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126 Lucy Barker | Historical Fiction Author
479 Plays2 years ago
Historical fiction author, Lucy Barker tells us all about her debut novel 'The Other Side of Mrs Wood', a story about rival mediums in Victorian London. (Photo by Nick Tucker)
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Transcript
Unfinished Novels
00:00:00
Speaker
So our podcast is called Right and Wrong.
00:00:01
Speaker
Are these your notes?
00:00:03
Speaker
Are these your notes about what we're going to say?
00:00:06
Speaker
Anything is a short answer.
00:00:08
Speaker
So how many novels did you not finish?
00:00:10
Speaker
Oh my God, so many.
00:00:13
Speaker
It was perfect.
00:00:14
Speaker
What's she talking about?
00:00:15
Speaker
This is not a spicy question.
00:00:19
Speaker
I love it.
00:00:20
Speaker
This is it, guys.
00:00:21
Speaker
The big secret to getting published is you have to write a good book.
00:00:25
Speaker
I'm going to hear first.
Introduction of Lucy Barker
00:00:29
Speaker
Hello and welcome back to the Right and Wrong podcast.
00:00:33
Speaker
On today's episode, I am joined by a debut historical fiction novelist, Lucy Barker.
00:00:40
Speaker
Hi, Lucy.
00:00:41
Speaker
Welcome to the show.
00:00:42
Speaker
Hello.
00:00:43
Speaker
Thank you so much for having me.
00:00:45
Speaker
It's my pleasure.
00:00:46
Speaker
Let's
The Other Side of Mrs. Wood
00:00:47
Speaker
get straight into it.
00:00:47
Speaker
Let's talk about the novel, The Other Side of Mrs. Wood, which not out right now, but will be out by the time this airs.
00:00:56
Speaker
Tell us a bit about it.
00:00:58
Speaker
So, as you say, it's historical fiction and it is about two warring mediums in 1873 London.
00:01:08
Speaker
And it's about this established medium who is brilliant at what she does.
00:01:12
Speaker
She's been doing it for a really long time.
00:01:15
Speaker
And has made a really successful career out of it.
00:01:18
Speaker
But she's sensing that people are starting to want more.
00:01:22
Speaker
And bright young things is kind of starting to be written about in the Spiritual Times newspaper.
00:01:29
Speaker
So everyone's a bit like, yeah, what's coming up?
00:01:31
Speaker
What's coming up?
00:01:33
Speaker
So she feels a little bit unnerved by this.
00:01:35
Speaker
And then when the opportunity to take on a young upcoming medium and train her, when that
00:01:43
Speaker
pops up, she leaps at the chance thinking this is her opportunity to stay relevant and to stay in the headlines and maintain her lifestyle.
00:01:53
Speaker
And not in a way that it is, she wants to kind of keep up with the riches and the wealth of it.
00:02:00
Speaker
What she wants is she wants to be able to sustain herself independently.
Victorian Mediums and Modern Relevance
00:02:05
Speaker
Do you know what's so funny is something like, I mean, the politics of like being a medium in Victorian London is not something that I've ever really read about or researched in any way whatsoever.
00:02:18
Speaker
But when you explain it, and you talk about the plot of that, it's such a relevant sort of narrative, right?
00:02:24
Speaker
Like we're all kind of
00:02:26
Speaker
as you get older, you're, you kind of like, Oh, I, I, I do this thing, but like, there's a younger person who's looks like they're going to start doing it better than me.
00:02:32
Speaker
And everyone's kind of like going to them and stuff.
00:02:34
Speaker
It's so like oddly relatable, even though it's a very unique, uh, kind of moment in time that you've picked.
00:02:40
Speaker
And then within that, a unique sort of thing with, and when you say mediums, it's like seances and readings and spiritual, spiritualism.
00:02:49
Speaker
Yes.
00:02:50
Speaker
Um, but is it, it's historical fiction.
00:02:53
Speaker
It's, it's not, is it fantasy realism or does it, it's sort of the sort of reality of what it was to be a medium.
00:03:02
Speaker
It's very much the reality.
00:03:03
Speaker
So it's not, um, I think I'm, I'm quite upfront, um, about the, um, the tricks behind it, I suppose.
