Become a Creator today!Start creating today - Share your story with the world!
Start for free
00:00:00
00:00:01
#133 - Tia Fisher
458 Plays1 year ago
Young adult verse novelist, Tia Fisher is on the podcast talking about verse novels, writing for teens, rejections and the whole publishing rollercoaster. She also shares a little bit about the origin of her debut novel 'Crossing the Line' and the real life events that inspired it.
Support the show on Patreon, chat with Jamie and other guests on the Discord server and get all of the episodes ad free.
Get a whole month with WriteMentor's Hub for free using the coupon code 'Write&Wrong'.
The Chosen Ones and Other Tropes
Jamie, Melissa and Noami talk about the best and the worst writing tropes!
Click here to find all of our guests' books as well as the desert island library over at bookshop.org.
Click on this referral link to get 30% off your first three months with Zencastr.
Recommended
Transcript
Introduction to Storytelling Challenges
00:00:00
Speaker
Ooh, a spicy question.
00:00:02
Speaker
I love it.
00:00:02
Speaker
Because the writing is sort of everything, right?
00:00:04
Speaker
Like you can fix plot holes, but if the writing... So some readers love that and some readers are like, but I wanted more of this.
00:00:11
Speaker
So it's kind of, it's kind of a gamble.
00:00:14
Speaker
Hello
Meet Tia Fisher and Her Debut Novel
00:00:15
Speaker
and welcome back to the Right and Wrong podcast.
00:00:17
Speaker
My guest this week is a poet and a novelist whose debut novel Crossing the Line, which is written in the fascinating style of narrative verse, came out earlier this year.
00:00:30
Speaker
It's Tia Fisher.
00:00:31
Speaker
Hi, welcome.
00:00:32
Speaker
Tia Fisher Hi, thank you so much for having me.
00:00:35
Speaker
I'm still sort of, I'm going to play that poet and novelist over and over again.
00:00:40
Speaker
I'm so excited to be here.
00:00:41
Speaker
This is so brilliant.
00:00:42
Speaker
Thank you.
00:00:43
Speaker
Oh, you're so welcome.
00:00:44
Speaker
Thanks for coming on.
00:00:45
Speaker
I wasn't
The Art of Narrative Verse
00:00:47
Speaker
actually familiar with that sort of narrative, the style that you use in Crossing the Line.
00:00:55
Speaker
For me at least, I feel like a part of me feels like you kind of have to see it to fully understand it.
00:01:03
Speaker
But since this is an audio only podcast, how would you describe the style of Crossing the Line?
00:01:13
Speaker
Right.
00:01:14
Speaker
We'll start off with it's a story.
00:01:16
Speaker
So it follows all the same rules as an ordinary story.
00:01:19
Speaker
You know, you're hitting the same beats.
00:01:23
Speaker
So midpoint happens and all the rest of it.
00:01:24
Speaker
But it's told in a series of snippets.
00:01:30
Speaker
And each snippet is what we'll loosely call a poem, but it's free, free, free verse.
00:01:37
Speaker
And some of the poems...
00:01:40
Speaker
kind of try to work in a visual sense as well as a semantic sense so that, you know, it might say the word holes.
00:01:51
Speaker
Well, yeah, for the start of it, it says the word holes and the O in the holes is a big O of a hole.
00:01:56
Speaker
And then there'll be the bit where he's talking about going on a roller coaster and some of the some of the words actually go on the roller coaster with you.
00:02:04
Speaker
So some of it, not all of it, is kind of it does what it says on the can.
00:02:09
Speaker
And so it works on more than one level.
00:02:12
Speaker
And to look at it, if you just flick through the pages, it does sort of look like a collection of poems, but when you read it, it does read like prose, as you say, like it's a normal, it follows a lot of the traditional narrative structure rules.
00:02:27
Speaker
Everything goes from one thing to the next.
00:02:30
Speaker
The way I think about it, or I've laterally started thinking about it, is that they're kind of like stepping stones.
00:02:37
Speaker
So there you are, you're crossing over the rushing stream and you're going from the key point or emotion or action point to another key emotion point.
00:02:47
Speaker
And if you were writing a prose novel, you're
00:02:49
Speaker
you would kind of have to fill in more of the water rushing around.
00:02:53
Speaker
You would have to have this segue from one point to another.
00:02:58
Speaker
And the joy of a verse novel is that you don't have to have that.
00:03:01
Speaker
You're going to get your reader to do a lot more of the filling in as the other stuff.
00:03:07
Speaker
They have to sort of bring their own experience to it.
00:03:10
Speaker
and do a lot more of the working out of what's happened between the next one point and the next.
00:03:15
Speaker
But
Influences and Inspirations
00:03:16
Speaker
I think that that is one of the values of a verse novel as well, that it does do that.
00:03:20
Speaker
Yes.
00:03:21
Speaker
It's, it's almost like a new experience.
00:03:23
Speaker
There's not, um, as someone who reads mostly prose, uh, it, it's kind of a fun thing.
00:03:29
Speaker
It's almost like a puzzle.
00:03:31
Speaker
Um, there's some pages where you're literally like turning the book or turning your head around to be able to read certain things and that it all kind of adds to it in a way.
00:03:41
Speaker
How did you get into writing in, in like in that style?
00:03:45
Speaker
How did you kind of discover this style?
00:03:47
Speaker
There are two words for that.
00:03:49
Speaker
And I think you'll find those two words repeated a lot among British first snufflers, of whom there are still fairly few.
00:03:57
Speaker
And the two words are Sarah Crossan.
