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#210 - Celia Silvani
286 Plays15 days ago
Contemporary fiction author, Celia Silvani is here to talk about her debut novel, Baby Teeth and the many years it has been in the making!
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Transcript
The Role of Writing in Storytelling
00:00:00
Speaker
Ooh, a spicy question. I love it. Because the writing is sort of everything. 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. So it's kind of a gamble.
Introduction to Celia Silvani and 'Baby Teeth'
00:00:14
Speaker
Hello and welcome back to the Right and Wrong Podcast. On today's episode, I am joined by author, freelance writer and communications director Celia Silvani. Hello. Hi, Jamie. Thank you so much for having me on. I'm very excited.
00:00:29
Speaker
Thanks so much for coming on. um Let's jump right in. Talk about your debut novel out February 6th. Tell us a little bit about baby teeth. Of course. So, Baby Teeth is about a very lonely, a vulnerable woman who relocates from the northeast of England to London with her husband who we don't like. um She is experiencing infertility. She finds support online rather than from her husband. And when she becomes pregnant, she falls
00:01:08
Speaker
deeper and deeper down the algorithmic rabbit hole and ends up in a sinister online cult and there are devastating consequences for someone in that group. um The book does carry a trigger warning for loss, just for anyone listening, ah explores mummy forums and also the movement called free birthing, which is where some women and birthing people choose to reject all medical support during pregnancy. It does not condemn free birthing, but it does criticise how unmoderated online spaces can be sources of dangerous misinformation.
00:01:54
Speaker
So yeah,
Exploring Themes of Online Radicalization
00:01:55
Speaker
that is a little bit about baby teeth. Very pleased to report it is pure fiction and not my experience. Okay. Okay. Amazing. um Sounds like you're touching on some really like contemporary issues, especially that that element of kind of falling into a specific online community. And then, I mean, it yeah I don't want to say radicalizing if that's not what it is, but it sounds kind of like you're talking about radicalizing online.
00:02:21
Speaker
Yes, it is definitely a radicalizing of sorts and what's really interesting is I was first inspired to write the book in lockdown after reading a really devastating graphic article online on NBC about free birthing. I'd never heard of it before and it just fascinated me and I ended up not being able to stop thinking about it. And I thought, this is the book, this is the book, I finally got my idea of the book I want to write. And as part of it, I joined lots of these communities and groups. And I learned so much. And yes, there's definitely
00:03:02
Speaker
There are some very, very extreme views out there, but like I said, it does not condemn free birthing because also there are a lot of reasons why someone might make that choice. And unfortunately, in the five years since I first read the article in the UK, it's become a much bigger anti-natal decision. um Like for example, there was a headline ah last year about systemic racism in the and NHS and the book does look at the reasons why someone might choose to go online, like what support is there available. But like I said, it is very much fiction. And in those five years
Understanding Free Birthing
00:03:40
Speaker
since writing the book, I have started a family of my own and part inspired by the book, I have opted for the most medical support available. I feel like I've learned too much in the process of researching baby teeth. It's been eye-opening. It's been very eye-opening.
00:03:58
Speaker
So just to, I think I've a vague idea from what you kind of read for measure. it So what is free birthing then? Just a kind of the description of what it means. Of course. Sorry, I should have said that upfront. Free birthing is when you choose to reject all offers of medical support and intervention during pregnancy and birth. So that means no scans, no monitoring of, you know, blood pressure using medical tools and no one at your birth who is, for example, a doctor or a midwife. Some people choose to have something called a doula who's like ah a birth supporter, but yes, it's it's about
00:04:39
Speaker
It's about reclaiming autonomy over your birth. um Again, i would I do not judge someone who makes that decision, but I i take paracetamol you know before I go for a wax, so it could never be me.
