Hello Friend — Will Dean
Bethany Rutter: Hello friends and welcome to Hello Friend.
My name is Bethany Rutter and today’s friend is Will
Dean. This is episode 10, the final episode of the
first season of Hello Friend, and I thought Will would
be the perfect last guest before I take a long break.
He’s an author and I love talking to authors, but
I particularly wanted to talk to Will for three reasons:
one, he wrote the kind of book I love to read, a crime
novel; two, a year ago neither of us had an agent or
a book deal and now we both do; three, he lives in
a forest in the middle of nowhere in Sweden, but more on
that later.
First of all how do we know each other?
Will Dean: Well, we met on Twitter.com.
BR: Yeah, we did.
WD: I think about three years ago. It was when I was
doing parental leave for my little boy and I was hiking
through the woods. I remember the exact day that
I first interacted with you.
BR: Oh my God, that’s so cool! Yeah, tell me more.
WD: I had him on some kind of rucksack on me, and in
Sweden parental leave is normally split 50/50, so
I think my wife had just done eight months and I was
just starting my eight months. So I had him on my back,
it was November, and you tweeted a photo with an amazing
hat with a veil.
BR: [Laughs] That really does sound like something
I would do.
WD: You did! And I tweeted, “Really nice hat, I like
your hat”, and you were like, “Thank you very much!” and
that was the beginning of everything. And, honestly,
Twitter before, I loved Twitter before but from that
moment onwards Twitter kind of came alive for me.
BR: Because I have so many cool lady friends?
WD: Yeah, exactly. It was like Twitter was great
black-and-white until then and then suddenly it became
technicolour.
BR: Like the Wizard of Oz but through the internet?
WD: [Laughs] Exactly.
BR: Will you tell me about your book, please?
WD: Okay. My book is called Dark Pines and it’s kind of
a cross between Twin Peaks and Broadchurch.
BR: Cool.
WD: So it’s like a quirky crime story set in an isolated
small claustrophobic town in the centre of Sweden during
two weeks in autumn, and at the beginning it’s the start
of the elk hunting season and a body is found deep in
the woods, basically.
BR: Cool!
WD: And my heroine, Tuva Moodyson, is a deaf journalist
working on a small newspaper in this small town and
she’s very ambitious, very focused and very confused all
at the same time and she kind of goes out to try and
investigate this crime.
BR: Cool, and when did you write it? Okay, I thought it
would be more interesting to talk to you as an author
who is in the middle of the long road to publication,
that process —
WD: Yes.
BR: — than talking to someone who is really distant
from the first time they ever had to go through it and
can’t really remember all of the process, the
conflicting emotions, all of that kind of stuff. So
talk me through the timeline of you thinking about
writing it, writing it, doing all that stuff, and then
to the present day.
WD: Okay. So I wrote the first draft, like, six months
after our first Twitter interaction that I just talked
about.
BR: Okay.
WD: So May 2015, I think it is.
BR: Yeah.
WD: And I was putting it off, I had this book in my
head, it was kind of playing on the inside of my eyelids
every night, the whole thing, so I really wanted to
write it but I was just finishing my parental leave and
then my parental leave got extended because Alfie, my
little boy, wasn’t quite ready for nursery, so then
I thought: okay, I’m just going to have to write it in
his naps. So I wrote it in — this sounds kind of weird
but I wrote it in four weeks in his naps. So I wrote
one chapter in the morning in his two-and-a-half-hour
nap and one chapter in the afternoon in his
two-and-a-half-hour nap.
BR: It’s a good job Alfie loves naps!
WD: I should dedicate the book to him, honestly, and his
sleeping.
BR: And his sleeping skills.
WD: Yeah, because he doesn’t sleep like that anymore, so
I was very lucky back then. So, yeah, the book came out
of his naps, and actually I’ve written two books since
then, first drafts, and I copy the same routine even
though he’s no longer napping at home. So I still do
a morning chapter in his nap time and an afternoon
chapter in his nap time.
BR: That’s a very nice way to structure your writing.
WD: Yeah, it works, and that’s way the first draft came
about. And then because I write it so fast it’s a rough
monster, so I have to wrestle with it and fight with it
and polish it. So I did that the summer of that year
and then I started submitting to agents, I think it
was August, July/August, something like that. So it’s
quite a fast process.
BR: Of 2015?
WD: I think so, yeah.
BR: And then what happened?
WD: Then I sent it off to … maybe it was 2016.
BR: Yeah, I was gonna say, because this was all last
year, right?
WD: All my years are wrong.
BR: Yeah.
WD: It’s 2016, and I sent it off to 20 agents, I think
it was, which is more than people recommend but I just
wanted to get it out there at that point.
BR: Why do people recommend fewer and how will the
agents know that you’ve sent it to fewer or more other
people?
WD: They don’t really know, but I think it’s just easier
to manage the process if you send it to five and then
you wait and then you send it to another five.
BR: Oh yeah, I guess, yeah.
WD: That’s often what they say, but I just was like: I’m
going to send it to 20 and I got 10 who requested the
full manuscript, which I was really happy about, and
then I had three offer representation and two more who
kind of were going to but then they ran out of time. So
that was how that came about.
Then I had this extremely weird, intense day where
I was feeding Alfie, my wife was away for a week, and
I was e-mailing all the agents saying, “I want to come
and meet you”, and they were saying, “Come, chat with
us, have a drink”, and a woman turned up at my door —
and I should say at this point that I live in the middle
of a huge forest in Sweden with no neighbours whatsoever
and I never get anybody turning up at the front door
just knock-knock-knock. So I was like, “What the hell
is this?” I was feeding him, I was e-mailing, I was
booking flights. I opened the door and a woman was
there and she was dehydrated. She was in a really bad
way. She had two huge bags of mushrooms, wild
mushrooms. This is a plot twist. What is this?