00:03:14
Speaker
Um,
00:03:15
Speaker
as much as I can be, because probably not surprising, they didn't really write about how they managed to con loads of people out of money by conjuring up things.
00:03:28
Speaker
Yeah, funny that.
00:03:29
Speaker
Yeah, yeah.
00:03:32
Speaker
But they...
Non-Conforming Victorian Women
00:03:34
Speaker
And also, whilst it's about mediums and about spiritualism, I really wanted to use that as more of the backdrop.
00:03:42
Speaker
And I really wanted to... So it's interesting when you say about the relevance today, one of the things that I'm really passionate about is bringing these women who were living in the Victorian period who not necessarily bucked the trend, but who on... We think of the Victorian woman...
00:04:04
Speaker
as a bit of a homogenous lump of just, you know, someone who was subservient, who was repressed and, you know, all of those kind of, which is true, but also there were women like, like we are women, you know, and they were, they were trying to forge their way in within a society that didn't necessarily make it easy for them.
00:04:26
Speaker
And that's what I wanted to talk about more about the fact that, you know, how did a woman become a financially independent where there were very limited, um,
00:04:34
Speaker
um work opportunities particularly if you're middle class um so the story is inspired by a true story and the mediums that i discovered during my research you know there are all these women who are just you know they're really successful at what they do and they're really good at what they do and i just really wanted to celebrate that so yes no it's not magical yeah
00:05:00
Speaker
It's really not magical.
00:05:01
Speaker
It's social and political.
00:05:02
Speaker
Yeah.
00:05:04
Speaker
So what was it about sort of Victorian London that drew you into that?
Passion for Victorian History
00:05:10
Speaker
I love Victorian London.
00:05:13
Speaker
I did an MA in Victorian studies at Birkbeck College and just, I did a fantastic course during that MA with Jerry White, who's such a brilliant historian of London.
00:05:27
Speaker
I mean, like when you live in London, which I was doing at the time, you know, you
00:05:31
Speaker
History is absolutely everywhere.
00:05:33
Speaker
You can see the steps are worn down by all the people that walked there, you know, over the past hundreds of years.
00:05:40
Speaker
And, oh, it's just, I'm talking about it in a very romantic way.
00:05:45
Speaker
I do have lived in London.
00:05:49
Speaker
But yeah, when you look for it, there is so much sort of history and it is easy to romanticise.
00:05:55
Speaker
It's so rich.
00:05:56
Speaker
But I also really love writing about places that I know and that, you know, and I love reading about places where I recognize street names.
00:06:05
Speaker
So that's, so my book is set in Notting Hill and I used to live down the less salubrious end of Portobello Road.
00:06:12
Speaker
So I know it really well.
00:06:15
Speaker
And also I love maps.
00:06:16
Speaker
So I could just spend years just looking at Victorian maps.
00:06:21
Speaker
So Victorian has always been, is it specifically Victorian London that you're kind of fascinated in or is it Victorian, that kind of era across the UK, across Europe?
Mediums and Victorian Fascination
00:06:31
Speaker
Across the world really.
00:06:33
Speaker
I just find the 19th century really fascinating.
00:06:35
Speaker
You know, you have a lot of primary resources or sources rather from
00:06:42
Speaker
the 18th century, but 19th century is where it really ramps up.
00:06:45
Speaker
You know, you've got so many firsthand experiences that you can explore.
00:06:51
Speaker
And I don't know, they just feel so close.
00:06:53
Speaker
And they're so like us as well, the Victorians, you know, we haven't really changed
00:06:58
Speaker
a huge amount in terms of what we're, what concerns us as a society.
00:07:02
Speaker
That's true.
00:07:04
Speaker
And so within that, you, you love the, the, the period, the era, what, what was it that then drew you even, even sort of to the sort of quite narrow sort of area of mediums and seances within that?
00:07:18
Speaker
Well, as I say, you know, I've always wanted to write about women.
00:07:23
Speaker
And it seems, although there were men who were performing as mediums, it was a very female-dominated thing.
00:07:32
Speaker
Women were thought to be more spiritual than men.
00:07:35
Speaker
And also, it's something that they could do at home in...
00:07:38
Speaker
the safe domestic sphere where they weren't, where they could remain respectable.
00:07:46
Speaker
And it was a way of hanging out with your friends and doing something interesting.