00:04:59
Speaker
no no i think i' understand okay sos It's the idea of just totally natural you know as yeah as it comes. Yes, as our ancestors did Yeah, not going to a hospital or anything. No, no medicalisation of birth. It's about how birth should be seen as a natural process. And
Research and Character Development in 'Baby Teeth'
00:05:18
Speaker
just just to say, there is there is research out there about how when birth becomes medicalised because to be able to support and treat birth, a doctor and a midwife has to sort of pathologize it. So you are given like treatments and it becomes a very medical thing. And there is some research out there, but if if someone is calm, like a woman or a birthing person is someone is calm at home, it very much turns it into a ah different experience. But there isn't concrete evidence out there. And it's also worth saying that
00:05:52
Speaker
The big expert bodies in the UK, so the Royal College of Obstetricians and Gynecologists and the Royal College of Midwives have as recently as November spoken out to say they are really shocked and concerned about the rise in free birthing. So it's it's been interesting following the rise in this phenomena ah over the last five years because it's becoming more and more current.
00:06:15
Speaker
Okay, wow. and And now you are an expert on it because presumably you did a lot of research into this. You said that you said that you joined um different communities online. What does that look like? Is that just like going onto forums or like Reddit pages or something?
00:06:30
Speaker
Yes, and a combination. The biggest places I joined were on Facebook and it was really interesting because at the time I ran all media and campaigns for a literacy charity. ah It was lockdown and a lot of the work had to be done virtually. So my Facebook turned into a combination of reading time for three year olds. And then I'd scroll and there would be someone just giving birth a video of that. And it was just such a startling contrast. And I was very glad to be working from home because it was entirely not suitable for work. So yeah, it it's these these groups are almost always private um because there is a lot of fear around the judgment of this choice. I think
00:07:21
Speaker
No one has the data on, is this safe or not? And there is a lot of criticism of people being like, why would you do such a thing?
00:07:33
Speaker
So a lot of these communities tend to be very, very private. You need to answer questions to be able to get involved. and But I thought it was so important to make sure I fully understood all the motivations of why someone might want to free birth to make sure that was part of my character stories and very much done in a nuanced, realistic way.
00:07:56
Speaker
Okay. So you sort of went, ah did some sort of undercover journalism when you were researching this. It's a very generous way of um describing Facebook sleuthing, but yes. Okay. Yeah. ah You also mentioned the mummy movement. That's separate. is that Is that more in terms of the sort of rise of um like mummy content on like social media and stuff? Absolutely. That's been another fascinating thing to track over the last five years. So Full disclaimer, I just before lockdown downloaded TikTok. And one of my deep regrets is not having, but not doing anything with that account five years ago, because if I'd started creating content or had any ideas, I'm just like, I wonder where I'd be now. But I have been an avid consumer of videos over the last five years. And I've noticed such a marked change in the performance of trying to get pregnant
00:08:55
Speaker
being pregnant and parenthood in a way that did not exist when I wrote this book. And it's been really fascinating. I think all the themes that Baby Teeth Explores are now even more relevant, which is just very strange to witness.
00:09:14
Speaker
And did you, you were a mother yourself. ah Did you use your own ah experience as well to influence the kind of storylines and things of baby teeth to to kind of give different points of view from from your own experience?
00:09:29
Speaker
So I actually wrote the book before my husband and I even thought about starting a family.
Writing Challenges During Pregnancy
00:09:36
Speaker
Oh, that makes sense because you knew too much, right? I knew too much. i just It was a really, really strange experience because I had to speak to all of these professionals and parents and um watch and observe and know what was driving these free birthdays whilst being very much thinking, oh, we'll have children in the future with my husband. And then so something shifted and we did start trying for a family and it was all just very odd because I was writing, i was i at that point I had a book deal and I was now editing scenes that I had
00:10:18
Speaker
created based on research, scenes like going for your first midwife appointment and some of the questions that asked that my main character finds really jarring. And I was like, this is so weird. I know what this midwife is about to ask me. It was just very, very odd of like, what is going on? Okay. But it didn't it didn't scare you away from from from obviously having a child.
