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45 Heidi Stephens | Romance Author, Liveblogger and Marketer
207 Plays4 years ago
Romance author, liveblogger and marketer, Heidi Stephens swings by to chat about her first novel, written during lockdown about a romance that happens in lockdown. 'Two Metres from You' came out in March 2021 and her second novel, 'Never Gonna Happen' is out in May 2022 with a third one already in the works! We talk all about her amazing rollercoaster ride in publishing so far as well as her work in marketing and liveblogging for the Guardian and Eurovision.
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Transcript
Introduction and Novel Debut
00:00:00
Speaker
So our podcast is called Right and Wrong.
00:00:02
Speaker
Are these your notes?
00:00:03
Speaker
These are your notes about what we're going to say.
00:00:06
Speaker
What does it say?
00:00:06
Speaker
I thought it would be a good... I didn't even get the idea.
00:00:12
Speaker
Maybe I can just ask you the question.
00:00:16
Speaker
It's going well.
00:00:16
Speaker
It's going really well.
00:00:22
Speaker
Hello and welcome back to another episode of the Right and Wrong podcast.
00:00:27
Speaker
As always, it's me, Jamie, and today I'm excited to be joined by the one and only Heidi Stevens.
00:00:34
Speaker
Hello.
00:00:35
Speaker
Hi, Jamie.
00:00:36
Speaker
One and only.
00:00:36
Speaker
I haven't been called the one and only for a while.
00:00:38
Speaker
I mean, I feel like Chesney Hawkes.
00:00:42
Speaker
There's only one Heidi Stevens.
00:00:44
Speaker
Let's kick off with your debut novel, Two Meters From You, a romance set in lockdown.
Writing During Lockdown
00:00:51
Speaker
Tell us about it.
00:00:53
Speaker
So it was a romance about lockdown that I wrote in lockdown.
00:00:57
Speaker
You're a method writer, I see.
00:00:59
Speaker
Yeah, absolutely.
00:01:02
Speaker
Yeah, I am.
00:01:02
Speaker
I'm the Lady Gaga of the literary field.
00:01:05
Speaker
I wrote it really as a sort of an experiment in can I write a book.
00:01:10
Speaker
It's something I'd wanted to do for a really long time.
00:01:12
Speaker
But I think as with a lot of novelists who find that career later in life, it was, I never had the time.
00:01:20
Speaker
So when we all got locked down in March last year and I was furloughed from my job and I had time on my hands for the first time in really 20 years, I
00:01:30
Speaker
So I thought, you know, I'm going to have a go.
00:01:31
Speaker
And to write a love story, a romantic comedy about a woman who's trapped in a small West Country village during lockdown was something that felt like my way, I guess, of navigating the situation we were in, sort of seeing it through the lens of a fictional character.
00:01:49
Speaker
And yeah, it started out as a bit of an experiment and ended up being my first novel that came out in March of this year.
00:01:58
Speaker
Yes, a very successful experiment.
00:02:00
Speaker
Yeah.
00:02:01
Speaker
I mean, I had no expectation when I started.
00:02:03
Speaker
It started out as, you know, can I write a chapter and can I write three chapters and can I write 20,000 words and then can I finish
Pitching and Publishing Journey
00:02:10
Speaker
it?
00:02:10
Speaker
And then, of course, you move into another phase, which is, well, what do I do with it now?
00:02:14
Speaker
And I didn't know anything.
00:02:16
Speaker
I didn't have a literary agent or know anything about publishing.
00:02:19
Speaker
So I did what debut novelists do and I pitched it out to, you know, I submitted it to lots of agents and went through that process.
00:02:27
Speaker
And
00:02:28
Speaker
Very fortunately, I found a literary agent who got me a deal with Headline, which was super exciting.
00:02:34
Speaker
So, yeah, I feel like I know that this last 18 months has been hugely challenging in lots of ways.
00:02:41
Speaker
But actually, for me, you know, much as it makes me feel slightly guilty to say it's actually been a really positive experience.
00:02:48
Speaker
But yeah, it's been quite life changing, actually.
00:02:53
Speaker
Yeah, it sounds like it.
00:02:54
Speaker
It sounds like you've really kind of been swept up through the whole publishing journey.
00:03:01
Speaker
You mentioned that you've always wanted to write.
00:03:03
Speaker
Was this the first time you'd actually written a story, a novel, or had you written them previously and never finished them or anything?
00:03:11
Speaker
No, no, this was my very first.
00:03:14
Speaker
It was something I've thought about a lot.
00:03:16
Speaker
I mean, I've always been a writer in some capacity.
00:03:19
Speaker
So I started out in marketing.
00:03:20
Speaker
In fact, I still work in marketing.
00:03:21
Speaker
I still have a proper job.
00:03:24
Speaker
And in different capacity, like brand management and then into copywriting.
00:03:28
Speaker
And, you know, I've written lots of ad campaigns and brochures and, you know, and TV ads and instruction manuals and all that kind of thing.
00:03:35
Speaker
Instruction manuals?
00:03:37
Speaker
Backing cleaner instruction manuals were one of my early specialties.
