Newton for the edit and Dominic Curry for the jingle. We hear the jingle one more time. And. Next month, special guest is going to be the one. The only a mike shekel is coming on Tuesday 19th November at 8 p.m.. Mike is the author of The Last War fantasy trilogy, and he writes crime thrillers as Michael Dylan. Originally from London. Mike's lived all over the world Hong Kong, Singapore, Beijing, New York, Dubai, but now settle down in Vancouver. In that time, he sold washing machines, cooked for royalty, designed a few logos, made lots of ads. But he's a fantastic, fantastic, author and a lovely guy as well. I really hope you can join us. Live for that. And if you've enjoyed the podcast, things like ratings, reviews, likes, shares, stopping random people in the street, they all help massively. With, with, the show. So, thank you so much. Let's bring Zoe back on. Zoe. Thank you so much for coming today. It's been absolutely brilliant, having you, on the show. So, thank you for having me. Laura says this is the creative differences. I've enjoyed the most. I'll be checking out your own podcast. That's amazing. And, Oh, thank you. Jim. Right. Says thank you, Joe. Lots of take away from this. I've not heard of tapping before for looking into that. So we're going to be tapping will remain neural neuro linguistic programing as well. We're all going to be better people because of you and what you've told us today. So you've made the world a better place. Oh, fantastic. So, folks, until next time. Happy writing, reading and being different. Who wants to hear the jingle one last time? Just can't get enough of this. There we go. One, two, three. Hey!