00:10:40
Speaker
It did not scare me away, but what I did find really frightening was that my um wonderful editors at Orion did ask for, so like I mentioned at the beginning, there is a trigger warning for the book um in one of the first pages, but they asked for a greater exploration of the loss of one of the characters experiences and i was 36 weeks pregnant at the time and i found that so tough there's there's this advice that everyone seems to give you when you're pregnant which is like only listen to positive stories and i was there thinking like i'm having to
00:11:17
Speaker
speak to obstetricians about the worst possible thing that could happen, and really hearing some of the awful things that happened. And yeah, that was quite scarring for me. I did not know that bit. Yeah, not the best time to be doing that. But my son is now two and a bit, and he's very healthy, and I'm also expecting another son in May,
Celia's Evolving Writing Process
00:11:43
Speaker
so it did not put me off parenting.
00:11:47
Speaker
Okay, now from that information, I can deduce that you wrote this book. ah This book has been a while to come out. Yes, it it really, really has taken a while. it I know, i like i I love it when I hear on this podcast, like how long it takes some people to write books. And sometimes people talk clear about how they write up to three books a year. And I'm like, oh my goodness. It didn't take me long to write baby teeth, but the version I submitted to my agent, which secured my wonderful agent was
00:12:20
Speaker
So bad.
00:12:24
Speaker
but it did It did require about a year of editing um and it made it into, it just made it so much better. Oh, okay. Okay. So, but obviously there was something there enough for you to to get your agent, um Hannah Scofield, ah to to get her attention to be like, oh no, there's something here. We just need to work on it. but Definitely. And she is just an absolute gem of a person and would never say that about ah the book, but it did need a lot of polishing. I think to what I was saying before, like it it taps into a lot of themes that have just become more and more timely. So as time went by, it was like, oh, this is becoming more of a big thing in the news agenda.
00:13:12
Speaker
um But yeah it it did take a while to edit it and I loved editing it with her I found that part so exciting and it was just amazing and so surreal to me that someone else understood my characters in the story and what I wanted to achieve and it just that whole part was a real pinch me yeah I loved it.
00:13:32
Speaker
Yeah. um I'd love to talk about um your process a bit. and ah you know that might What's always interesting to me is how that changes once people go from like being sort of outside of publishing, it's like you're just writing something in isolation versus you have an agent, you have a you know publishing deal and stuff like that. so do you Has your process... Well, this is your first novel and you've obviously been working on this for a long time, but um how What was your process when you first like did the draft? Is this the first thing you'd ever written?
00:14:03
Speaker
Yes, it was the first thing I'd ever written. I have always wanted to write a book and I just never had that spark of an idea. And i I'd read so many articles and listen to so many podcasts where authors talk about how you just sometimes you have an idea that demands to be to be written. And that is exactly what happened with Baby Teeth. And I ah really rushed the first draft and became very, very enthusiastic about it. i My process was just making sure I'd mapped out the big motions and reactions of the story. And I just went from there. And I know some people are far more meticulous with their planning.
00:14:54
Speaker
But I would just have a goal of trying to write a chapter every three days after work or on weekends. Like this was the luxury of not having a child and also lockdown. I just had so much time for once in my life. Like no one was doing anything and yeah.
00:15:12
Speaker
ah It just sort of flowed out in a way that I haven't experienced since, like I'm writing book two at the moment and it's taken quite a bit longer. okay But that was my process. i I was very, I know some people go in completely blind, but I did know what I wanted to happen and the kind of points at which those big dramatic moments would happen. But other than that, i it was sort of a free flow.
00:15:37
Speaker
Okay. And for book two, are you doing the kind of a kind of similar thing or are you more ah you trying to ah map it out a bit more? Yes. I very much learned that I should map things out a little bit more because because of all of the feedback, the wonderful advice I received from both Hannah and their Ryan editorial team, I've tried to plan more.
00:15:59
Speaker
So one thing i' I've done for book two is I've actually already written the synopsis and the kind of query letter in the sense that I've got like the three paragraphs that get to the ah core of what the book's about. And that has really, really helped me. Like I know, I know what I want to achieve. I know what I want the story to say.