00:03:40
Speaker
If you couldn't use your Dyson in the early noughties, that was probably my fault.
00:03:44
Speaker
So you're an expert on Dyson Hovers then?
00:03:47
Speaker
Very much so.
00:03:47
Speaker
I worked there for quite some time.
00:03:50
Speaker
So yeah, I've always written different things.
00:03:53
Speaker
And then I went on from marketing and had a bit of a side hustle going, doing some TV live blogging for The Guardian, which I still do and have been doing now for 12 or 13 years.
00:04:03
Speaker
So I've done a little bit of journalism and a little bit of blogging and a little bit of
00:04:08
Speaker
commercial writing in a sort of marketing capacity, but I've never been a story writer.
00:04:13
Speaker
I wasn't as a child, I was a sort of, you know, a religious story writer as a child, but never as an adult, you know, life took over.
00:04:22
Speaker
And so it was something I'd always wanted to do, but never had the time until last year.
00:04:27
Speaker
It's amazing that you must have practiced a lot of the skills that were required for writing a novel just through all the different sort of the wide breadth of writing that you've done across your professional career.
Challenges and Pressures of Writing
00:04:42
Speaker
I think sure.
00:04:42
Speaker
I think definitely without really realizing it.
00:04:45
Speaker
When you write a presentation to sell your agency skills or your marketing skills,
00:04:53
Speaker
You know, it is a method of storytelling.
00:04:55
Speaker
You start at the beginning and you move through the middle and you summarize everything at the end.
00:04:59
Speaker
And the same for blogging and live blogging.
00:05:01
Speaker
You know, it's short form, but it's definitely, you know, the narrative is up and down.
00:05:07
Speaker
And I think the blogging particularly helped me hone my sense of humor.
00:05:12
Speaker
And I think that's become really useful because that's definitely something that I really enjoy doing.
00:05:20
Speaker
So I think I hadn't really realized the skills I had built up over the years that would help me form a 100,000 word novel, but they were there.
00:05:29
Speaker
And it actually, you know, when I once I got started, it started to flow much more easily than I thought it would, which was a lovely surprise and ended up, you know, with a book at the end of it, which felt like a huge achievement.
00:05:42
Speaker
Yeah.
00:05:42
Speaker
I mean, just, I say it to everyone, it's like just finishing a book is a huge achievement in itself.
00:05:49
Speaker
It's a hard thing to just kind of go, especially a hundred thousand words.
00:05:52
Speaker
That's pretty long for a debut.
00:05:53
Speaker
Yeah.
00:05:54
Speaker
I think actually the first one was, I think it was like 92, but the second one that comes out next year is more like 100.
00:06:01
Speaker
It is a hard thing to do.
00:06:02
Speaker
And I think we put a lot of pressure on ourselves as writers.
00:06:06
Speaker
It's not enough to finish the book.
00:06:08
Speaker
Then you have to get an agent and then you have to find a publisher and then you have to write a bestseller and then you have to get a book deal.
00:06:14
Speaker
And suddenly it's like, well, actually now I want
00:06:17
Speaker
translation rights and movie rights.
00:06:19
Speaker
We're always moving the goalposts.
00:06:20
Speaker
And I think it's really important that writers take a moment to just congratulate themselves for having written a book.
00:06:28
Speaker
It's a huge thing to do.
00:06:29
Speaker
And I think it's natural for us to always be thinking ahead, but sometimes we need to take a breath and congratulate ourselves on how far we've
Authenticity in Writing
00:06:38
Speaker
come.
00:06:38
Speaker
Yeah.
00:06:38
Speaker
And remember that you started writing for you, not for commercial success or any of the things that come along with that.
00:06:46
Speaker
Definitely.
00:06:46
Speaker
And I think had I sat down and gone, right, I'm going to write a book that's going to be published and is going to be out in the world, I probably wouldn't have written that book because, you know, it was a lockdown romance.
00:06:58
Speaker
And I think it was only when I finished it, I started to get a bit wobbly about, well, is anybody going to want to read this?
00:07:04
Speaker
You know, we're still in lockdown.
00:07:06
Speaker
And actually, here we are a year on and we're still in lockdown in some capacity.
00:07:11
Speaker
I think had I known how long it would go on for...
00:07:15
Speaker
I probably wouldn't have written that book.
00:07:16
Speaker
I probably would have written something different.
00:07:19
Speaker
But because I didn't know what I was going to do with it and because I didn't know that it would ever be published, I wrote the book I wanted to write at the time.
00:07:27
Speaker
And now I'm really glad I did that.
00:07:29
Speaker
Yeah, that's the key.
00:07:30
Speaker
That's what I've found from talking to different people is a lot of people write several books before one gets picked up by an agent or picked up by a publisher.
00:07:40
Speaker
And it's almost always the one where they said, you know, I just took the pressure off myself.
00:07:44
Speaker
I just said, I'm going to write this one because this is the one I want to write.
00:07:47
Speaker
I don't know if the market's going to like it, but I just really want to do this.
00:07:49
Speaker
And that's like the passion comes through, the joy comes through.