00:04:01
Speaker
I owe it all to her.
00:04:04
Speaker
I love you, Sarah Crossan.
00:04:07
Speaker
She...
00:04:09
Speaker
was a teacher and went over to teach in the States.
00:04:13
Speaker
And in the States, a verse novel is much more of a thing than it is here.
00:04:18
Speaker
It started off in the, I'm trying to remember, early 90s, I think, with a book called Making Lemonade,
00:04:27
Speaker
which was written, by the way, and this is very interesting for me, especially to encourage teen young mothers to read.
00:04:35
Speaker
And that's important, but it was made to be accessible.
00:04:38
Speaker
Anyway, so it comes from a whole history of kind of Homeric epic poetry, but it ended up there at this book called Making Lemonade.
00:04:49
Speaker
And Sarah Crosser went to the States, taught in the States,
00:04:53
Speaker
was exposed to this wonderful, wonderful style of writing and bought it back here and wrote the most amazing book.
00:05:01
Speaker
I don't know whether she still loves it, but I still love it.
00:05:04
Speaker
I do love it.
00:05:06
Speaker
I'm holding my copy now.
00:05:07
Speaker
I've got...
00:05:09
Speaker
I've got my copy, which says on the fly loop, it says the way to water.
00:05:13
Speaker
And it goes to Stan with very warm wishes, Sarah Crossan, because I was so embarrassed when I went to see her.
00:05:19
Speaker
I couldn't say it was for me.
00:05:20
Speaker
I felt that I had to say it was my son.
00:05:25
Speaker
Now I know it will be fine, but right back then.
00:05:27
Speaker
And that was published in 2012, but I didn't read it to about 2015 or something like that.
00:05:33
Speaker
Um,
Blending Poetry and Prose
00:05:34
Speaker
And I read that, didn't know, like you, I didn't know anything about verse novels.
00:05:38
Speaker
I didn't know they existed.
00:05:40
Speaker
And I read it in one sitting.
00:05:42
Speaker
I could not get up from the sofa before I'd finished it.
00:05:44
Speaker
And I cried and experienced all these amazing things with this immediate voice and the simplicity of writing, this distillation of what's happening and the emotion.
00:05:58
Speaker
And Sarah Crossan has this wonderful sort of slightly underwritten style that
00:06:03
Speaker
And then I went back to my work in progress and thought, well, it was a prose book.
00:06:08
Speaker
I saw that's a lot of rubbish, isn't it?
00:06:09
Speaker
And it was actually.
00:06:10
Speaker
It was.
00:06:11
Speaker
To be fair, it was a load of rubbish.
00:06:13
Speaker
And I thought, well, I wonder.
00:06:16
Speaker
I used to be a poet.
00:06:16
Speaker
I used to write poetry.
00:06:18
Speaker
I wonder if I can somehow blend the two.
00:06:22
Speaker
And I tried.
00:06:23
Speaker
And it was like skating down a frozen river.
00:06:26
Speaker
It was just like, oh, my Lord.
00:06:28
Speaker
I can't skate, by the way.
00:06:29
Speaker
That's why I imagined skating.
00:06:30
Speaker
Skating.
00:06:31
Speaker
would be like if you could do it right it suddenly felt freeing it's like whoosh whoosh whoosh I can do this this is me yeah it's not it's not necessarily my voice but it's my vehicle it's it's it's you know it's how I can get from A to B in the way I want to do it
00:06:47
Speaker
Yeah.
00:06:48
Speaker
Okay.
00:06:48
Speaker
So the shoe fit as it were.
00:06:52
Speaker
It did.
00:06:52
Speaker
Okay.
00:06:53
Speaker
Do you think, I was going to ask, so you were writing a more traditional style of prose beforehand?
00:06:59
Speaker
I was.
Exploring New Genres
00:07:00
Speaker
Yeah.
00:07:00
Speaker
Would you ever go back to that?
00:07:02
Speaker
Oh, interesting question because I have.
00:07:06
Speaker
The book I'm working on now is a prose.
00:07:12
Speaker
And there's a good reason for that.
00:07:13
Speaker
And it's because I'm doing the MA in writing for young people at Bath Spa.
00:07:18
Speaker
I'm just about to finish it, much to my sadness.
00:07:24
Speaker
It just has been the best experience ever.
00:07:27
Speaker
Anyway, so there I was in the first term of that, and they do this –
00:07:33
Speaker
part of this module called, we call it Ages and Stages.
00:07:36
Speaker
It's where you sort of look at lots of different ways of writing for young people and you're encouraged to free yourself from the fetters of where you were before and try something new.
00:07:47
Speaker
And they gave us this writing exercise, which was about one character describing another.
00:07:52
Speaker
And I thought, okay, well, I could do this in verse.
00:07:54
Speaker
I mean, to be honest, I could do this standing on my head in verse and it would be really easy and very effective.
00:07:59
Speaker
And everyone would go, whoa, verse, how wonderful.
00:08:02
Speaker
And I thought, well, no, that's a bit stupid really, isn't it?
00:08:05
Speaker
Because I'm here to learn.
00:08:07
Speaker
So I thought, well, let's on this particular exercise, let's get as far from my comfort as I possibly can.
00:08:15
Speaker
I'm going to write prose, which I haven't touched for years.
00:08:18
Speaker
And I'm going to write historical prose.
00:08:21
Speaker
because I've never written historical.
00:08:23
Speaker
And I'm going to write young.
00:08:26
Speaker
I'm going to write middle grade.