BR: [Laughs] I was going to say, this sounds like a lie!
WD: I know! And I said, “Are you okay, can I give you
a glass of water?” and she said, “I’m lost, I can’t get
back to my truck”, and I said, “I can give you
directions so you can get back”, and she was like, “No,
I’m not going back out there”.
BR: “I will never go into the forest!”
WD: “Can you please take me back?” So I was like, okay,
so I said to all these agents, “Hold on an hour”, put my
son in my truck and I drove and it took two hours to get
to her truck and back. But she was so grateful, and
she’s a professional mushroom consultant, which is
a pretty cool job!
BR: [Laughs]
WD: So she gave me her card and she was like, “I talk to
restaurants and I can identify mushrooms and I do
lectures, so if in future you need a mushroom fact for
a book, just e-mail me”.
BR: So the third book is called Dark Mushrooms.
WD: [Laughs] It’s a mushroom thriller, yeah.
BR: So that was the day that you had to … the mushroom
lady day was …
WD: Yes mushroom lady day was like three days before
I actually flew in, met with these agents, which was
extremely stressful and so difficult because they were
all great and it was really difficult to pick between
them and ask the right questions.
BR: Yeah.
WD: Because I knew this might be a relationship I have
for 30 or 40 years so I want to make the right choice.
So it was really stressful. But I actually went with
the first agent who offered me representation and she’s
fantastic and super passionate and lovely and kind and
wonderful, so …
BR: It’s one of those things where before you’ve done it
you don’t know what’s the right questions are, you don’t
know what’s important until you’re quite far into the
process.
WD: So true, exactly.
BR: Yeah. And if you were doing it now you might know
stuff to ask.
WD: Maybe.
BR: But at the time you’re like, “Mm-mm?”
WD: I had to ask other authors, like, “What should
I ask”, and that was really helpful.
BR: Yeah, do you know what, I really think that
a supportive community goes a long way.
WD: It really does.
BR: Having people to ask about stuff.
WD: I was so grateful, because most of them said, “Go
with your gut instinct.”
BR: Who do you like the most, because that’s who you’re
going to be hanging out with at different things.
That’s quite important.
WD: Exactly. Yeah, who do you want to sit next to on
a plane for eight hours.
BR: And that’s your lady.
WD: That’s my lady, yes.
BR: Is she called Kate …
WD: She’s called Kate Burke. She’s great!
BR: At Diane Banks?
WD: Yeah.
BR: Cool. And you would recommend being represented by
them to anyone listening?
WD: I would, yeah.
BR: Good!
WD: She’s superb.
BR: So she got your manuscript and she was like, “Yes,
this is some good shit!” Then what happened?
WD: She did, and then she wanted to get it ready for
Frankfurt Book Fair to pitch it there, and she was
an editor for ten years at three different big
publishing houses, so the editorial work she did was
amazing. I’d never been through a process like that and
it kind of tore my heart out when I read her comments
because it looked like so much work and so much
deconstruction and then rebuilding. But actually it
wasn’t and all her comments were great.
So it only took me a week and a half. I just raced
through it all and sent it back to her and we had one
more back-and-forth and then she put it out on
submission, I think, a week or ten days before Frankfurt
and then it sold at Frankfurt.
BR: When’s Frankfurt?
WD: It’s in October, I think, mid-October.
BR: So it was late August that you had decided to go
with her?
WD: Exactly, yes.
BR: I remember, I was on holiday in Budapest and
I remember being very happy for you.
WD: Thank you!
BR: So that was a pretty quick turnaround, and then …
WD: That was pretty quick, yeah.
BR: And then in October it was like, cool, it’s gone to
Frankfurt and now it’s going to be published?
WD: Yes, which is wild. I thought it might take me five
books or something. This is my second book. I have
another book that is locked in a drawer that will never
see the light of day.
BR: But your wife thinks it’s good, so … [Laughs]
WD: But she’s my wife! She’s very nice, but it’s not
good. It’s better than it used to be but it will never
be seen, I don’t think, so …
BR: Maybe it will be seen.
WD: Maybe. Maybe I’ll work on it as a script one day.
BR: Yes, it can be your weird little extra thing.
WD: But, honestly, I can’t even look at it right now.
It’s too ugly.
BR: It’s just too embarrassing?
WD: Yeah, it’s just too bad, so I’m glad it’s locked
away.
BR: And I’m glad that you’re not so arrogant to think
that it’s good … I don’t know, I think it’s sometimes
good when people are like: I did this thing and I know
it’s good but I’ve done this thing which I know is not
so good; it’s not like everything I do is perfect and
I’m a genius.
WD: Yeah, and that’s why I think when I wrote the first
draft of my second book, which is my book, I was so
relieved that it kind of came out naturally and I could
see that it was better, and I think of my first book
that’s locked away as kind of my creative writing course
for free because I worked on it so much. I kind of
stripped it back from 95,000 words down to 30, back up
again, back down again, back up again, like a lot of
hours of work, and it was never going to be a good book,
but I learned a lot from that process, like what to
avoid in the second book.
BR: It was like shit you had to do in order to become
a better writer.
WD: Honestly Bethany it was a nightmare book because
it’s got, like, seven points of view, it’s written over
a period of two years in seven different countries.
I mean you can hear, it’s a mess! [Laughter]
Whereas when I sat down for my second one, which is
my first one, I kind of realised, okay, this is going to
be one person's point of view during two weeks in one
town.
BR: Keep it small, yeah.
WD: Exactly, simple as can be. So no tangling. Let the
writing speak for itself.
BR: Yeah, and I feel like that's maybe something that
has been slightly lost in a lot of, like, thriller-ish
writing. There's almost like a formula where it has to
have multiple time lines and different perspectives and
stuff like that. So I really find it a relief when
I read something that's quite contained. So I'm looking
forward to reading it.