00:07:53
Speaker
And that's always the one that gets picked up.
00:07:55
Speaker
Totally.
00:07:55
Speaker
And the second book that I wrote, because when I got the deal with Headline to publish that book, I actually got a two-book deal.
00:08:03
Speaker
So the second book that I then had to write felt very different because suddenly you're thinking about audiences and you're thinking about, you know...
00:08:12
Speaker
is this commercial enough?
00:08:14
Speaker
Is this got enough sex in it?
00:08:15
Speaker
Should this have less sex in it?
00:08:17
Speaker
You know, you start to question everything.
00:08:18
Speaker
And actually I had to just say to Heidi, stop it.
00:08:21
Speaker
Like just write the book you want to write.
00:08:24
Speaker
You know, if this is going to be, you know, one day I'd like this to be what I do for a living.
00:08:30
Speaker
I feel like that's probably quite a long way off, but I think that's what we all dream of, right?
00:08:34
Speaker
Yeah, that's the dream.
00:08:36
Speaker
And there are always going to be books that mean more to me than they mean to other people and some that, you know,
00:08:41
Speaker
readers like more than others.
00:08:42
Speaker
That's just life.
00:08:44
Speaker
So I think you have to, I think the minute you try so hard to write for other people is the point at which it stops coming from the heart.
00:08:53
Speaker
And that I think feels very different.
00:08:55
Speaker
Oh, definitely.
00:08:56
Speaker
And I'm always, I have a really great writing group and we're constantly on WhatsApp and talking about what's, you know, the big stuff that's just been signed, the big deals that are being made, what's trending at the moment in terms of like what's popular.
00:09:10
Speaker
And if you, we were always saying like, if you chase the trends and you say, oh, um, for example, let's say vampires are becoming popular again.
00:09:19
Speaker
I don't think they are, but let's say they are for the sake of this.
00:09:22
Speaker
The Twilight Revival.
00:09:23
Speaker
Yeah, exactly.
00:09:24
Speaker
And then suddenly everyone's like, oh, let's write Twilight-esque books and things like that.
00:09:28
Speaker
It's like, by the time you've written that book, pitched it, an agent has maybe seen it.
00:09:33
Speaker
Publishers are not going to take it because that's like a long time in the future and that trend's gone.
00:09:37
Speaker
It's been and gone.
00:09:39
Speaker
They're looking for the new one now.
Agent Collaboration and Editing
00:09:41
Speaker
Definitely.
00:09:41
Speaker
And, you know, I have to, we all have to, we all have to be the writer we were born to be.
00:09:46
Speaker
And I think I don't want to be, you know,
00:09:49
Speaker
the next Jilly Cooper or the next Marion Keys.
00:09:52
Speaker
They're both incredible writers.
00:09:53
Speaker
I love their work, but that's their work.
00:09:56
Speaker
And I have to find my voice and do it my way and accept that everyone's going to love it.
00:10:02
Speaker
But, you know, it is what it is.
00:10:04
Speaker
Take inspiration from like the places you want to, and you can pay homage if you wish, but always, yeah, try and be true to your own voice.
00:10:13
Speaker
You're 100% you've hit the nail on the head there.
00:10:16
Speaker
And your agent, going back to your journey here, your agent is...
00:10:23
Speaker
Caroline Sheldon.
00:10:23
Speaker
The legendary.
00:10:25
Speaker
The legendary.
00:10:25
Speaker
The one and only Caroline Sheldon.
00:10:27
Speaker
Yeah.
00:10:28
Speaker
And actually, I heard you interview her a couple of weeks ago.
00:10:31
Speaker
Oh, yes.
00:10:32
Speaker
She's amazing.
00:10:32
Speaker
She is.
00:10:33
Speaker
She's an extraordinary woman who has been the best mentor and guide that I could have possibly wanted.
00:10:40
Speaker
And when I put together my shortlist of agents and I did all the research and looked at, you know, writers I really admire in that kind of genre of romantic comedy and who their agents are.
00:10:49
Speaker
And I made my shortlist and wrote my submissions and my cover letters.
00:10:53
Speaker
And Caroline was, you know, one of sort of at the top of my list.
00:10:57
Speaker
And because I wanted, I think the thing I wanted most was experience, was somebody who had navigated this industry because I knew nothing.
00:11:08
Speaker
I hadn't got a clue about how publishing works.
00:11:10
Speaker
I could talk about marketing until the, you know, product marketing until the cows come home, but I don't know anything about books.
00:11:17
Speaker
So when Caroline...
00:11:20
Speaker
emailed me and said, I've read your first three chapters and I love them.
00:11:23
Speaker
Can I see the rest of the book?
00:11:24
Speaker
I mean, I think I went through the kitchen roof with excitement because, you know, she's amazing and she has been incredible and so helpful and so free with her advice and her guidance.
00:11:38
Speaker
And I feel very lucky to have somebody like her on my team.
00:11:42
Speaker
She is great.
00:11:42
Speaker
Yeah.
00:11:43
Speaker
And if you're looking for experience, then she has seen the industry through so many years.
00:11:51
Speaker
You really nailed it with her.