00:08:28
Speaker
And I'm normally a teen YA writer.
00:08:31
Speaker
And I'm going to have one person who's my protagonist describing a disabled character.
00:08:39
Speaker
because I wanted to know how I could write inclusivity into a historical novel and still be okay for readers of today.
00:08:48
Speaker
And I wanted to do that while I had the support of the MA around me and all the feedback from my tutors and all the wonderful, wonderful help they can give.
00:08:56
Speaker
So that's what I'm doing right now.
00:08:58
Speaker
Okay.
00:09:00
Speaker
I think it's, I think it's so useful to try styles that you're not, you're not like practicing that you're not comfortable in.
00:09:08
Speaker
I think I've done it a few times.
00:09:11
Speaker
Um, and I usually come out of it thinking I'm, I'm probably not going to suddenly jump into that new thing that I've been trying, but I've learned so much from doing that, that I will take lots of little pieces back to my comfort zone and I, and kind of expand that out of that.
00:09:27
Speaker
Is that kind of
00:09:28
Speaker
Did you get that kind of feeling from doing that?
00:09:30
Speaker
Absolutely.
00:09:30
Speaker
Although I actually do hope that this, this is a, this is a whole book now.
00:09:35
Speaker
Oh, great.
00:09:36
Speaker
Okay.
00:09:36
Speaker
Yeah.
00:09:37
Speaker
So I am hoping it's highly unlikely to be the next one or this, you know, the author brand business will, will get in the way of that.
00:09:44
Speaker
But, you know, consider my draw for a number of years.
00:09:47
Speaker
The second world war isn't going anywhere.
00:09:50
Speaker
Hopefully.
00:09:50
Speaker
Yeah.
00:09:53
Speaker
So it can sit there until it's the right time for it to be published.
00:09:57
Speaker
And I love it to pieces because –
00:10:00
Speaker
I was editing Crossing the Line while I was doing the MA.
00:10:04
Speaker
And it would have been, you know, you have to work on a manuscript, you have to decide what you're going to do.
00:10:11
Speaker
And doing two grimly, gristly, realistic, current affairs-y verse novels would be impossible.
00:10:19
Speaker
So it would have done me in.
00:10:22
Speaker
So this was, it sounds a bit weird, but The Second World War was my little, little pearl of joy.
00:10:27
Speaker
Okay.
00:10:28
Speaker
You have to wait until you read it and you'll understand.
00:10:32
Speaker
Okay.
00:10:32
Speaker
Yeah.
00:10:32
Speaker
Whatever floats your boat.
00:10:35
Speaker
Let's go back to, to crossing the line quickly.
00:10:38
Speaker
The,
Engaging Reluctant Readers
00:10:39
Speaker
just talking about the story and stuff, you said you are predominantly a sort of YA writer and the story is about a teenager in a, with a very difficult kind of family life that kind of gets led down a,
00:10:51
Speaker
bad criminal path.
00:10:53
Speaker
The story itself is very real and grounded, which at first I thought, having sort of seen the book and you actually showed it to me when we met it at launch.
00:11:03
Speaker
And I, at first I thought it's, it's kind of strange to have this very real and grounded source material sort of basis for the book juxtaposed with this rather whimsical styling.
00:11:14
Speaker
I mean, there's even- Whimsical?
00:11:15
Speaker
Now there's a word.
00:11:17
Speaker
Yeah, because I mean, there's, you know, there's paragraphs where the paragraph is shaped like a roll of toilet paper or like boxes stacked in a tower.
00:11:25
Speaker
But weirdly, like going through the book, it really adds something.
00:11:29
Speaker
And it's, you know, like the moments where you do have to kind of rotate the book around to read it.
00:11:33
Speaker
There's something about that, which feels almost interactive, like more interactive than a normal book.
00:11:39
Speaker
And it kind of, I guess in some ways it forces you to stop and really process the
00:11:44
Speaker
the thing you're reading and the scene that you're in, in that moment.
00:11:49
Speaker
Yeah, I guess you can't, I mean, we all do this.
00:11:51
Speaker
We all skip bits of description, don't we?
00:11:54
Speaker
No, I would never.
00:11:58
Speaker
Apart from the very best books like yours, Jamie, we will skip a little bit of description every so often.
00:12:05
Speaker
I don't think you can really do that.
00:12:09
Speaker
I mean, some reader will come along and say, I skip most of it, actually.
00:12:11
Speaker
But, you know, I don't think you can really do that.
00:12:14
Speaker
And like you say, you have to work that little bit harder in some ways so that it does kind of engage you.
00:12:22
Speaker
But I mean, I've had the best feedback on this book.
00:12:27
Speaker
I am so excited.
00:12:28
Speaker
And this is something which I didn't know before.
00:12:31
Speaker
When I started writing it, I knew it had to be a verse novel.
00:12:35
Speaker
And I knew it had to be a verse novel because verse novels are accessible because the person I was writing for was a 14-year-old boy.
00:12:46
Speaker
But I didn't know how successful that strategy was going to be because I'm getting now, I'm getting these amazing feedback.
00:12:57
Speaker
People sending me shots of their teenage children reading going,
00:13:01
Speaker
Oh, so-and-so hasn't read a book for two years.
00:13:04
Speaker
And I gave him yours and he's reading it.
00:13:06
Speaker
And it just seems to engage people, this format.
00:13:12
Speaker
I think the combination of, as you said, this very grounded, very real story and this playful, fast reading, scrolling format is working really, really well.
00:13:26
Speaker
I'm very excited.