00:16:18
Speaker
The difficulty is I have, I have a job and I also, um, I'm a parent and pregnant, so I'm just finding it really hard to find the time. And then when I do have the time, I'm just, um, because it's so stop start, I'm just not getting the same level of inspiration and excitement. But when I do yeah get this little snippets of time, it's just, I am enjoying it so much more, I think, cause I've just learned so much from baby teeth.
00:16:48
Speaker
Yeah, yeah, yeah. Are you
Modern Tools in Writing
00:16:51
Speaker
doing it whenever you can or are you trying to have some kind of schedule where you do set aside time per week to to be able to write? Yes, I have Fridays as my writing days and my precious, precious writing days when my son's in nursery and I do try and do a bit wherever I can. I write on Google docs. So it's always on my laptop or my phone. So sometimes when I'm putting my son down to bed, I'm just like, Oh, I know this is what I can do. or Like, Oh, this is what someone could say. So yeah, that, that Google doc is, is quite sacred to me.
00:17:25
Speaker
It's funny how times change because you're not, I've had authors on the podcast who have also like written a lot of their novels on their phone. I think I had one author who essentially wrote the first draft of one of their novels on the train back and forth from work every day. And the whole thing was written on their phone in their notes app instead of money to think like,
00:17:46
Speaker
What would the the the authors of like 100 years ago think when they were on their typewriter as well? They think about people on little phones and then the on the train. I think their minds would truly
Celia's Literary Influences
00:17:57
Speaker
be blown. It is is so wild, but I i wonder...
00:18:03
Speaker
Yeah, i think I think I have so many ideas that just come to me in the middle of the night and I'm like, oh, I need to write that down. I don't. And I wonder if the books are are that we're writing on our phones, that we are able to capture those sparks a little bit more. Or or maybe they just, yeah, when they were doing things more analog, they just always carried around a pen and paper. It was almost certainly the latter.
00:18:25
Speaker
No, I come yeah or yeah or you subscribe to I think it's Stephen King on talking about how he never takes notes because he he says, if it's a good idea, I'll remember it. So if I have to write it down, it's not a good enough idea. I think it is his kind of thought on the whole thing.
00:18:42
Speaker
I think Stephen King and I, for lots of different reasons, have very, very different brains. I'm a complete scatterbrain. No, I, yeah, I'm the same. Like I love a note, but equally, um, I was talking to one of my friends the other day and she was saying she had woken up in the middle of the night and she thought she'd had the most revolutionary idea. She was like, this is going to be my my next novel. This is going to, you know, I'm going to win all the awards for this. This is going to make, this is going to be the biggest book of all time. And she wrote it down and then went back to bed. And then she woke up in the morning and looked at what the note was. And it was the most inane, unintelligible, like nonsense. And she was like, what?
00:19:21
Speaker
There's like something about that half awake, half asleep moment where everything seems lucid and everything seems to make sense. Let you know when you're dreaming and like yeah it obviously doesn't make sense, but in your head you're like, it makes perfect sense. oh yeah I definitely, definitely relate to your friends. Some of the things I've written in the middle of the night, I'm just like, these can never see the light of day. like It'll be like twitchy eyes and like, what does that mean? Who's got twitchy eyes? Do I need therapy?
00:19:52
Speaker
I think that's what this means.
00:19:55
Speaker
um Amazing. What a great time to segue into the um the maroon question. So Celia, if I were to strand you on a desert island with a single book, which book do you hope that it would be?
00:20:12
Speaker
I've thought long and hard about this question, Jamie. I would have to take one of the very few books I've ever read multiple times, which is The Lost Art of Keeping Secrets by Eva Rice. It is a book that
00:20:30
Speaker
defined my friendship with my best friend when we were in our late teens and at universities in very different cities. We would read it every single year together. Sometimes on Skype, she was studying for a medical degree, I was studying for my English degree and we just adore it. It's set in 1950s Britain. It's like a a love story and it's about falling in love for the first time and the power of being a fan of someone and trying to control chaos and how magical it is when you meet new friends and open up new worlds and I just love this story so much it feels like a hug and I'd have to like eke it out on this desert island I'd read it maybe like
00:21:14
Speaker
I think I'd have to do a yearly ah yearly read. I hope I'm not on the desert island for too long, but it's just such a beautiful story and I reread it last year actually and it it just still contains so much magic for me and it would just have to be that book. Okay, amazing. It's always nice to hear one that sort of goes back, almost like takes you back to an earlier time in life and it still sticks with you to to this day.