00:11:53
Speaker
How many agents were on your shortlist?
00:11:57
Speaker
Nine.
00:11:58
Speaker
I had nine of them.
00:12:00
Speaker
And that was really, you know...
00:12:03
Speaker
quite a sort of carefully chosen selection.
00:12:07
Speaker
I'd read a lot of forums and blogs and, you know, the writing community is amazing.
00:12:13
Speaker
They're very generous with their advice online.
00:12:17
Speaker
So I was able to go and read lots of forums and blogs from debut authors who gave tips and, you know, top 10 things to do when you're submitting your book and
00:12:28
Speaker
And one of the common themes was don't scattergun the industry.
00:12:33
Speaker
It's a very small world and they'll know if you've sent it out to all and sundry.
00:12:38
Speaker
Make a shortlist, pick carefully the agents that you would
00:12:43
Speaker
genuinely be happy if any one of them picked up your book.
00:12:46
Speaker
So that's what I did.
00:12:47
Speaker
And it took quite a lot of time.
00:12:48
Speaker
It's quite a lot of work.
00:12:49
Speaker
I had a spreadsheet, love a spreadsheet.
00:12:53
Speaker
And, and, and yeah, so Caroline was one of, was one of nine and she wasn't, she wasn't the first to respond.
00:12:59
Speaker
I had a couple of, you know, very, very kind no's.
00:13:03
Speaker
And then after Caroline, I had another, I had another
00:13:07
Speaker
would like to would like to see it but but Caroline was my was my first
Publishing Choices and Editorial Support
00:13:11
Speaker
choice and and I think absolutely the right one amazing well I mean you you've got the deal so that obviously once once she'd signed you um did you then come together and work together on the novel before sending it out to publishers
00:13:29
Speaker
Yeah, so Caroline came back with some brilliant advice on maybe you could trim this and there's this little subplot that I don't think is adding anything.
00:13:37
Speaker
So let's get rid of that.
00:13:38
Speaker
I mean, this is very Caroline.
00:13:39
Speaker
She's like, no nonsense, kind of get rid of that, bit more of that.
00:13:43
Speaker
So I spent a little bit of time just finessing it.
00:13:48
Speaker
and um and then getting it ready for her to to do her thing with um and then i think so i think i signed with her around sort of late july last year and then i think i finally got a deal i think it was about october september october so it took a little bit of time to get it ready and then you know it was over to caroline to do her thing with it yeah um but yes i did i did have some really constructive advice from her which was exactly you know what i wanted an agent for i mean i have a huge amount of admiration for
00:14:17
Speaker
people who self-publish and um you know I've worked in marketing for a really long time and I thought really long and hard about whether or not I could go down that route because I probably more than some have the ability to to ring my own bell um because I know how to do it but equally I was just very conscious that um it was an industry I didn't know anything about and if I could get some expert advice on my on my side then that would be really useful so that was always my plan a and if that hadn't worked out then then I probably would have gone down that route but um
00:14:46
Speaker
But yeah, I felt Caroline was really, really constructive with her feedback.
00:14:51
Speaker
And we got that manuscript in good shape really quickly.
00:14:55
Speaker
And once it was, were you involved much in the submission process between when Caroline was taking it out to publishers?
00:15:02
Speaker
No, not at all.
00:15:03
Speaker
I was chewing my fingernails in Wiltshire, Washington.
00:15:09
Speaker
Well, she was doing her thing in London.
00:15:12
Speaker
Yeah.
00:15:12
Speaker
So I wasn't involved at all until she had had, obviously when she started to get feedback, she shared that with me.
00:15:18
Speaker
Yeah.
00:15:20
Speaker
And, you know, was sort of kind of keeping me calm until such time as we had a positive call.
00:15:26
Speaker
And then I had a conversation with my editor at Headline who, you know, talked about what their plans were and her thoughts.
00:15:35
Speaker
And yeah, and that all then started to move quite quickly.
00:15:38
Speaker
Okay.
00:15:39
Speaker
And how did you find working with an editor?
00:15:41
Speaker
Oh, my goodness.
00:15:42
Speaker
She's amazing.
00:15:43
Speaker
I mean, it's funny.
00:15:44
Speaker
We're sort of three generations of women.
00:15:46
Speaker
So Bea Grabowska is my editor at the headline.
00:15:50
Speaker
And she's, I guess, probably in her late 20s.
00:15:53
Speaker
And then, of course, I'm in my late 40s.
00:15:54
Speaker
And then Caroline is another generation further on.
00:15:57
Speaker
So we're this kind of three generations of women who all are sort of pushing towards a common goal.
00:16:03
Speaker
So it's really nice to have those two different perspectives on my work.
00:16:07
Speaker
But, you know,
00:16:07
Speaker
Yeah, Bea is amazing.
00:16:09
Speaker
And she came back and it was just immediately clear that she totally got me and got the book and like was excited about all the same things I was excited about.
00:16:19
Speaker
And it just felt like it felt like a really, really good fit.
00:16:21
Speaker
So that was that was a lovely conversation to have, obviously by Zoom, because, you know, that's all we did back in those
Future Book Releases and Design Involvement
00:16:27
Speaker
days.