00:07:49
Speaker
It was a way of feeling special and that you had powers at a time when you didn't necessarily have them.
00:07:57
Speaker
So that's what really drew me in.
00:07:58
Speaker
And also I'm completely obsessed with the idea of the other side.
00:08:03
Speaker
So that was, I'm slightly obsessed with personality.
00:08:06
Speaker
You might find it.
00:08:07
Speaker
Right.
00:08:08
Speaker
Yeah.
00:08:08
Speaker
Okay.
00:08:09
Speaker
So you combined your two obsessions, Victorian times and the other side.
00:08:13
Speaker
Exactly.
00:08:14
Speaker
Yeah.
00:08:15
Speaker
I don't know what I'm going to write next.
Researching Historical Fiction
00:08:18
Speaker
So you mentioned that you did do an MA in Victorian studies.
00:08:25
Speaker
Historical fiction as a genre obviously always requires usually pretty extensive research.
00:08:32
Speaker
Did doing that MA, did it sort of give you enough of a view to just kind of start writing the novel or did you figure out what the novel was about, kind of plan it and then do more research?
00:08:46
Speaker
um I I kind of did both so I had the foundation there and I had done um I'd done some bits on spiritualism when I during my MA but um so I read around it a lot before I actually started properly writing um just to make sure that I got the feel of it right but in terms of
00:09:08
Speaker
the proper detail research.
00:09:11
Speaker
I tend to do that as I write.
00:09:13
Speaker
You don't really know what you don't know until you get to that point.
00:09:19
Speaker
But as I say, I'm in a fortunate position because I'm kind of steeped in it already.
00:09:23
Speaker
I'm so steeped in history.
00:09:28
Speaker
But I am because I'm fortunate because I really loved that period.
00:09:31
Speaker
So yeah.
00:09:34
Speaker
And I've been writing in the Victorian period in many failed ways before this.
00:09:39
Speaker
Okay.
00:09:40
Speaker
So what sort of stuff had you written before this in that period?
00:09:44
Speaker
Well, I did the Curtis Brown six month novel course back in 2014.
00:09:49
Speaker
And at that time I was writing a Victorian novel about a woman who accidentally murders her husband, which is great because he's awful.
00:09:57
Speaker
Yeah.
00:10:00
Speaker
So I got to the murder bit, which was probably, I don't know, about five chapters in.
00:10:06
Speaker
And then I didn't know where else to take her after that.
00:10:10
Speaker
And so, yeah.
00:10:11
Speaker
So that book was about 15 different books where she was in the States.
00:10:15
Speaker
She was in Wyoming or she was in Northern England or she stayed at home.
00:10:19
Speaker
So I wrote loads of different opportunities for her and then put them all in the bin.
00:10:25
Speaker
And so that was in 2014 you did the Curtis Brown creative course.
00:10:29
Speaker
Yes, yes.
00:10:30
Speaker
What was that like?
00:10:31
Speaker
Oh, it's brilliant.
00:10:32
Speaker
I absolutely loved it.
00:10:34
Speaker
And it's where I met my writing circle who I've still been, I've just been messaging with them this morning.
00:10:42
Speaker
Yeah, I couldn't, I wouldn't be where I was now if it weren't for the people that I met on that course.
00:10:47
Speaker
Absolutely not.
00:10:48
Speaker
They kept me going.
00:10:49
Speaker
Well, speaking about keeping you going and more importantly, singing your praises.
Imposter Syndrome and Praise
00:10:55
Speaker
And it's very commonplace for, and I'm sure anyone who's been in a bookshop recently knows that almost all books have quotes on them from other authors.
00:11:03
Speaker
And I couldn't help but notice that on yours, there are some very, very big names.
00:11:09
Speaker
Katie Ford, Lucy Diamond, Marion Keys.
00:11:12
Speaker
I know.
00:11:13
Speaker
I know.
00:11:15
Speaker
Are you like, when it's, when it's in the sort of, when you're in the publishing process, are you aware of who is getting these early copies?
00:11:22
Speaker
Like where they're being sent?
00:11:23
Speaker
Yes.
00:11:24
Speaker
Yeah, I am.
00:11:25
Speaker
So I've basically just been this kind of like wide-eyed blinking, what person when all this stuff has been happening.