00:13:27
Speaker
Yeah.
00:13:27
Speaker
I think there's also something about, I have a few books where it's very small font size and there's not much spacing and you open the page and it's just, it looks like a wall of text.
00:13:39
Speaker
But with yours, it's, and I don't want to say blank space because it's not blank space.
00:13:44
Speaker
Cause it's not, that's, we call it white space.
00:13:47
Speaker
White space.
00:13:48
Speaker
Okay.
00:13:49
Speaker
I was going to say negative space, like the artsy version.
00:13:51
Speaker
Yeah.
00:13:54
Speaker
But yeah, opening the page, there's something very welcoming about you kind of flipping the page and being like, oh, there's actually not much, you know, there's not many words here.
00:14:00
Speaker
I'll just flick through this one and then it's, oh, no, I'll just do the next one and the next one and the next one.
00:14:04
Speaker
You know what I mean?
00:14:06
Speaker
My total hero, Jason Reynolds.
00:14:09
Speaker
Do you know Jason Reynolds?
00:14:10
Speaker
I know of Jason Reynolds.
00:14:11
Speaker
I'm not too familiar.
00:14:13
Speaker
Right.
00:14:13
Speaker
So he's a first novelist and he was also the equivalent of the poet laureate in the States a couple of years back.
00:14:22
Speaker
And he is, I mean, he's a demigod, frankly, but he's got this great YouTube clip where he says, right.
00:14:28
Speaker
So talking about trying to get young people to read and trying to get young people who are very disengaged with reading and the whole educational process to read.
00:14:38
Speaker
Well, you're using the wrong tactic.
00:14:40
Speaker
If somebody's afraid of dogs, you don't bring a pit bull into their house and expect them to spend time with it.
00:14:46
Speaker
Well, if that's the case with young people and reading, then don't bring these massive great tomes of, as you say, tiny fonts and closely written books.
00:14:54
Speaker
Bring in, and he calls it the palm-sized pup.
00:14:58
Speaker
I love that.
00:14:58
Speaker
The palm-sized pup of a verse novel.
00:15:02
Speaker
Put that into their hands.
00:15:03
Speaker
It's friendly.
00:15:04
Speaker
It's friendly.
00:15:06
Speaker
It's, you know, it's non-aggressive and just beguile them and get them to have the satisfaction of finishing a page, of finishing a chapter, of finishing a book, finishing a book in two days, in one day.
00:15:21
Speaker
You know, just the amazing sense of achievement from someone who has struggled with reading and hasn't fallen in love forever.
00:15:30
Speaker
with stories.
Collaboration for Authenticity
00:15:31
Speaker
That's an incredible thing to be able to do.
00:15:33
Speaker
And he does it in spades.
00:15:35
Speaker
He's just brilliant.
00:15:36
Speaker
Yeah, that's great.
00:15:37
Speaker
That's a nice metaphor as well for it, comparing it to fear of dogs and things like that.
00:15:42
Speaker
Speaking of the book, I was interested, because you did mention as well that with the MA that you're doing, you're sort of looking at writing inclusivity and making books.
00:15:52
Speaker
You're obviously quite aware of sensitivity in terms of that thing.
00:15:57
Speaker
I saw you worked with
00:16:01
Speaker
Was it the Children's Society?
00:16:03
Speaker
Yeah, I worked with the Children's Society.
00:16:06
Speaker
So what we haven't mentioned so far is that the book is based on the true story of what happened to one of my best friend's sons, who's the same age as my eldest son, went off the rails and we didn't know what it was.
00:16:18
Speaker
And then she, my friend, found out what it was and told me and said,
00:16:23
Speaker
I'd never heard of county lines.
00:16:26
Speaker
That was back in about 2018, something like that, 2019.
00:16:31
Speaker
And I looked around and there was pretty much nothing, nothing on the shelves about county lines.
00:16:38
Speaker
And as we all know, people need to see themselves reflected in books, you know, mirrors and sliding doors and all that stuff.
00:16:47
Speaker
So I started researching.
00:16:49
Speaker
And first of all, I researched with a film director called Henry Blake, who's made an amazing film.
00:16:57
Speaker
called County Lines.
00:16:58
Speaker
He used to work in a pupil referral unit.
00:17:00
Speaker
So I spoke to him and then it was all so incredibly scary that I actually didn't write about it for a long time because like you said, the sensitivity thing, I thought, well, I don't have...
00:17:12
Speaker
I don't have the right to do this.
00:17:15
Speaker
Although I had, my friend's son really wanted me to do it.
00:17:18
Speaker
He really wanted to tell me his story because he wanted other people to be able to at least look into the gaping chasm of what they might be getting into and make a decision based on that.
00:17:30
Speaker
Anyway, I ran away from it because I was too scared and I thought I couldn't do it.
00:17:35
Speaker
And then, no, I did, I did.
00:17:38
Speaker
Before Hockey said they were interested, I did then go to the Children's Society because one of the things I found was a storyline, a really bad storyline, in one of the soaps whose name I can't remember.
00:17:50
Speaker
Oh, Hollyoaks, that's it.
00:17:52
Speaker
And I found out that they had consulted with the Children's Society.
00:17:55
Speaker
And the Children's Society are one of a few charities who do amazing work with county lines.
00:18:01
Speaker
They advocate for children and drive laws through, get in working with children, work right from the top to the bottom, trying to work with all the organisations who children will be involved with and trying to do what they call disrupting exploitation, which is totally important.
00:18:23
Speaker
Anyway, so they were brilliant.