00:16:27
Speaker
It still is.
00:16:29
Speaker
But yeah, so that felt really nice to meet somebody who said, I've read the book and this is what I loved about it and this is what we'd like to do with it.
00:16:36
Speaker
And yeah, that felt really positive.
00:16:38
Speaker
And the next one, Never Gonna Happen, out in May.
00:16:42
Speaker
Same editor?
00:16:44
Speaker
Same editor.
00:16:44
Speaker
Yep.
00:16:45
Speaker
So, so my, my deal with headline has now been extended to four books.
00:16:52
Speaker
And so I will be working hopefully with, I mean, she and I have started working on the third.
00:16:57
Speaker
So I have drafted the manuscript for the third.
00:17:00
Speaker
So it's in kind of first, first she's, she's given, you know, structural edits and all that kind of stuff.
00:17:05
Speaker
So that's moving along quite nicely.
00:17:08
Speaker
So yes.
00:17:09
Speaker
So hopefully I will work with B for all four, which would be really lovely.
00:17:12
Speaker
Okay.
00:17:13
Speaker
So the second one, you're done with it.
00:17:15
Speaker
It's gone.
00:17:17
Speaker
Yeah.
00:17:17
Speaker
It's in like final proofreading now.
00:17:19
Speaker
And that's out in May.
00:17:20
Speaker
Okay.
00:17:21
Speaker
Just waiting for a cover.
00:17:22
Speaker
Apparently we'll have that in a couple of weeks.
00:17:24
Speaker
So that's quite exciting.
00:17:25
Speaker
Do you have any say in the covers?
00:17:27
Speaker
I do actually a little bit.
00:17:28
Speaker
Yeah.
00:17:30
Speaker
So Bea asked me for the first book to sort of share some thoughts on what was in my head, make her a little mood board.
00:17:38
Speaker
So I did.
00:17:38
Speaker
And, you know, I gave her some sort of visual styles and colors and things that were in my head.
00:17:43
Speaker
And she came back and said, great, because that's exactly where my head is at too.
00:17:47
Speaker
And then one of the amazingly talented designers at Headline did the book cover.
00:17:54
Speaker
And hopefully the same designer will do the second one.
00:17:56
Speaker
So it will be in the same kind of wheelhouse, but obviously a slightly different theme and a little, you know, different colours and so on.
00:18:07
Speaker
But I think they will all feel like they're part of the same family, I think.
00:18:10
Speaker
Oh yeah.
00:18:10
Speaker
Brilliant.
00:18:11
Speaker
On brand.
00:18:12
Speaker
I really like the cover for two meters from you.
00:18:14
Speaker
It's fun, isn't it?
00:18:16
Speaker
Yeah.
00:18:16
Speaker
But like bright colors and sort of friendly and welcoming look to it.
00:18:21
Speaker
No, it's really nice.
00:18:22
Speaker
Thank you.
00:18:24
Speaker
It feels a bit like you've been, this, this, your journey into publishing from, as you said, you didn't know anything about publishing has been, sounds like it's been nonstop since basically you signed with Caroline.
Balancing Writing with Other Roles
00:18:36
Speaker
Yeah, it has.
00:18:37
Speaker
It's been, I mean, you know, I have to pinch myself because I feel like it's all moved extremely quickly.
00:18:43
Speaker
And, you know, I still have a job.
00:18:46
Speaker
I still have a proper job.
00:18:48
Speaker
And obviously at the moment I am live blogging Strictly at the weekends.
00:18:51
Speaker
I don't really know which way is up most days at the moment.
00:18:55
Speaker
It'll get better in January.
00:18:57
Speaker
Strictly's got three more weeks to go and then that'll be finished and I'll have a bit more breathing space at the weekends.
00:19:01
Speaker
Right.
00:19:02
Speaker
But yeah, it does feel like a bit of a whirlwind, but I'm loving it.
00:19:06
Speaker
I feel I feel very lucky and very, very blessed to be in this situation.
00:19:11
Speaker
So I'm making the most of it.
00:19:13
Speaker
Yeah, no, it's brilliant.
00:19:14
Speaker
And let's talk about, let's talk about these strictly live blogs.
00:19:17
Speaker
Let's talk about strictly.
00:19:19
Speaker
What exactly is entails within live blogging?
00:19:23
Speaker
What's your role there?
00:19:25
Speaker
It was born out of cricket, funnily enough.
00:19:28
Speaker
So way back in the day, like early noughties, the Guardian started doing these sort of over by over cricket blogs on what was the newly formed Guardian website.
00:19:38
Speaker
And
00:19:39
Speaker
It was just a way of following the cricket if you weren't watching, you know, or alongside watching, a bit like having a commentator, but one that didn't speak like a written commentary that, that, that sort of, and it moved quite quickly in the sort of mid noughties into television for like big event TV.
00:19:55
Speaker
So, you know, things like big brother and early X factor and like, you know, Charles and Camilla's wedding, like things where people gathered around the television, you could watch it and then you would have this, this commentary.