WD: I know what you mean. Some of them get tangled and,
yeah, as a writer I like the simplicity of it. It was
quite liberating, so I could just focus on the story and
the people.
BR: Yeah, like the real shit, rather than having to
start again with each new perspective. I don't know.
WD: Exactly, and I was lucky, I didn't have to have
a huge post-it note wall chart thing. It was quite
simple.
BR: And would you say it's a thriller? I don't know,
I'm always quite confused about genres.
WD: Me too! [Laughter] I really am, because when
I sent it to Kate, I didn't know what it was. I was
like, "What is this?" and I asked that to all of those
agents, "What is this?", and they all came up with,
like, "It's kind of crime", but it's difficult to know.
So literary crime is kind of what people are calling it.
It's kind of crime, it's crime-thriller/crime.
BR: What is it closest to in terms of things that you
know I have read?
WD: Okay ... I think it's a little bit ...
BR: Don't worry, I won't think that, like, you are
saying that your book is as good as whatever you ...
[Laughs].
WD: Thank you! It's a little bit Gillian Flynn's Sharp
Objects meets Stephen King's Needful Things, which
I don't think you've read.
BR: I haven't read.
WD: But that's the small town element.
BR: Okay, cool. I understand what it is now. Not that
I really need to know because I am going to read it this
week.
WD: [Whispers] Thank you. Thank you, thank you.
BR: Are there things that you wish you had known about,
like, the world of publishing or what was going to
happen to you before you embarked upon it?
WD: That's a really good question. I don't know.
I think the thing I've seen is that it's really
important to be a good person, just like in life itself,
to be kind and generous and understanding and patient
with other people. Patience, actually, maybe is
a thing.
BR: Yeah! [Laughs]
WD: Because, as you know -- congratulations on your
announcement by the way, it's amazing -- things take
a long time. So I guess that I've learnt, which
I didn't quite realise.
BR: Yeah.
WD: And also how collaborative the whole process is,
like how many people are involved. I guess I didn't
realise how important my cover designer would be,
because he's done a really good job, I think, and how
important every little piece of the puzzle is. So it's
really a team project.
BR: Obviously I will edit this out if you don't want to
talk about it, but do you want to talk about the fact
that your title completely changed and things like that?
WD: I'm happy to talk about that ... I think.
BR: Okay, cool, because I think that's really
interesting.
WD: Yeah, so it changed three times, actually.
BR: And obviously the title changing influenced the
cover design, which has now become something important
and nice for you.
WD: Yes, that's true. So my title I came up with is the
worst title ever conceived.
BR: Tell me!
WD: It's so bad I'm almost embarrassed to say it it's so
bad!
BR: I don't want to embarrass you on air, you don't have
to say it.
WD: No, I'm going to say it; I think it's important to
get it out there. So my title was Man Hunt.
BR: What's wrong with that? It's kind of like the
Silence of the Lambs/Thomas Harris thing, right?
WD: I know, well it's kind of what the book is, but when
I talked to agents they were like, "Well, this is like
some 1987 thriller in an airport with a gun on the cover
with blood dripping down".
BR: Is it like a Dean Koontz novel?
WD: Yeah ... It's just the wrong title.
BR: Okay. I don't think that's so bad! Don't beat
yourself up about that!
WD: Okay, I'm glad you say that.
BR: It's not the best title but it's not like the worst
one.
WD: Okay, but the second one that I came up with was
Sweet Rot.
BR: Yes, which I really like.
WD: Thank you.
BR: And I know that my good friend and Hello Friend
guest, Alice Slater of @smokintofu also thinks that's a
good title.
WD: Alice is amazing, and the fact that she loves it and
you love it means that it's kind of difficult to give
up. But my publishers were great and said, "You can
keep it but maybe it's a little bit too much for a debut
and you can maybe use it in a later book", which is fine
with me. So they were like, "Do you want to use that or
do you want to come up with some alternatives?", so
I came up with Dark Pines, which now I love.
BR: Yeah!
WD: So thank goodness for that, because to give up
Sweet Rot was difficult but now I'm really happy I did
because I can use it in the future and because I really
like Dark Pines.
BR: And Dark Pines has given the opportunity for a good
cover design as well.
WD: Thank you.
BR: Which I really like.
WD: You do?
BR: And obviously because this is audio you can't see
it, but it's a very cool cover, it's like either
black-on-white or kind of grey ...
WD: Yeah.
BR: It's black-and-white.
WD: Yeah.
BR: And it is a white road going through a thick forest
and a car is parked at the side of the road and there's
a trail of blood going into the forest and it just says
"Dark Pines" on the cover and it just looks really good
and it is very cohesive and I really understand what it
is, where it's set and what it's about.
WD: Fantastic!
BR: And I think they've done a good job of the cover and
the title together. So congrats on that!
WD: Thank you very much, indeed, I really like it. I'm
really happy with it.
BR: And it's almost like you getting what you needed
rather than what you wanted.
WD: That's true, exactly, yeah.
BR: And I think something that I'm being forced to learn
is there is a reason that the people you are dealing
with do those jobs. They are the experts and if they're
saying to you, "We think this is a better idea", it
probably is. Like no one is out to make your life
difficult for no reason.
WD: Exactly, that was my thinking process, like, "Who
am I?"
BR: Yeah, "What the fuck do I know?"
WD: This weird dude from the woods, who am I to say,
"Actually I think you're wrong". Like, I've never done
this before so I kind of put my ego away and just said,
"Actually, I am going to go with your advice".
BR: Yeah, as annoying as it is.
WD: Yeah.
BR: Yeah, because there's this illustrator that I really
want for the cover of my novel, and my editor also
really wants that same illustrator but is concerned that
it is too cool.
WD: Okay. Too cool?
BR: Yeah, I don't know, that it would somehow be, like
... I don't know. I don't know. But I'm coming up with
a list of other potential illustrators.