00:11:33
Speaker
I'll be sitting in meetings going, okay.
00:11:36
Speaker
Yeah, no, I knew that they were going to go out to, they were going to do early bound, which I think are just like ring bound A4 word docs.
00:11:46
Speaker
And I knew that they were going to get them off to Marianne and they wanted, I
00:11:52
Speaker
because the book is is written I don't want to say it myself but I will say it it's quite it's quite a witty book um and so they wanted others the writers with a similar tone so um Marianne Keyes um Lucy Diamond and Katie Ford were like the first kind of names that kind of came into my editor's head wow
00:12:15
Speaker
i know i know and then when marianne said yeah i read it i was like okay i wasn't really expecting anything because i didn't think that she was really reading right and then and then i was on twitter on a friday night and um as you do when you're in your 40s and um and i realized i had a dm um which i never have and um and it was from marianne oh my god oh
00:12:42
Speaker
Yeah, I was very excited.
00:12:45
Speaker
But she's such an incredibly generous author.
00:12:48
Speaker
You know, I feel hugely privileged that she read and then blurbed my book.
00:12:54
Speaker
I mean, it's just bonkers.
00:12:56
Speaker
But, you know, the imposter syndrome is very real because, like, even though she's blurbed it, there's a part of me that thinks, yeah, she just feels sorry for you, babes.
00:13:03
Speaker
Yeah.
00:13:05
Speaker
I was about to say, like, if there's anything that's going to help push back against the imposter syndrome, it'll be having like very well-established, successful authors like saying, no, this is really good.
00:13:17
Speaker
No, no, no, it just makes it worse.
00:13:19
Speaker
Okay, great.
00:13:21
Speaker
That's how you know you've got real imposter syndrome.
00:13:23
Speaker
Exactly.
00:13:23
Speaker
I know.
00:13:24
Speaker
I know.
00:13:24
Speaker
I was like, oh, yeah, no.
00:13:26
Speaker
And like, you know, we actually had a bit of back and forth on my DMs.
00:13:30
Speaker
It was just so surreal.
00:13:31
Speaker
Yeah.
00:13:32
Speaker
And she was like, no, no, really, I loved it.
00:13:36
Speaker
That's amazing.
00:13:36
Speaker
Because I guess, yeah, from your perspective, it was, and it's Fourth Estate.
00:13:40
Speaker
Yes.
00:13:41
Speaker
I guess from your perspective, they were sort of like, yeah, we're going to send it to these people.
00:13:44
Speaker
And you're like, oh, okay, wow, those are amazing people.
00:13:47
Speaker
Did you put any names for it?
00:13:50
Speaker
Yeah, so after that bound one went out, when the proofs came in, which I think were November, end of November, maybe beginning of December, we did a massive list then of all of our wish lists.
00:14:04
Speaker
And so, yeah, so...
00:14:07
Speaker
So you did contribute to that?
00:14:09
Speaker
Yes, definitely.
Writing Historical Fiction: Tips and Challenges
00:14:10
Speaker
Definitely.
00:14:10
Speaker
People like Sophie Irwin.
00:14:13
Speaker
Yes.
00:14:14
Speaker
Yeah.
00:14:15
Speaker
He was so lovely.
00:14:16
Speaker
And again, the publishing is a weird world, but the support that you get from other writers is just, you know, because we all know how hard it is.
00:14:29
Speaker
And so it's incredible though, that being a debut and kind of being welcomed.
00:14:33
Speaker
So, so magnanimous.
00:14:35
Speaker
No, I'm not going to say magnanimously because that makes me sound like it.
00:14:41
Speaker
I know what you mean.
00:14:42
Speaker
I had, Katie Ford was on the podcast recently and she's such a, such a nice and generous person with her time and like,
00:14:50
Speaker
She's had so much success and done so many amazing things in publishing that it's sort of like, wow, and this person is just so happy to just give back and help support up and coming writers.
00:15:01
Speaker
And yeah, it's great.
00:15:03
Speaker
But I think it's because it is tough, you know, and you spend all this time just like writing in this silo and then suddenly other people are reading it and you don't know if it's any good because you're so close to it.
00:15:15
Speaker
Yeah.