00:20:06
Speaker
And I, I,
00:20:08
Speaker
was a blogger at the time, you know, the early wave of sort of 2006 kind of blogging, pre-social media.
00:20:16
Speaker
And I got wind of a rumor.
00:20:21
Speaker
I mean, I was literally like a mum of two living in Wiltshire.
00:20:23
Speaker
I didn't have any connections in the world of journalism, absolutely no qualifications, blagged my way in as usual.
00:20:29
Speaker
I got wind of the fact that they were sort of interested in recruiting bloggers to do live blogs rather than journalists, because obviously it's a slight different skill.
00:20:37
Speaker
Heard about that on the sort of blogging grapevine and then just hammered on their door relentlessly until they got so sick of me.
00:20:44
Speaker
They said, yes, go on then, have a go.
00:20:46
Speaker
And that was 2008, 2009.
00:20:48
Speaker
So 13 years on, I'm still doing it.
00:20:51
Speaker
But now I focus almost exclusively, you know, for a while I did The Apprentice and Bake Off and X Factor and all those kind of big event TV sort of.
00:21:03
Speaker
But now, because I have a million other things and a proper job, I just do it.
00:21:07
Speaker
I just do strictly now.
00:21:10
Speaker
And then I live blog Eurovision, the Eurovision Song Contest, which is my other great passion.
00:21:14
Speaker
But I do that for Eurovision, for Eurovision.tv rather than The Guardian.
00:21:18
Speaker
So it's like it's live.
00:21:21
Speaker
You are watching it and then... I'm watching it and writing at the same time.
00:21:25
Speaker
So I'm writing a live commentary of the show minute by minute.
00:21:30
Speaker
It's a stream of consciousness, basically.
00:21:32
Speaker
It's me talking about the dance and the dresses and the outfits.
00:21:36
Speaker
And it's supposed to be quite funny.
00:21:38
Speaker
Yeah.
00:21:39
Speaker
I think what makes it quite special, particularly with The Guardian, is that there is a huge community of commenters who join in.
00:21:49
Speaker
So, you know, there's me kind of providing my commentary and below the block there is a...
00:21:54
Speaker
a whole community of people who come along every week and then add their wit and wisdom in the comment box.
00:22:00
Speaker
So thousands and thousands of comments every week.
00:22:02
Speaker
And they're great.
00:22:03
Speaker
They're really funny.
00:22:04
Speaker
They're very wise.
00:22:04
Speaker
They're all big fans of the show.
00:22:06
Speaker
So it's all quite good natured.
00:22:09
Speaker
And so I think a lot of people will follow along with the blog as an extra kind of layer to their viewing experience.
00:22:14
Speaker
But others will come to read the blog and also read the comments because they're great.
00:22:20
Speaker
Yeah.
00:22:21
Speaker
I wonder how much I speak to a lot of people who are sort of not agented yet trying to write or just starting writing or talking about, you know, things that they've struggled with writing.
00:22:32
Speaker
And a lot of my friends say that they often struggle doing a vomit draft where you just, it's just like, I've just got to write it down.
00:22:42
Speaker
It doesn't need to be perfect.
00:22:44
Speaker
Because the trap is often to you write a paragraph and then you can't help but reread it and then you keep rewriting it and you keep rewriting it.
00:22:51
Speaker
I wonder if, do you think that doing those live blogs, that experience of just kind of in a situation where it's like, I have to get this down.
00:22:59
Speaker
I can't change it.
00:23:00
Speaker
It's done.
00:23:01
Speaker
Do you think that helps you to just...
00:23:04
Speaker
It helps me to focus.
00:23:05
Speaker
So the only way you can write a live blog is to go into a bit of a zone.
00:23:09
Speaker
You imagine I'm trying to watch TV with one eye and look at a laptop with another and then think and write simultaneously whilst editing and adding pictures and proofreading and all of those things at the same time.
00:23:21
Speaker
It's the ultimate multitasking.
00:23:24
Speaker
You add pictures as well.
00:23:25
Speaker
Oh yeah, I do all that.
00:23:27
Speaker
I'm a one woman live blog machine.
00:23:30
Speaker
But
00:23:31
Speaker
when you're so many of those skills come into play, like to sit and in front of my laptop and go, right, thousand words today, every day, thousand words.
00:23:41
Speaker
And just, as you say, vomit them out.
00:23:43
Speaker
Like don't, don't get hung up on the details.
00:23:46
Speaker
Don't like second guess yourself, like just empty your brain of what has been rattling around in the last 24 hours since you last did this.
00:23:54
Speaker
I think that's, that's really, really important.
00:23:56
Speaker
And it, you know, you can,
00:24:01
Speaker
You can edit a bad bit of text, but you have to have some text.
Writing Habits and Self-Care
00:24:05
Speaker
Exactly.
00:24:06
Speaker
And so you've got to get it out.
00:24:07
Speaker
And I think you say, I mean, my, my, one of my favorite phrases is shit it out.
00:24:12
Speaker
Just shit it out, Heidi.
00:24:13
Speaker
Just get it out there.