00:18:25
Speaker
And I was allowed to interview one of the case workers and then the sensitivity read the book.
00:18:30
Speaker
when it was drafted to make sure that it was plausible and credible and didn't said all the right things, which fortunately it did.
00:18:37
Speaker
Yeah, that must have been daunting, having them kind of look over it.
00:18:42
Speaker
No, it never could.
00:18:43
Speaker
It shouldn't have been daunting.
00:18:46
Speaker
No, I was just so grateful.
00:18:48
Speaker
No, it's fine, because I talked to them before.
00:18:50
Speaker
Oh, right.
00:18:54
Speaker
I think if I hadn't had all the first-person input from my friend's son, I mean, he and I spent so long on the phone.
00:19:03
Speaker
There's a point in the book where fiction and reality part company because I needed to write a story and I needed it to do certain story things.
00:19:14
Speaker
But all the grooming, the part about the grooming was absolutely great.
00:19:20
Speaker
what happened to him.
00:19:21
Speaker
And so I knew that I was right there and I didn't really need to change anything at all.
00:19:28
Speaker
Yeah.
00:19:29
Speaker
Scary when you're, you know, you watch or you read something and people are like, it's like, oh, which part do you think is, is the real bit?
00:19:37
Speaker
Which part is the fiction part?
00:19:38
Speaker
And you're really hoping that certain bits of it are the fiction part, but.
00:19:41
Speaker
No, I'm afraid not.
00:19:43
Speaker
No, I'm afraid not.
Challenges in Publishing Verse Novels
00:19:44
Speaker
I'd love to dive into a bit of the, the business side of stuff, the publishing side of things.
00:19:48
Speaker
So narrative verse, as we've, as we've talked about, it's a little bit different.
00:19:53
Speaker
Um,
00:19:54
Speaker
It actually reminds me in many ways of more kind of experimental literary fiction kind of stuff, as opposed to like what you would expect to see in the YA shelves or children's shelves.
00:20:06
Speaker
Was it difficult when you sort of were pitching this to agents?
00:20:14
Speaker
Yeah.
00:20:14
Speaker
Yeah.
00:20:18
Speaker
So one of the reactions from agents and also from publishers when we went on sub was sort of, well, we've got a first novelist already, which is sort of hilarious because if you apply that to prose, it's kind of like, no, we've got somebody who writes prose already, you know, regardless of the fact that it's a different genre, that it's for a different age, it's completely different subject, you know, it,
00:20:42
Speaker
It's really, really strange how it's regarded as the one thing.
00:20:46
Speaker
And could you imagine a poetry magazine saying, sorry, we've already published a poem.
00:20:52
Speaker
So you get that answer.
00:20:54
Speaker
Although from the people who responded...
00:20:59
Speaker
both agents and publishers, if they were responding positively, then really it was all about the craft.
00:21:08
Speaker
It was all about, did I have the right character?
00:21:10
Speaker
Did I have the right scene?
00:21:12
Speaker
Was my writing good enough?
00:21:13
Speaker
So it was kind of like once I got through an initial barrier to talk to the people who wanted to,
00:21:18
Speaker
to talk back to me, then it was fine.
00:21:22
Speaker
You were on the same rules as any other writer, really.
00:21:28
Speaker
But there are still very few verse novelists.
00:21:31
Speaker
And I did a bit of a written essay.
00:21:36
Speaker
It's a big essay.
00:21:37
Speaker
They call it an article.
00:21:38
Speaker
For my MA, I've written, which is sort of an article, sort of an essay.
00:21:42
Speaker
And so I went out about this, about why there are not more verse novels.
00:21:47
Speaker
And I went out to talk to a number of writers, a number of agents, a number of publishers and booksellers and blah, blah, blah.
00:21:54
Speaker
And it has been so interesting.
00:21:57
Speaker
And while I was talking to writers, I discovered more writers than I would expect who'd had the bums rush from their agents and had been told that that's a lovely book.
00:22:11
Speaker
I don't suppose you could write it in prose, could you?
00:22:13
Speaker
Which is a bit not the point.
00:22:14
Speaker
Yeah.
00:22:16
Speaker
And I mean, my agent, I am the only verse novelist with my agent.
00:22:22
Speaker
And I was taken on by her pure serendipity, really.
00:22:27
Speaker
The lovely Eve White, the amazing, the formidable Eve White, took me on with a verse novel which had a character who played a cello in it.
00:22:37
Speaker
And it caught her eye because her daughter played the cello.
00:22:39
Speaker
I mean, how unplannable is that?
00:22:44
Speaker
It caught her eye, got over the first fence, and then wonderful.
00:22:48
Speaker
And then she supported me so much through two first novels that died on sub, and then finally the third one, which made it.
00:22:56
Speaker
Okay.
00:22:57
Speaker
So you sort of writing this one, crossing the line, did you write this and you were already with Eve throughout the kind of entire existence?
00:23:05
Speaker
Okay.
00:23:06
Speaker
So there was always a sort of back and forth and you were working with her throughout the whole process.
00:23:11
Speaker
That's right.
00:23:12
Speaker
This, I signed with Eve.
00:23:15
Speaker
This is my fifth book.
00:23:16
Speaker
If we count the two prose books, which we will never, ever mention.
00:23:19
Speaker
I think they're a bonfire.
00:23:22
Speaker
I hope I've lost them in an old computer thing.
00:23:24
Speaker
So this is my third first novel.
00:23:27
Speaker
And Eve took me on for my first first novel back in 2009, 19, I think she took me on.