00:15:16
Speaker
And you've poured a lot of yourself, not just yourself, but like you've poured so much time into this that it's kind of like, oh gosh, what if I've spent months, years doing this thing and everyone's like, yeah, this is pretty bad, you know?
00:15:30
Speaker
Yeah.
00:15:31
Speaker
Yeah.
00:15:32
Speaker
Yeah.
00:15:32
Speaker
Well, according to some of the one star reviews I've had, you know, but you know, but you're right though, because you know, I'm in my late forties now and
00:15:41
Speaker
And I've been doing this since I was, well, I mean, I've been writing since forever, but you know, I have been plugging away since I was 19, 19, 20.
00:15:50
Speaker
I started writing my first proper book.
00:15:55
Speaker
Was it always Victorian?
00:15:56
Speaker
No, no, no.
00:15:58
Speaker
That came later.
00:15:59
Speaker
Yeah, I never wanted to do historical because I thought it just sounded like too much hard work.
00:16:03
Speaker
Okay.
00:16:05
Speaker
I actually had a similar feeling, but then it was after you read a few historical, it was Bernard Cornwell.
00:16:11
Speaker
I read a couple of Bernard Cornwell's books.
00:16:13
Speaker
And I was like, I probably am not going to write historical ever.
00:16:16
Speaker
But after reading that, a part of me was like,
00:16:19
Speaker
maybe I should write this.
00:16:20
Speaker
This is awesome.
00:16:22
Speaker
Yeah.
00:16:22
Speaker
And actually, you know, you know, that there's that, that quote, um, which is like the past is a foreign country.
00:16:30
Speaker
They do things differently there.
00:16:31
Speaker
Um,
00:16:34
Speaker
And I think the way to approach historical is to just think of it that you're just writing about a different place.
00:16:40
Speaker
You're always going to have people in cardigans who are going, well, I don't think that they would have used a spatula.
00:16:46
Speaker
Well, technically the belt buckles would have been made of different material than that.
00:16:51
Speaker
Exactly.
00:16:52
Speaker
You're always going to have those types.
00:16:54
Speaker
But, you know, as long as you research the things that matter.
00:16:59
Speaker
And it's great, you know, God, who doesn't want to escape to a different world?
00:17:02
Speaker
as soon as when they sit down that laptop.
00:17:05
Speaker
Yeah.
00:17:05
Speaker
And I mean, the beauty of historical is, is that thing of knowing that like, gosh, this, this, this kind of happened.
00:17:12
Speaker
Oh, it's historical fiction, of course, but there's a party that's like, wow, this is like kind of how it was.
00:17:17
Speaker
And it's weird to think that this really happened.
00:17:20
Speaker
This really existed, which is different from something like sci-fi or fantasy where it's sort of speculation.
00:17:24
Speaker
It's like, this could happen.
00:17:25
Speaker
This is like something that someone might do in this situation.
00:17:28
Speaker
Yeah, exactly.
00:17:29
Speaker
And my book is based on
Inspiration from True Stories
00:17:31
Speaker
a true story.
00:17:31
Speaker
So, you know, it's inspired by these two mediums, Agnes Guppy, which is the best name in the world, and Florence Cook.
00:17:40
Speaker
And Florence Cook is known as the first medium in Britain to materialise a full spirit.
00:17:48
Speaker
And she did that in the early 1870s when she was about 15.
00:17:51
Speaker
Yeah.
00:17:52
Speaker
And Agnes Guppy was this long standing, well established medium who became embroiled in this rumour that she was really jealous of Florence.
00:18:03
Speaker
So, you know, this very human kind of behaviour that's going on.
00:18:08
Speaker
I feel like that happens so much in, well, at least movies tell me that there's always like a movie that comes out about like a, there'll be a pop star and it'll be the, the, the sort of, um, the legendary sort of has always been famous pop star getting older.
00:18:22
Speaker
And then the, the, the young new thing coming on the scene and the rival between those two.
00:18:27
Speaker
So it like, it's one of those, as you said, it's like, it's, it's timeless, that kind of story of the young upstart and the sort of old and sort of fading away.
00:18:36
Speaker
And I think that sense of when you're really experienced, when you feel like, you know, you have so much you can share with them, but actually they don't really want that much.