00:24:14
Speaker
Get it out of your head and onto the page.
00:24:17
Speaker
And, and then it's not in your head anymore and you can fill your head with something else.
00:24:22
Speaker
And I think that that is really, really important.
00:24:24
Speaker
And, and, you know, that's what drafts are for, right?
00:24:26
Speaker
Exactly.
00:24:27
Speaker
Yeah.
00:24:27
Speaker
Because I mean, realistically, I think most the sort of nuance and things like that, that's all written in the redrafts.
00:24:33
Speaker
Oh, completely.
00:24:34
Speaker
Yeah.
00:24:34
Speaker
You know, there's that phrase, you can't edit a blank page.
00:24:39
Speaker
Totally.
00:24:40
Speaker
And no one's ever going to see it.
00:24:41
Speaker
No one's ever going to see this dreadful mess of a first draft.
00:24:45
Speaker
Yeah.
00:24:46
Speaker
It's really important to get it done.
00:24:48
Speaker
And I tend to write in blocks.
00:24:51
Speaker
I'll write a few chapters and then I'll go back and refine a little bit and then I'll move on rather than just write the whole thing flat out.
00:24:58
Speaker
I do tend to write in sort of 10,000 word blocks and then twiddle with it as I go along.
00:25:05
Speaker
But again, I know everybody has their different ways and that was what felt right for me.
00:25:11
Speaker
But the most important thing is I try and write something every day.
00:25:15
Speaker
Yes, that's the, no matter what it is, take, or how much you do, always take a step in the direction of your dreams every day.
00:25:22
Speaker
I love, you're like a, you're like a Instagram motivational quote in human form.
00:25:27
Speaker
I love it.
00:25:28
Speaker
I'm pretty sure that's a misquote of Bruce Lee, but yeah, I'll take it.
00:25:32
Speaker
A misquote of Bruce Lee, I'm sure, you know, well, why not?
00:25:36
Speaker
I mean, segwaying on from there,
00:25:38
Speaker
If you could give some advice with the kind of your experience over the last year and a half about writing and getting published and things like that to would be authors out there, what advice would you give them?
00:25:54
Speaker
I think I would say be kind to yourself.
00:25:58
Speaker
Remember to enjoy it.
00:26:00
Speaker
It goes back to what I was saying before about how much pressure we put on ourselves.
00:26:03
Speaker
You know, the fact that you're sitting down and you're writing and you've got that passion and you've got that dream and you've got that skill is something to be massively proud of.
00:26:11
Speaker
And I think, yeah, so...
00:26:15
Speaker
It's not a race.
00:26:16
Speaker
It's, you know, it's a journey and it's one we're all on at some stage, some people moving along faster than others, some people further along the journey, but everybody started by writing chapter one at the top of a piece of paper.
00:26:29
Speaker
And I think that's, that's something we need to remind ourselves of and remember that it shouldn't, you know, it shouldn't feel like agony.
00:26:35
Speaker
It should feel like you doing something you love.
00:26:37
Speaker
And, and, and so, you know, you need to enjoy it and, and, and be proud of yourself.
00:26:43
Speaker
Yeah, yeah, yeah.
00:26:44
Speaker
I think if it feels like you're not enjoying it, if you're trying to just kind of get through a chapter or a certain part of your book, then you probably want to rethink that.
00:26:54
Speaker
Definitely.
00:26:54
Speaker
And I mean, I think we've all, you know, I can think of a number of times in my career, I've started working a job and I've realized really early on, this isn't for me, whether it's the place or the people or the job itself.
00:27:06
Speaker
I mean, you know, you don't stick that out for years and years and years, you just move on.
00:27:10
Speaker
And I think that's what people need to do is like, you know, not punish yourself, not beat yourself up, not look around and compare yourself to everybody else.
00:27:18
Speaker
I think that's something that we're all inclined to do.
00:27:21
Speaker
And it's, it's,
00:27:22
Speaker
it's not necessarily particularly healthy, like enjoy your own journey and love every minute of it because it's, it's really special.
00:27:32
Speaker
And the minute you start, you're on it and, you know, who knows where it might end up.
00:27:35
Speaker
Yeah, and we all start writing because we love stories and we love writing.
00:27:39
Speaker
You know, that's why we do it.
00:27:40
Speaker
It's easy to forget sometimes when you get caught up in the industry and all the pressure.
00:27:44
Speaker
Definitely.
00:27:45
Speaker
You know, we're all storytellers in our own little ways and that is a real gift.
00:27:49
Speaker
And it is something that, you know, you have to nurture and you have to sort of look after.
00:27:54
Speaker
And that requires looking after yourself.
00:27:56
Speaker
And I think, you know, sometimes I'm not very good at that, but I'm learning that you can't do everything and you can't do everything now.
00:28:03
Speaker
Yes.
00:28:03
Speaker
And, you know, you have to take a breath some days and just go, do you know what?
00:28:07
Speaker
It's just not happening.
00:28:08
Speaker
I'm going to write six more words and then I'm going to go walk my dog.
00:28:12
Speaker
Perfect.
00:28:12
Speaker
And I'll come back to this later.