00:23:33
Speaker
Yeah.
00:23:36
Speaker
And then, yeah, that one was another issue based.
00:23:38
Speaker
I think I would always be, certainly for verse, I would always be an issue based writer.
00:23:43
Speaker
I can't help it.
00:23:44
Speaker
I get very hot under the collar about things.
00:23:47
Speaker
And it was about assisted dying, weirdly enough, which is one of the things I care about.
00:23:53
Speaker
Not the most obviously teen subject.
00:23:55
Speaker
Yes.
00:23:57
Speaker
Which is probably why I died.
00:23:59
Speaker
And then the next novel was about climate change because I was doing lots of stuff with Extinction Rebellion.
00:24:06
Speaker
Okay.
00:24:08
Speaker
And I was very hopeful at that point that, you know, we might make a difference.
00:24:13
Speaker
Just like many parts of Extinction Rebellion, I'm afraid that one died as well.
00:24:17
Speaker
But attached to that one when it went out was a little snippet about crossing the line.
00:24:21
Speaker
Yeah.
00:24:22
Speaker
Oh, okay.
00:24:23
Speaker
So it stayed.
00:24:26
Speaker
That was out on Sub.
00:24:28
Speaker
It had this little snippet because you know the way that – here's advice to writers.
00:24:32
Speaker
When you go on Sub, you have to have book number two.
00:24:38
Speaker
and it had better be something you like and that you actually want to do.
00:24:43
Speaker
Because what happened with Hotkey is that eventually, after sort of not responding for the best part of the year, they came back and said, well, actually, we don't want the one about climate change, but we're really interested in the one county line.
00:24:55
Speaker
Have you sold it yet?
00:24:56
Speaker
No, I hadn't sold it.
00:24:57
Speaker
I hadn't written it.
00:24:59
Speaker
I was getting nowhere on sub.
00:25:01
Speaker
I was desperately upset.
The Editing Process
00:25:05
Speaker
that nobody wanted me, that I was a rubbish writer.
00:25:07
Speaker
And I thought, I can't do this grim book because it's so hard to write.
00:25:11
Speaker
It's so difficult.
00:25:12
Speaker
And then I found remarkably that when a, when a publisher said that they wanted me to write it, how, how much I could write it really, really quickly.
00:25:20
Speaker
I wrote it very, very quickly.
00:25:22
Speaker
Oh, that's great.
00:25:23
Speaker
When you, when you did time with Hotkey and you, you were working with, with an editor, was the editor familiar with the, with like narrative versus the style?
00:25:34
Speaker
Oh, yes.
00:25:35
Speaker
I mean, hockey are stunning.
00:25:38
Speaker
They are amazing.
00:25:40
Speaker
So, yeah, for many things, but for two things which matter for me, which is that they really support writing for teens.
00:25:46
Speaker
So, and that is, you know, that point between middle grade and YA,
00:25:51
Speaker
where there are not nearly enough books.
00:25:54
Speaker
And when I was getting rejected, I was getting rejected.
00:25:56
Speaker
A few of the rejections were, I'm sorry, there's no market for teens.
00:25:59
Speaker
And Hotkey really believe in teen writing.
00:26:02
Speaker
And they publish a lot of first novels.
00:26:04
Speaker
So they publish Elizabeth Acevedo in the UK.
00:26:09
Speaker
And they've got a lovely first novelist called John Shabani, who wrote a book called The Silver Chain, which is so beautiful.
00:26:17
Speaker
So yes, they know those novels.
00:26:19
Speaker
Okay.
00:26:20
Speaker
That's great.
00:26:21
Speaker
Cause I was worried that you, because as you say, personal stories, a rarer breed within publishing, I was worried that you would, it might be an awkward situation where you work with the editor and the editor is, I'm sure would be very keen and excited to learn, but you'd almost have to be teaching the editor how the system works.
00:26:37
Speaker
It never, it was never a problem.
00:26:40
Speaker
It,
00:26:41
Speaker
Being edited by the lovely Emma at Hotkey, I think has got to be one of the high points of my life ever, ever, ever.
00:26:49
Speaker
Oh, wow.
00:26:50
Speaker
It was brilliant because the agent got my book.
00:26:51
Speaker
But then when I went to meet with Emma, she really got it.
00:26:57
Speaker
She understood it as well as I did.
00:27:00
Speaker
And she could see with a clarity that I couldn't see where the weak bits are, where the structure needed changing a little bit, where it would be better.
00:27:08
Speaker
And she...
00:27:09
Speaker
It was like having this sort of massive safety net underneath you that somebody really understood what you're trying to do and could probably see how you could do it better than you could.
00:27:21
Speaker
It was fantastic.
00:27:22
Speaker
But the other special thing about Hotkey was that when you, and especially about verse novels, is that when you get onto the copy edit stage, that's when it differs massively from a normal book.
00:27:37
Speaker
And it's...
00:27:39
Speaker
Honestly, it's really hard work because with a normal book, you're looking to make sure your apostrophes are in the right place and that you haven't contradicted yourself and that somebody hasn't suddenly grown a moustache.
00:27:52
Speaker
But when you're doing it for a verse novel, you're doing all of those things.
00:27:58
Speaker
But you're also counting line breaks between stanzas and counting whether your indent rule, which you stupidly set for yourself, which is what I did.
00:28:10
Speaker
I set the sort of indent rule, which I'm still seeing places where I got it wrong and I missed it, when your indent rule is happening.
00:28:19
Speaker
I first of all started crossing the line with putting each poem on a separate page and
00:28:24
Speaker
And then we got to the end of the edit and I planted in this manuscript.