00:18:46
Speaker
What they want is leg up.
00:18:48
Speaker
Yeah, yeah.
00:18:49
Speaker
And, you know, and I think, you know, the vanity and the sense of self-importance is really present in both.
00:18:56
Speaker
Yes.
00:18:58
Speaker
So, yeah, I can't remember why we started to talk about it.
00:19:03
Speaker
Yeah.
00:19:04
Speaker
I don't know, medium seances and stuff like that.
00:19:06
Speaker
Let's go back to, so you did the Curtis
Meeting the Agent
00:19:10
Speaker
Brown creative course.
00:19:10
Speaker
Your agent, Lucy Morris, is also at Curtis Brown.
00:19:17
Speaker
Yes.
00:19:18
Speaker
Was that a meeting that came out of the course or did that happen separately?
00:19:23
Speaker
That happens separately.
00:19:25
Speaker
So I didn't really write for a couple of years after the course because I had children.
00:19:30
Speaker
As in, I had them.
00:19:33
Speaker
I made them in that time.
00:19:35
Speaker
Yeah.
00:19:35
Speaker
And rather than just using them as a scheme.
00:19:39
Speaker
I generally can anyway.
00:19:41
Speaker
um and then um i've been noodling around with that that other novel and then the and then curtis brown announced their first novel award in 2019 and so my writer friend fran quinn name drop um she um she's she was like right you're gonna enter that and then she was
00:20:02
Speaker
that it was with Fran that I was kind of playing around with different ideas.
Curtis Brown Award Experience
00:20:05
Speaker
And so I entered it and I came second and Lucy offered me representation.
00:20:10
Speaker
So that's how I, but even though I've done the course, I think I was the only one in the shortlist who'd done the course.
00:20:17
Speaker
So it wasn't necessarily related.
00:20:19
Speaker
But it was, it was a Curtis Brown competition.
00:20:22
Speaker
It was a Curtis Brown competition in 2019.
00:20:25
Speaker
Okay.
00:20:27
Speaker
And so you then, was that with, um, with this book?
00:20:32
Speaker
Yes.
00:20:33
Speaker
Okay.
00:20:33
Speaker
Right.
00:20:34
Speaker
And then you would have worked on it for a bit with Lucy and then presumably gone on, on sub to publishers.
00:20:40
Speaker
Yeah.
00:20:40
Speaker
So I worked on it off and on because then lockdown happened.
00:20:45
Speaker
And then I was, I didn't really write during lockdown because I have small children who weren't in childcare, which is a special kind of hell.
00:20:57
Speaker
And so I couldn't, I couldn't really write for ages.
00:21:01
Speaker
So it took me about a year to do the first draft properly.
00:21:05
Speaker
And then Lucy very discreetly came back and said,
00:21:09
Speaker
well, there's lots to love.
00:21:15
Speaker
And then I rewrote it again and then subbed to her in January last year.
00:21:22
Speaker
And then we did loads of edits.
00:21:23
Speaker
I have to say that I am so lucky.
00:21:26
Speaker
Lucy is an incredible agent and she's a brilliant editor.
00:21:29
Speaker
And we honed it and honed it and honed it until it went out.
00:21:33
Speaker
Actually, a year ago, I was having my pitch meetings this time last year.
00:21:38
Speaker
Today?
00:21:38
Speaker
No, no, no.
00:21:40
Speaker
My launch day will be a year to the day that Fourth Estate pitched to me.
00:21:46
Speaker
Oh, great.
00:21:47
Speaker
Okay.
00:21:47
Speaker
So lots of edits with Lucy.
00:21:50
Speaker
Did you then do many more edits with your editor at Fourth Estate?
00:21:56
Speaker
No, I was really lucky because Lucy had whipped it into such incredible shape.
00:22:04
Speaker
It was so polished.
Editing Process
00:22:05
Speaker
My first, the notes that came back.
00:22:07
Speaker
So I sold in the UK and in the US.
00:22:10
Speaker
So they, my two editors, Millicent and Katie kind of came together and brainstormed the, the edits and,
00:22:21
Speaker
And then I had one round of edits and then Katie asked me to undo some of those edits because she thought she'd made a wrong decision about changing the direction of something.
00:22:31
Speaker
And then it was just line edits.