WD: Okay, that's good.
BR: But it feels like we're on the same page about the
stuff that we want and that's nice.
WD: That's good. Your book is going to be so good.
BR: Maybe ...
WD: No, it is. It is. It really is.
BR: [Laughs] Yeah, I'm kind of looking forward to it
but it's a long way off, so ...
WD: Yeah, it is. It's a marathon.
BR: Not a sprint.
WD: It really is.
BR: Whereas I've been sprinting this whole process.
[Will laughs] I have just been, like, anything that
I can control I get done very quickly and that's
anything to do with my book or doing this podcast or
anything that is only up to me, I will just do. So I'll
write the book really quickly, and then as soon as it
becomes someone else's responsibility to deal with
I find that very difficult.
WD: Yes. I was so impressed with just how fast you went
through it. At the beginning you were like, "I'm going
to sit down and I'm going write a book", and then you
just wrote the book, and then you just got an agent.
BR: Yeah, and I feel like I did get an agent but there
are also agents that rejected me.
WD: Yeah.
BR: I feel like I don't want people to think that
everything was just really easy.
WD: Sure.
BR: Because, yeah, people didn't want to represent me.
People read the book and were like, "This is not for
me", or, "You're clearly very talented but I don't think
this is the right thing for me to do".
But, yeah, I did get through that whole thing quite
quickly, and now I'm paying for it by having to wait
a really long time for my book to actually come out.
But I guess it gives me time to make it good and then
maybe write another one.
WD: That's the thing, I think. That's probably the best
therapy you can have, is getting involved in another one
and going into that new world. I found that very
therapeutic.
BR: So you are focusing now on the other books around
this one rather than anything completely different; is
that right?
WD: Exactly. So I'm focused on the second Tuva Moodyson
book, which is called Red Snow.
BR: Yeah, that's so good!
WD: Thank you. That was a title they're happy with and
I'm happy with so that was really nice and simple. So
I'm wrestling with that now and, I was saying to you
earlier, it's kind of a sprawling beast of a thing and
I'm having to work a lot harder on it to get it into the
shape I want it in. So it will be fine but I need to
throw in a lot of hours this autumn. I mean, it will be
fine, but I am at a point where I'm kind of spinning
plates and I need to get working really hard on it.
BR: And then there's another one?
WD: Then there will be a third one and a fourth one and
a fifth one, I think. I hope!
BR: Woah, that's so many!
WD: Just because I love writing Tuva. Before this book,
writing was writing, but when I started writing the
first page of my first Tuva Moodyson book, Dark Pines,
it was like a huge relief. It was like I was high,
I was buzzing, it was like being possessed, you know,
and that's why the book came out so fast, I think. It
was so much fun to write her! It was so liberating.
I love writing Tuva so I don't want to stop, if
possible.
BR: Yeah, and it's not like it's unheard of for there to
be loads of book that revolve around the same person.
WD: That's true, it has been done. [Laughs].
BR: It has literally been done lots of times.
WD: Yes.
BR: That's so cool. I'm very happy that you have
a plan.
WD: Thank you. Thank you. I hope it works out.
BR: Yeah. And you have just been having fun this
weekend?
WD: I've been in Harrogate at, like, this huge crime
writing festival.
BR: Yes, it felt like everyone I knew from the world of
books was there.
WD: A lot of people there, yeah. It was lovely, it was
like finding your people, just a big tent of writers and
readers and passionate book people drinking and playing
croquet and having fun, and it was really nice. It was
really good fun! A little bit intense. I need my
hermit time now; I need to go back to the woods and lock
myself away.
BR: You need to go back to the swamp.
WD: Yeah, but it was great. It was really fun.
BR: And you went as, like, a kind of future potential
person; right?
WD: Exactly!
BR: You were there in your capacity as "Will Dean:
author", rather than like "Will Dean: random man on the
internet"?
WD: I was kind of in the capacity of "Will Dean: unknown
author", which was quite nice, very low key. I was kind
of just mooching around in the corners just kind of
saying hi to writers that I've read and that I respect
and really like and wanted to say hi to, and just kind
of checking the place out for next year when the book
will be out.
BR: And you will be a real dude?
WD: Exactly. It's kind of a nerdy thing. When I used
to go for job interviews I always used to turn up at the
office the day before so I could completely do the
journey on the tube and walk up to the door of the
office and then go back home again.
BR: That's kind of weird, and I respect it!
WD: It is very weird and my wife used to laugh at it,
but it meant that I was more relaxed the day of the
interview because I knew my route, I knew which tube
exit and everything else.
BR: And you knew what it would look like and what it
would be like.
WD: Exactly, what it would smell like, what it would
feel like.
BR: Yeah.
WD: That was the same as going to Harrogate this year,
just so I'm relaxed next year.
BR: A practice run at being a real author?
WD: Yeah, that's it.
BR: So when is your book out?
WD: It's out January 4th.
BR: That's about as early in 2018 as a book can come
out!
WD: It is. It's like Christmas and then bang!
BR: I will pay money for one. I'll pre-order it,
because that's good, right?
WD: Wow, thank you very much!
BR: I've heard on the grapevine that pre-ordering shit
is really good, like it makes authors look good.
WD: I think so, yeah. Pre-ordering is good. Yeah.
BR: Okay, cool, I'll single-handedly enable the
pre-ordering campaign for Dark Pines.
WD: I'll do the same for you, then at least we have one
each. [Laughs]
BR: Thank you! Yeah, one book was pre-ordered by both
of us.
I feel like, I don't know, something we were talking
about on the way here. We took the boat here.
WD: We did.
BR: And we had to wait quite a long time for the boat to
come.
WD: We did a cruise.