00:28:28
Speaker
It was about 500 pages long.
00:28:30
Speaker
It really wasn't going to work at all.
00:28:32
Speaker
So we had to make this toilet roll decision that it was going to be sort of every poem was going to follow another with a certain number of line breaks in between.
00:28:41
Speaker
which I am so happy now that we did.
00:28:44
Speaker
I was forced to do it, but actually it works brilliantly, I think, in terms of the speed of read.
00:28:50
Speaker
It's just one long, continuous read with just chapter breaks.
00:28:55
Speaker
And I really like that, and I'm really, really happy with that.
00:28:58
Speaker
Yes.
00:28:59
Speaker
I can only imagine the sorting out layouts and design for each page must be a whole... I guess it's actually weirdly similar to doing the graphic novel in that you're thinking very carefully about... I know that with graphic novels, there's a lot of emphasis on when you turn over, do you have the double spread?
00:29:18
Speaker
And when do you want that impact of the double spread and what panels are where and stuff?
00:29:24
Speaker
I hadn't thought about that before.
00:29:25
Speaker
There are many similarities between verse novels and graphic novels.
00:29:28
Speaker
And that is another one then.
00:29:30
Speaker
It is.
00:29:31
Speaker
I mean, I decided that I had to have my chapter openings on the recto, not the verso, on the right page, not the left page.
00:29:40
Speaker
And you can't break stanza.
00:29:44
Speaker
So that is really, really difficult.
00:29:48
Speaker
There are so many rules that were put on there.
00:29:52
Speaker
So you can't break a stanza.
00:29:54
Speaker
You've got to have Leroy and you've got to end on this page.
00:29:56
Speaker
What happened was, I had a marvellous, marvellous editor at Hotkey.
00:30:03
Speaker
She and I spent two whole days sitting next to each other
00:30:08
Speaker
editing this on the hoof and I was having to occasionally actually make up poems on the hoof and take lines out and put lines in to make it all fit which yeah it really was a wow I think she went away and had a quite nervous breakdown afterwards
00:30:23
Speaker
I'm having a quite nervous breakdown just thinking about it.
00:30:25
Speaker
My God.
00:30:26
Speaker
And now that you, now that you, it seems obvious, but now that you've said it, I'm really like, wow, the, the complexity of copy editing, the like late stage of a book like this is must be, I mean, not even to mention just getting the formatting right on like a loo-roll shaped paragraph.
00:30:42
Speaker
The loo-roll.
00:30:44
Speaker
Okay.
00:30:44
Speaker
I've got to say, I've got to confess the loo-roll.
00:30:46
Speaker
The loo-roll.
00:30:47
Speaker
So I'm, I'm what I would like to call an iterative writer.
00:30:50
Speaker
Okay.
00:30:50
Speaker
Yeah.
00:30:51
Speaker
That means that I come up with lots of good ideas quite late in the game and change my mind a lot.
00:30:57
Speaker
So the loo roll thing was right on the late stages, right on the really, really late stages.
00:31:03
Speaker
When I looked at this poem, which hadn't been shaped like a loo roll, I thought, oh!
00:31:07
Speaker
It's a loo roll.
00:31:10
Speaker
I remember sending it to editor and copy editor, expecting them to sort of turn around and go, oh, that's brilliant here.
00:31:15
Speaker
And my editor wrote back and said, that's the last time.
00:31:19
Speaker
Okay.
00:31:20
Speaker
Leave it alone.
00:31:23
Speaker
She let me have it though.
00:31:24
Speaker
Bless her.
00:31:25
Speaker
She let me have it.
00:31:25
Speaker
I'm so pleased.
00:31:27
Speaker
Oh, it's great.
00:31:27
Speaker
It's iconic.
Reflections on Patience and Finalizing a Manuscript
00:31:28
Speaker
Before we get onto the final question, I just want to quickly ask, would I like to get a bit of people's experiences and what they've kind of learned through publishing?
00:31:37
Speaker
This has been your debut novel, first time through the industry rollercoaster.
00:31:44
Speaker
If you could go back to when you first started writing Crossing the Line, would you do it all the same or would you do anything differently?
00:31:56
Speaker
I wouldn't embarrass myself so much.
00:31:59
Speaker
Why not?
00:32:02
Speaker
Well, I think back now to some of the things that I said, and everyone has been so polite and so nice.
00:32:09
Speaker
And as you go through the process and you realise that, you know, chasing up your agent and saying, have you done this?
00:32:16
Speaker
Can you chase them, please?
00:32:18
Speaker
Oh, God, did I say that?
00:32:19
Speaker
I actually look back at some of the emails before this interview.
00:32:22
Speaker
I look back at some of the email threads between me and my agent and various publishers.
00:32:27
Speaker
to get to remember what happened and I can't I'm just I'm so yeah um okay so learnings are you know that the publishing industry is extremely slow and that when they don't answer and then you can't chase them up it's actually not done you know and uh I don't know um try to learn to be patient and
00:32:55
Speaker
not change my writing quite so much quite so late in the game i think i would try to sort of decide when it was done and then walk away yes that's a learning yeah yeah because you i think there's i think most writers can continually edit and perfect something until it's gone past perfection and now it's your you know your continued editing is now chipping away at the kind of peak of what this once was
00:33:20
Speaker
Well, or the, you know, the critical part of your publisher.
00:33:25
Speaker
Yes.
00:33:26
Speaker
Yes.