00:28:14
Speaker
Yeah.
00:28:14
Speaker
I think that's excellent advice is look after yourself as a creative, as a storyteller, as a writer, you know.
00:28:21
Speaker
I mean, it's any kind of creative work, whether you're an artist or a musician or, you know, we torture ourselves, don't we?
00:28:27
Speaker
Because we long for, you know, we long for everything that's in our heads to be out there and perfect and in the public realm.
00:28:34
Speaker
But that's a slog.
00:28:36
Speaker
It's hard work.
Desert Island Book and Final Thoughts
00:28:37
Speaker
Yes, it is.
00:28:37
Speaker
Yes, it is indeed.
00:28:39
Speaker
And that brings us on to the final question, which is,
00:28:45
Speaker
Heidi.
00:28:45
Speaker
Yes.
00:28:46
Speaker
If you were stranded on a desert island, but you could take one book with you, which book would you take?
00:28:53
Speaker
So this was a very interesting question.
00:28:56
Speaker
And I probably gave far more thought to this than any normal person would.
00:29:00
Speaker
Lots of people have given me more thought to it.
00:29:02
Speaker
Don't worry, we've kept people up at night.
00:29:05
Speaker
So I found reading new books really, really hard during lockdown.
00:29:10
Speaker
And I know I'm not the only one.
00:29:12
Speaker
I think a lot of that has been about, I guess, to some degree, avoiding the stress of the unknown.
00:29:17
Speaker
So to pick up a book, you don't know where it's going to go.
00:29:19
Speaker
You don't know what the plot's going to be.
00:29:21
Speaker
And to dive into that.
00:29:22
Speaker
in a time where anxiety is high and stress levels are quite high, is quite difficult.
00:29:27
Speaker
I found it particularly difficult.
00:29:29
Speaker
So the way I've got myself back into reading in the last year is to kind of retreat to books I've read in the past and I've loved.
00:29:37
Speaker
And so they felt a bit like a sort of a safe harbor.
00:29:41
Speaker
Maybe something I read 10 years ago or eight years ago or whatever and thought, oh, I remember I really loved that.
00:29:46
Speaker
I'm going to go back into that.
00:29:47
Speaker
So the book I have picked is The Night Circus.
00:29:51
Speaker
by Erin Morgenstern.
00:29:53
Speaker
And that's the book I would like to take on to my desert island.
00:29:55
Speaker
And the reason I've chosen it is because it's part love story, it's part fantasy, it's part this sort of Victorian fairy tale, but it has the most vivid imagery of any book I think I've ever read.
00:30:09
Speaker
And it was, I revisited it for the first time in years at the end of last year or early this year.
00:30:15
Speaker
And I
00:30:17
Speaker
and just fell in love with it all over again.
00:30:19
Speaker
It's not so much a book you read, it's more a book you kind of immerse yourself in, like proper kind of magical escapism.
00:30:26
Speaker
And that made me realise just how much I love reading again and to perhaps push myself out and go, do you know what, Heidi, read some new things, download some nice books, go book shopping again.
00:30:37
Speaker
And like, because there are so many great books out there, like The Night Circus, there was a debut book,
00:30:44
Speaker
And it's it's an extraordinary one.
00:30:46
Speaker
And, yeah, I think it's made me think, you know what?
00:30:49
Speaker
There's there's tons of great stuff out there.
00:30:51
Speaker
And I see people talking about it on Twitter all the time of like this amazing book and that amazing book.
00:30:54
Speaker
And I just need to kind of get back out there.
00:30:57
Speaker
But that that book I'll take because I know that no matter how bad I'm feeling, I will always find a lot of happiness in that book.
00:31:03
Speaker
Oh, it's wonderful.
00:31:04
Speaker
It's, it's always great when you have that book, that sort of comfort thing that, you know, uh, will always kind of bring out the best in you as well, inspire you in whatever way you need at the time.
00:31:16
Speaker
Well, that's a lovely answer.
00:31:18
Speaker
Um, thank you so much for coming on the show and sharing your experiences with me and everyone listening.
00:31:24
Speaker
Oh, it's been an absolute pleasure.
00:31:25
Speaker
Thank you for having me.
00:31:27
Speaker
Oh, you're most welcome.
00:31:28
Speaker
Come by anytime.
00:31:29
Speaker
And for anyone listening, if you want to keep up with everything that Heidi is doing, you can follow her on Twitter and Instagram at Heidi Stevens.
00:31:39
Speaker
You can also go on her website, HeidiStevens.co.uk for more information and links to her blogs and everything like that.
00:31:45
Speaker
Two Meters From You is out.
00:31:47
Speaker
You can get it in all the usual places.
00:31:49
Speaker
And her second novel, Never Gonna Happen, will be out in May next year.
00:31:55
Speaker
To make sure you don't miss an episode of this podcast, follow us on Twitter at RightAndWrongUK and on Instagram at RightAndWrongPodcast.
00:32:03
Speaker
Thanks again, Heidi.
00:32:04
Speaker
And thanks to everybody listening.
00:32:07
Speaker
We'll catch you on the next one.