BR: We cruised up the Thames. And we were kind of
talking about how, I don't know, maybe more for me that
because I didn't really talk about the book that I wrote
until I was able to announce that it was being
published, for weird superstitious reasons, and also
then once I did get a publishing contract I was told not
to talk about it until it was being officially announced
yesterday, that meant that I actually never really
talked much about writing on Twitter.
WD: Okay.
BR: I didn't really ... yeah, I was never really
explicit about what I was writing or that I was writing
fiction, and I think maybe I quite like that, that
I have not got into the habit of moaning about writing
on Twitter.
WD: Yes. Yeah.
BR: But I also think that for a long time I did not feel
like a real writer because it felt so much like being
a real writer meant complaining about writing and what
terrible agony it is, and I'm like, "Mate, if you're
inside and sitting down, especially if you are inside,
sitting down behind a laptop, what are you complaining
about?"
WD: So true!
BR: But, I don't know ... yeah.
WD: And for me I feel like there's maybe enough straight
white guys, writers, giving tips and giving this, that
and the other and just talking on Twitter about writing.
Whereas I kind of feel like I could just shut up and
listen.
BR: Yeah.
WD: I don't feel quite entitled enough to talk about it
yet because I'm so early in the process. So maybe in
ten years when someone is like, "What do you think about
this? What do you think about the characterisation?"
I'll talk. But right now I just think let other people
talk: let Sarah Waters talk, or Hilary Mantel talk.
BR: Yeah, someone who knows their shit.
WD: Yeah, exactly.
BR: But instead of complaining on Twitter about ...
I don't know, I tend to just e-mail you and be, like ...
WD: I love your e-mails!
BR: Okay, good, because I'm like, is it just dumb
questions about writing or dumb questions about the
publishing process where I'm like, "Ah, he doesn't know,
you can't just ask him anything just because he is
a year ahead of you, he won't know". But it does make
me feel better when I've got my edits and I don't want
to open the document because they might be bad, and
you're like, "That's normal, that's okay".
WD: It's totally healthy. Honestly, when I get
an e-mail from you in the woods I'm just delighted.
[Laughter]. Because I normally get e-mails and it's
going to entail some work or some kind of boring admin
tax thing. But when I get an e-mail from you with
poodles in the subject line and pine trees and a guy
with a moustache or whatever, I'm just like, "Yeah!
This is going to be fun, this is going to be
interesting!"
BR: Even if she is asking a silly question about
editing. Good.
But yeah, that's where I'm at now, is like my editor
sent through the first edits on my book last week and
I was kind of like, this is a whole thing that I hadn't
thought about, having to come back to this and do more
work on it. I hadn't thought about it because ... I'm
a silly baby.
WD: [Laughs] Have you opened the e-mail?
BR: I have opened the document because I had lunch with
her last Friday and I was like, I can't really go for
lunch with her without having read it she'll know that
I haven't.
WD: It's too weird if you don't open it.
BR: Yeah, but you saying that it's normal to feel
daunted by that task made me feel better.
WD: How do you feel now you've opened it?
BR: I don't know ... She's right, everything she's
telling me to do is right, but I'm also like: don't want
to do any work because I'm a lazy bitch.
WD: It's hard though, isn't it, because it's like that
thing that you have finished in a way and having to go
back in, and if you change something on page 27 it's
going to have knock-on effects, ripples all the way
through the book.
BR: Yeah.
WD: It is tough.
BR: And there's another thing I started writing a couple
of months ago and I only wrote 10,000 words of it, and
my editor was basically like, "Edit this stuff first and
then do that", do it in that order. And I was like,
"But doing new stuff is fun, doing old stuff is boring"!
[Laughs].
WD: I would kind of say if you want to do something new,
do it. I don't want to ...
BR: Rachel, if you are listening ... [Laughter]
WD: I'm so sorry! I'm so sorry, but I kind of think if
there's something bursting out of you that you want to
write, just write it.
BR: Maybe I will. Maybe I can do both.
WD: Maybe. It's up to you; you know how much you can
juggle, but for me if I need to write something I'm just
going to write it and deal with it afterwards.
BR: Yeah. No, I think it would make me feel better if
I did the stuff I didn't want to do first,
psychologically.
WD: Okay, no, that's better. You should do that,
totally.
BR: Yeah. But, yeah, I hope that now it's a known fact
I wrote this book and it's coming out and blah blah
blah, I don't want to become one of those people that
whines about writing on Twitter, so I'll just decide not
to.
WD: Just e-mail me.
BR: Yeah, I'll just e-mail you instead.
WD: That would be a delightful thing!
BR: I don't know, and I think for a long time that made
me ... not doing that kind of performative writing thing
made me feel like I was not a real writer, but because
I had done it in like a speedy, businesslike fashion it
was not real, and it's only now I'm like, no, it's real,
I did it, I wrote a book so it's real.
WD: It's so real now. It's very real. You are
a writer, Bethany.
BR: Yeah, I guess.
WD: You really are. But it is a difficult thing to say,
because it sounds pretentious.
BR: Yeah ...
WD: It's like last weekend I said to somebody in
a sentence, "my publicist", and then I kind of stopped
myself and I was like, "You sound like such a wanker,
you can't say that."
BR: But you do have a publicist!
WD: I know, but you can't talk about it; it just seems
ridiculous, it seems so weird.
BR: Yeah.
WD: So I know exactly what you mean.
BR: But we're real people.
WD: We're getting there.
BR: You're way more of like a real person.
WD: No, absolutely not.
BR: Don't you just live in a swamp so that you can write
more?
WD: Yeah, but what's real about that? [Laughter]
BR: Do you find that it has made you more productive,
living in a swamp?
WD: It has, but I think you can be very unproductive in
a swamp as well.
BR: What's there to do?
WD: You find things to do.
BR: I guess you do have a small child.
WD: I do, and a massive cat. [Laughter] They keep me
busy.
BR: Yeah. So you could just hang out with them rather
than write.