00:21:40
Speaker
It really does stick with
Balancing Reading and Writing Styles
00:21:41
Speaker
me. And I think it's because the book just has so many associations with me with my best friend. And I just, I'm not someone who normally loves a feel good story. I love unlikable female characters and okay difficult situations, but this is just so gorgeous. I just love it so much. Yeah. Okay. Okay. But you would never write about this. Too likable, too nice.
00:22:08
Speaker
No, no, I don't think I'm capable of it. I think that's been a real, um that was something I've really learned when I was writing is that the books that I love to read aren't necessarily the books that I can write. So I, yes, I love, like I said, like, weird, weird girl fiction. And to an extent, baby teeth fits in that category. But it's by no it's it's book club fiction. It's by no means the literary fiction that I adore. And I similarly I love like,
00:22:38
Speaker
light romance. And I love a a rom-com, but I could never write that story. And it's just been really interesting of being like, oh, yeah, that's very much not within my capability. Well, it's good to know your, you know, know where your boundaries are. Exactly. It's it's been very humbling, but also really refreshing and like really, I've always respected writers so much, but it's very much renewed my significant respect for other authors.
00:23:06
Speaker
Yeah, I think it's not uncommon as well. I think a lot of people read outside of their own genre, whether that's because of a, you know, like you that it's like, I like to read this, but I but I write this or a lot of people actively avoid reading in their own genre so that there's not any kind of influence or crossover. Yes, I can completely see that. I remember when I was writing Baby Teeth, I read um Magpie by Elizabeth Day. And it is a brilliant book, but I was reading it and I was thinking, I need to stop reading this book because there's some real crossover themes and I do not want to be accidentally influenced in any way. And I also remember Audrey O'Drayan's The Push was huge when I had just got my book deal and was in the editing process. And I was like, I similarly, I'm going to wait till I've done all of my mends because I want to really enjoy this book and not feel anything but
00:24:00
Speaker
extreme respect for its craft and not worry that like I'm being subtly influenced by its insidiousness in any way. Yeah, no, I understand. You like it's good to have like a degree of separation. And, you know, especially if we were not writing a big series of books where you're you're going to finish one and go on to the next one, which will be the sequential, you have that luxury of being like, okay, I you know, I can just finish my editing and then I can read that book that I don't need to do it right now. Yeah, absolutely.
Podcast Conclusion
00:24:27
Speaker
Yeah. yeah um Awesome. Very cool answer. um Coming up, I've got some questions about finding your agent. We touched on it earlier, but we'll go a bit deeper on that and the process of querying agents and then submitting to editors. And that will all be in the extended episode on patreon dot.com slash right-hand wrong. um Yeah. that yeah that They're not interpreting it from the receiving end. Yeah, it's exactly.
00:24:55
Speaker
Interesting stuff. it's ah' It's a really cool concept. I'm excited to to to hear more about it and in the future. um But for now, ah just as we as we wrap up here, um the debut novel Baby Teeth is out February 6th, if anyone listening. I think this we're probably going to put this episode out on the same day, so it will be out when this comes out. um Thank you so much, Celia, for coming on the podcast and chatting with me, telling me all about Baby Teeth and your your experiences with with writing and publishing. It's been really fun chatting with you. Thank you so much, Jamie. Thank you. I really appreciate the opportunity.
00:25:31
Speaker
And for anyone listening, if you want to keep up with what Celia is doing, you can find her on Instagram at CeliasilvaniAuthor. To support the podcast, like, follow, and subscribe, join the Patreon for ad-free extended episodes, and check out my other podcast, The Chosen Ones and Other Troves. Thanks again, Celia, and thanks to everyone listening. We will catch you on the next episode.