00:33:26
Speaker
Or you're just annoying everyone around you.
00:33:31
Speaker
Amazing.
00:33:31
Speaker
Well, I think that that's great advice in and of itself.
00:33:34
Speaker
Which brings us to the final question, which as always is, Tia, if you were stranded on a desert island with a single book, which book would you take with you?
00:33:46
Speaker
You should see
Desert Island Book Choice
00:33:47
Speaker
my face now.
00:33:48
Speaker
I'm wiggling.
00:33:49
Speaker
I'm trying to get out of this.
00:33:50
Speaker
Could you not revise this in the same way that this does?
00:33:54
Speaker
It says, we give you this and we give you that and then you go back.
00:33:57
Speaker
So could we not have a thesaurus given to us?
00:34:01
Speaker
A thesaurus?
00:34:07
Speaker
Because I'm going to be stuck there.
00:34:09
Speaker
No one's talking to me.
00:34:10
Speaker
I'm going to lose my language.
00:34:12
Speaker
What remains in middle age, I'm going to lose my language skills.
00:34:15
Speaker
I'm going to lose my words.
00:34:18
Speaker
And it's a good opportunity for trying to increase your vocabulary and your lexicon.
00:34:24
Speaker
So I was going to say I would like a thesaurus.
00:34:27
Speaker
And of course, that's very big.
00:34:29
Speaker
And once you've learned a page, you can use it for kindling or something.
00:34:33
Speaker
But then I thought, nah, because I love creative writing as well.
00:34:40
Speaker
So what I've got in front of me, right, I went through my shelves and I've pulled out one of my books is missing, so it can't be in this pile, but I've pulled out seven books.
00:34:50
Speaker
Do I get to tell you what they are or do I just have to tell you which one I'm going to close my eyes and shuffle and pick?
00:34:56
Speaker
Oh, is that how you're doing this?
00:34:57
Speaker
I'm going to.
00:34:58
Speaker
I'm literally.
00:34:59
Speaker
I've got them in front of me on a shelf.
00:35:01
Speaker
And I'm going to turn myself around three times.
00:35:04
Speaker
So I don't know which bit I'm grabbing out to.
00:35:07
Speaker
And I'm going to pick them.
00:35:08
Speaker
Okay.
00:35:08
Speaker
Give us a quick run through of what they are.
00:35:10
Speaker
I'm going to tell you about that.
00:35:11
Speaker
Right.
00:35:12
Speaker
Okay.
00:35:14
Speaker
Two Max Porters, Lanny and the thing with feathers, because they are beautiful and amazing.
00:35:20
Speaker
And he is the most amazing, intelligent person.
00:35:24
Speaker
Man, Katya Ballen's The Light in Everything.
00:35:27
Speaker
I love any of hers, but I've chosen this one because it's the most recent one I've read because she writes, oh, you have to pick up the Katya Ballen, read it, and then decide for yourself what it is
00:35:39
Speaker
that creates that amazing lyrical and yet sparse style.
00:35:45
Speaker
I think I know what it is, but it's just there's something that she doesn't include in her writing and it's just so beautiful.
00:35:53
Speaker
Weight of Water by Sarah Crossan because you know why.
00:35:57
Speaker
Two books which people might possibly not know.
00:36:00
Speaker
It's Nobody Speaks of Remarkable Things by John McGregor because of the style, his beautiful, beautiful lyrical prose.
00:36:09
Speaker
It's so amazing.
00:36:11
Speaker
And Evie Wilde's All the Birds Singing, which again, it's beautiful poetic writing, but...
00:36:19
Speaker
In that book, it's got the most amazing narrative structure.
00:36:22
Speaker
She's done something so clever with the timeline of how she writes it.
00:36:26
Speaker
I won't say what it is because you've got to go read it and discover it for yourself.
00:36:31
Speaker
It's brilliant.
00:36:32
Speaker
And Elizabeth Acevedo, the poet X, because she's just another genius.
00:36:39
Speaker
And it could have been the Jason Reynolds, but I chose Elizabeth Acevedo.
00:36:42
Speaker
So anyway, I love them all and I love them all because of their
00:36:47
Speaker
the voice the voice yes is all important okay so i'm gonna turn myself around three times i'm gonna not fall over i got my eyes closed well this is a first on the podcast yeah okay i have i've looked i've looked at what is it oh it's easy wild right there you go i'm taking easy wild all the birds singing amazing a great choice narrowed down in a completely random way
00:37:12
Speaker
Amazing.
00:37:12
Speaker
Well, thank you so much, Tia, for coming on the podcast and telling us all about narrative verse novels and your writing and your kind of journey through publishing.
00:37:24
Speaker
It's been really, really great chatting with you.
00:37:26
Speaker
Oh, it's been brilliant talking with you.
00:37:28
Speaker
Thank you so much.
00:37:29
Speaker
I really enjoyed it.
00:37:31
Speaker
And if anyone's listening and they want to keep up with what Tia is doing, you can follow her on Twitter at Tia Fisher underscore, on Instagram at Tia underscore Fisher underscore writes, or you can head over to her website, www.tiafisher.com.
00:37:46
Speaker
Make sure you don't miss an episode of this podcast.
00:37:48
Speaker
You can support and follow along on Patreon, Twitter, Instagram, TikTok, and Facebook.
00:37:52
Speaker
And for more Bookish Chat, check out my other podcast, The Chosen Ones and Other Tropes.
00:37:56
Speaker
Thanks again to Tia and thanks to everyone listening.
00:37:58
Speaker
We'll catch you on the next episode.