WD: I think it's not so much writing time as reading
time that I have more of now, which is so precious. In
London, when I was working in London full-time I was
able to read maybe a book every two weeks or a little
more than that. Then when I moved to the swamp and
I was watching TV still I could read a book a week.
Then I quit TV completely, and radio for a while at
least, and I could read two or three books a week, and
that helped my writing so much.
BR: Interesting. Why?
WD: I just needed that intense period of reading good
shit, like lots and lots and lots of good books in one
year, and that gave me a little bit of a surge in: okay,
I can do this, I can break this rule, I can write this
length of thing.
BR: Yeah, I really think that's true in that reading
lots of good things -- lots of different good things has
made me feel more confident about my own writing. Like
I don't have to ... there isn't one right way of doing
stuff, or you are allowed to write something quite quiet
and low-key. It doesn't have to be very high-concept.
I don't know, I just remember at some point during
the writing of my book, No Big Deal, I read a book that
was so completely not like my book, it was polar
opposites and it was a book by Helen Dunmore, RIP, about
spies, and I can't remember what it was called and
I feel really bad about it because she is dead and
therefore I have to honour her more. But it was her
most recent book before she died. It was just so
low-key but amazing, and I was like, this is a really
quiet book and I like that, and it made me feel really
good about writing, and ... I don't know.
WD: That's lovely to hear.
BR: Yeah.
WD: I think often that's exactly how it goes. It's like
a weird book that's not in the genre that you're writing
in that's maybe old and it just has a thing that clicks
with you and you're like: okay, I could do that, or
I could not do that. Totally.
I read now three or four contemporary crime literary
books and then I'll go back and read an old romance book
or I'll read an old historical fiction book or something
like that, and I often find it's that book that's not in
my genre or not in my period that really helps me and
that gives me something.
BR: Yeah. Obviously this is not you stating forever
your favourite people in the whole world and if you
don't mention someone that means that you hate them, but
who do you like reading the most in your genre?
WD: In kind of older style books?
BR: Any.
WD: I love Cormac McCarthy, he's probably my favourite
writer.
BR: He's your boy?
WD: He is. I love the way he mixes nature writing with
things happening. I love how concise he is. I just
love the way he describes life.
Then I love Muriel Spark, Sarah Waters,
Shirley Jackson, Susan Hill. I like creepy stuff. My
genre is creepiness.
BR: Okay. [Laughs].
WD: It's like if you can write a story that makes me
feel uncomfortable, unnerved and unsettled, I'm going to
read all your books.
BR: That's what I want to read. That's definitely like
... I don't want to write it but I want to read it.
WD: I don't care about police procedurals too much.
I don't want too much gore. I want something that's
tense all the way through.
BR: Yeah. You want to be scared.
WD: I do, in a kind of low-key way, and I want a voice
which means that I'm fascinated by the pages where
nothing much is happening can pull me through.
BR: That's very like Sharp Objects, I thought, Gillian
Flynn, Sharp Objects.
WD: She's so good. I really want another book by
Gillian Flynn soon.
BR: Yes, I feel like -- to mention her again -- Alice
posted a picture of something recently that was Gillian
Flynn related. But maybe it wasn't. I don't know.
WD: The only photo I've seen her post recently was
F. Scott Fitzgerald's hair, which was a fantastic tweet.
BR: And then you abused her for being frivolous about
men's appearances. No, obviously that wasn't you. "No,
some dude is dead"?
WD: Okay, wow. Really? My God! [Laughter].
BR: Yeah, about having a go at the way he looked rather
than appreciating all of his writing.
WD: What a thing to say, my God! [Laughter]
BR: It's like no one is allowed to have fun at the
expense of F. Scott Fitzgerald's hair.
WD: It's crazy hair.
BR: But, yeah, I'll look into it and report back about
what that book might be.
WD: Okay.
BR: Yeah, I think I like Gillian Flynn's books because
it's just like, something horrible is happening, like
something weird and unnerving and horrible is happening.
WD: Yeah.
BR: And I like that.
WD: I love the voice. Her voice is very her own.
BR: Yes.
WD: And it pulls me through the whole book and I am just
delighted to read her stuff. Her little mini twists --
obviously she's had a massive, landmark twist in
Gone Girl, but in her other book she has mini twists and
just little things, little bends rather than twists, and
I really enjoy that because I find most twists extremely
unsatisfying and annoying.
BR: Now I want to be like, "Tell me about twist you did
like", and then no one is going to read those books
after ...
WD: Exactly. I will never talk about twists ever. And
also when I'm about to read a book I don't want to be
told there's a twist in it.
BR: Oh my God, me either and I get so furious!
I basically don't want to know anything about a book
other than "It is good". I want someone that I trust to
recommend a book and then I will read it.
WD: Exactly.
BR: Unless it is like sci-fi or fantasy, when I will not
read it.
WD: Yeah, "Don't tell me there's a twist at the end".
No.
BR: Or even halfway through.
WD: Yeah.
BR: Just, yeah. And I feel like this is related to my
rant about trailers in the previous episode of this
podcast where I was like: I don't want to see The
Beguiled any more because I know what happens. Yeah,
I don't know, I'm just furious about it all the time.
Does your book have a twist ... wait! No! Don't
tell me.
WD: My lips are so sealed.
BR: Any other people that you want to big up?
WD: Yes, in terms of writers now that I love, it's
difficult to remember everyone right now on the spot.
But I love Kit de Waal. Have you read her book, My Name
is Leon?
BR: I haven't.
WD: Soooo good.
BR: But she was also speaking ... you know the thing
where I did my dry breakfast?
WD: Yeah.
BR: She was on at that event as well and she was great,
and she read a really great piece that she'd written.
WD: Okay. She's so cool.
BR: Yeah.
WD: And I love that book. It made me very sad and very
... it really moved me. She's very, very good at what
she does.
Then I love Jessie Burton, The Muse, beautiful
writing. I love Imran Mahmood, he wrote a book called
You Don't Know Me, which is really interesting. The
voice is really original. It's set, the main character
is in a dock in a courtroom and it's him kind of giving
his testimony and saying what happened. That's the
whole book.
BR: This sounds cool.
WD: And he does it so well.
BR: This sounds like something I would read.
WD: It's really, really nice.
BR: Is it, like, crimey? Right? Kinda crimey?
WD: Totally crimey.
BR: Okay. I've never heard of it.
WD: It's really, really good. It came out I think just
a few months ago.
BR: Okay, cool, I'm going to look into this.
WD: It's very original.
BR: Thank you. This is all I want.
WD: Very, very good.
BR: Don't tell me if there's a twist.
WD: I won't tell you.
BR: Okay, that's really good because I feel like people
hardly ever mention something that sounds good that
I don't already know about, and you just did it.
WD: It's a good book.
BR: Yeah.
WD: And then there's Abir Mukherjee, who wrote A Rising
Man, which is set in India in the Twenties, and I don't
read a huge amount of historical fiction but this is ...
I really enjoyed this. And kind of by osmosis, not
knowing I was, I learnt a load of stuff about Indian
history in that book. But it was also very exciting and
very, very exquisitely written.
BR: Cool!
WD: I enjoyed it.
BR: These are very solid recommendations and
non-obvious. Sounds good. Thank you.
WD: Good. Pleasure.
BR: What are you looking forward to most in your new
life as an author?
WD: Honestly the thing I like best is being alone
reading and writing. So being able to do that as much
as possible is just the biggest luxury.
BR: Yeah, someone is paying you to do that. It's
literally your job.
WD: Yeah, exactly, I would kind of do it for no money.
So doing it and people reading it and liking it and
being able to do it for a living is crazy. It's
a dream.
BR: People liking it. So your proofs are slowly making
their way around the world.
WD: Yeah, I think there's ten out there at the moment,
and there's a load of new ones coming out soonish,
I think.
BR: So people have been reading it.
WD: Yes.
BR: How do you feel emotionally about people reading it?
WD: Absolutely terrified, genuinely scared. Because
they're not people I don't know: they're people who
I respect and I have really enjoyed their work. So if
I send it to somebody and I never hear anything ... it's
just kind of heartbreaking.
BR: Has that happened?
WD: No, no, not at all.
BR: Because I was like: I will beat them up, I will find
out who they are.
WD: Not at all. Only one or two people have read it but
they've been super positive and that's been [sighs]
a huge relief and so nice. So it's been good.
BR: Good. Then one day there will be reviews of it;
will you read them?
WD: I think all writers do at the beginning and I'll
probably be exactly the same, like the first reviews
I'll read, and then I'll go through a process of
realising this is not good for my health and actually
I should stop. So I'll probably fall into that.
I probably should never read a review but how are you
going to do that? How are you going to be that
disciplined?
BR: I think maybe I just won't. Maybe I never will.
WD: Really?
BR: Yeah, because I don't think you're going to learn
anything from them.
WD: I just think it's difficult not to be tempted.
BR: Yeah, because you want to read something good.
WD: It's like a dark kind of thing luring you in. So
I think I'll read a few but I definitely don't want to
read them going forwards, especially not if I'm writing
the next project or the project after that. I can't be
dealing with that.
BR: No, and what you're writing, whatever you read in
a review, you're not going to learn anything from that
that should influence what you write next. That should
be something that you figure out with your editor and
your agent, not some random person on the internet or in
a magazine.
WD: That's very true.
BR: In my opinion.
WD: No, you are right. So I will try and ...
BR: I just wouldn't, you know?
WD: Yeah, I'll try and stay away.
BR: I'm certainly not.
WD: I'll probably fail, but I'll try and stay away.
BR: Yeah.
WD: Especially the kind of Amazon reviews where they
talk about it being two days late and the packaging was
inadequate.
BR: Yeah, well you don't give a shit about that!
WD: Like: No! Don't give me two stars because of that!
So I'll ignore those. [Laughter].
BR: Yeah! "Don't blame Royal Mail's failure on me."
WD: Yeah.
BR: And are there other things that you are not looking
forward to?
WD: No.
BR: You are just ...
WD: No, I love it. I'm so lucky. To be able to do this
and, like you say, people you pay for it is just the
biggest privilege in the world. I want to have fun with
it and see what happens. I want to try and get the
balance right, maybe, between my hermit time in the
forest, which I need, not just to be able to write but
also to be healthy and happy, and my time travelling
going to conferences and festivals and all of that
stuff, which I love but in kind of small doses. So
I just need to get that balance right.
BR: At least when you are hermitting you get to hang out
with Alfie.
WD: I do, a lot. That's really nice.
BR: And he is a very vibrant person.
WD: He's amazing, he is the coolest little person ever.
BR: Yeah [Laughs].
WD: He's a lot of fun.
BR: So even when you are hermitting it is an intensely
social time?
WD: It is, even with my cat, he is intensely social. He
is like a Labrador wrapped up in a lot of fluff. He's
a ridiculous cat: he comes if I whistle to him, he plays
with Alfie like they're two brothers.
BR: No! I love them too much!
WD: They wander off into the woods and they find a frog
and they're playing, and it's a beautiful thing to see.
BR: Oh yeah, so here's something. Apart from the
mushroom woman what is the most swamp thing that has
happened in the swamp?
WD: The most swamp thing?
BR: Yeah.
WD: Okay, I think I have an answer for you. When we
were building I was living in London and flying over
every weekend on Ryanair with £5 tickets that we had
back then to try and build this thing, this eco-house,
and we were digging, we had a digger, to try and put
drainage pipes down -- we really needed a lot of
drainage -- and we found a tractor, a skeleton of an old
tractor from the Thirties or Forties and according to
the locals this thing had slowly sunk over the decades.
Nobody had buried it; it had just sunk. So it was maybe
a metre below the soil surface.
BR: So it is real bog stuff?
WD: It had been consumed. It had been swallowed by the
swamp. That was wild.
BR: Oh my God, yeah! [Laughs].
WD: So this thing came and we were like, "What is this?
Who put this here?" And they were like, "No one",
I think it just sank over the years.
BR: The bog ate it?
WD: And then they took it away on the back of a trailer
and it was kind of sad to see it go, this old rusty
skeleton.
BR: That is kind of swamplike?
WD: That's quite swampy, yeah.
But the positive side, can I talk about the positive
side.
BR: Yeah, tell me the good shit!
WD: So the good thing is that most people who live in
Swedish forests have a huge mosquito problem.
BR: Okay.
WD: Big mosquitoes. They start off quite small and by
the end of summer they are massive. But because we are
so swampy we have like a Royal Air Force of dragon
flies.
BR: That eat the mosquitoes?
WD: Yeah, they do! They are beautiful little things, in
May/June they come out and they're blue and they're very
pretty, and then by August they are as long as your
middle finger, or even longer, as long as a pencil that
you have used a little while; and these things fly
around, there are thousands of them and they are
beautiful and they eat all of the mosquitoes. So we
have no mosquitoes.
BR: Oh my God, that is the dream! Because that would be
a genuine concern, as someone who has very delicious
blood to biting insects. That's so cool that the
eco-system takes care of itself.
WD: It actually makes it a lot more comfortable to live
there. Like when we go to other people's forest houses
that aren't so swampy, it's pretty horrible with all the
mosquitoes.
BR: And you have ... I think one of my nature highlights
of recent times was the elk stealing your flowers?
WD: Yes, we have elk coming through the garden every
maybe three or four months, and they kind of hang around
for about a week, and these guys are massive! They are
just so prehistoric and so properly wild. They're more
wild than anything I've ever seen in the UK. It's like
seeing a bear, you know? And they have zero respect for
hedges or fences, so they just lollop long, they're as
tall as a rhinoceros, they just walk through things.
This guy that you are talking about, he came and he was
eating my grass and eating my flowers, and then he ate
all of our artificial flowers. I had an urn full of
artificial flowers and he just took it away. He just
took it.
BR: No! [Laughs].
WD: We also had one that got wrapped in a hammock, and
he was thrashing around. It looked like a great white
shark caught in a net.
BR: Is it scary? Like, would you be scared for Alfie
and Monty to be outside when there's an elk around?
WD: Yeah.
BR: Are they scary?
WD: They're not scary, but they're slightly
unpredictable because they're so wild, so I wouldn't
want them out there with an elk.
BR: Because they can't control their behaviour?
WD: Yeah, like a general elk is a very docile, lovely
massive thing, but a female elk with young is
unpredictable because they are protective. And
sometimes you get old dude elks that eat rotten apples
and get drunk. [Laughter]. This is like a good
newspaper article in Sweden; you see this a lot.
BR: Yeah?
WD: And it will fall into a tree or it will fall asleep
on a driveway, or get angry with people walking past.
So elk are to be respected, I think. I kind of give
them a good distance.
BR: Cool! Well, on that note I will respect the elk and
ask you my questions to finish up our chat.
WD: Okay.
BR: What book do you wish you had written?
WD: I wish I had written The Road by Cormac McCarthy.
BR: I knew you were going to say that.
WD: Sorry ...
BR: That's okay. That's fine. I understand that.
WD: Okay.
BR: What emoji do you most identify with?
WD: What emoji?
BR: Yeah.
WD: Can I do a hybrid?
BR: Yes!
WD: Okay, I think I'm half pine, half poodle.
BR: Okay, yes! [Laughs].
WD: Would that work?
BR: Yeah!
WD: Okay.
BR: That's like your city life and your swamp life.
WD: Exactly.
BR: Yeah!
If you were going to go to the shop -- when you're
in London, not when you are in the swamp -- and buy some
crisps, what crisps would you buy?
WD: Crisps ... okay, I love ... can I have two?
BR: Yes.
WD: Really quickly.
BR: Yeah, of course.
WD: I love Nice 'N' Spicy Nik Naks.
BR: Yes! Nik Naks are the best!
WD: Yes, because they're not like crisps, they're like
remoulded potato starch covered in flavour.
BR: Yeah, it's maize, isn't it?
WD: And it's crunchy and they're delicious. And they're
orange and they're crunchy.
Then the other thing I like is posh crisps, like
Kettle Chips kind of thing.
BR: Yep!
WD: But only if they're folded over.
BR: Yeah! [Laughs]
WD: So you get double-crunch, and the best thing ever is
when you get a folded one inside a large folded crisp,
so you get a quadruple crisp. It's like a hermit crab
crisp hiding inside a big one. They're the best ever.
[Laughter].
BR: It's like a pearl inside an oyster.
WD: Exactly.
BR: So you are the last guest of this series, so who
would you like to hear me talk to next time?
WD: Thank you so much for having me on, by the way.
BR: That's okay!
WD: I would love, actually, talking of Kit de Waal,
I would love to hear her speak on any subject, so
I would love to hear her on here.
BR: Cool, that's a good nomination. Thank you so much
for joining me, flying out of the swamp and joining me
for a chat.
So this was the last episode in the series of
Hello Friend. I will probably come back, I don't know
when, but in the meantime listen out for a new fun thing
that I'm going to do with a friend. Thank you for
joining me. I have really enjoyed your support and all
of your tweets. Keep them coming, keep listening and go
back and listen to episodes that you missed. Let me
know if there's stuff you'd like me to do differently
next time, or people that you really want to hear on
season 2. Either way I will see you again soon. Thank
you.
WD: Thank you so much!
BR: Bye!
WD: Bye!