00:22:32
Speaker
So I was in a really fortunate position.
00:22:34
Speaker
Yeah, that's great.
00:22:35
Speaker
Lucy really did a great job with me before subbing.
00:22:39
Speaker
Yeah, she did.
00:22:40
Speaker
She did.
00:22:40
Speaker
And I think, but I think also that it's really difficult when you're editing because you're really close to your work.
00:22:46
Speaker
And also you, you know, you've got all these pages full of darlings that you just don't want to kill off.
00:22:51
Speaker
And I think I'm, I'm not precious anymore about my writing.
00:22:55
Speaker
And it's like, if you don't think that works fine, it's going, you know?
00:22:58
Speaker
Yeah.
00:23:00
Speaker
I think, yeah, I just listened to other people and that really helped me.
00:23:04
Speaker
I think that's a great skill.
00:23:06
Speaker
And I think it comes with time.
00:23:08
Speaker
Like the longer you spend writing, the more you understand that it's okay for me to delete a whole chapter, for me to delete like some thousands of words.
00:23:17
Speaker
That's fine.
00:23:18
Speaker
If it was good, like if it's kind of like the Stephen King thing where I don't fully agree with not taking notes, but Stephen King thinks you shouldn't take notes and stuff because if the idea is good enough, you'll remember it.
00:23:33
Speaker
Which I don't fully agree with, but the idea of me, whenever I think like, okay, I'm going to delete a few thousand words that like when I was, you know, when I first started writing, I was like, oh, how can I do that?
00:23:45
Speaker
Like, you know, that's, there's so much time and like, maybe there's something really good in there.
00:23:48
Speaker
And now I think, oh, did it, if there was something really good in there, I will have remembered it and I will, I can easily just type it up again.
00:23:55
Speaker
Yeah, I think you're right.
00:23:56
Speaker
And I think, yeah, I can just say about the Stephen, the Stephen King is, I love him.
00:24:03
Speaker
That's a man that's not multitasking.
00:24:08
Speaker
That's a man who's not thinking, oh, God, have I done the kids PE kit?
00:24:12
Speaker
You know, have I made them pack lunches?
00:24:15
Speaker
Yeah.
00:24:15
Speaker
Yeah.
00:24:16
Speaker
Oh, God, there's no socks.
00:24:18
Speaker
Yeah.
00:24:20
Speaker
Sun cream.
00:24:20
Speaker
I need sun cream.
00:24:23
Speaker
I went off tangent.
00:24:24
Speaker
That was always going to happen.
00:24:26
Speaker
Stephen King always takes me off on a tangent.
00:24:28
Speaker
Oh, okay, okay.
Learning to Accept Edits
00:24:30
Speaker
Oh, yeah.
00:24:30
Speaker
No, I'm not worried about.
00:24:33
Speaker
I think you're right.
00:24:33
Speaker
I think you will remember it.
00:24:35
Speaker
And I think, I mean, I always have a, I work first in word.
00:24:39
Speaker
And then when it's, I can start to see the shape of it, I put it on to Scrivener because that will kill at least two days of writing time, me just organizing it, which is great.
00:24:47
Speaker
I do very similar things.
00:24:49
Speaker
Yeah.
00:24:50
Speaker
What other things can I add into Scrivener?
00:24:53
Speaker
Colours, put colour tabs on.
00:24:58
Speaker
I just have loads of little scenes that I keep.
00:25:02
Speaker
So, I mean, nothing's killed anymore.
00:25:04
Speaker
It's not like we're in the 19th century where everything was handwritten and we can just chop and change and put things in.
00:25:13
Speaker
Yeah, exactly.
00:25:14
Speaker
Yeah.
00:25:14
Speaker
But I think, you know, there's a fine line between owning your work and being too precious about it, which, as you say, I think it is really learned.
00:25:25
Speaker
Because also, I always remember now, I always think I'm not, the first draft's for me, the second draft is for everyone else.
00:25:33
Speaker
Yes.
00:25:34
Speaker
Yeah, yeah, yeah.
00:25:34
Speaker
I think it's about what, because a lot of it's about what you want from your writing.
00:25:40
Speaker
And if you are writing something that is going to be purely authentically you and it's just for you, then do whatever you want.
00:25:47
Speaker
But if you're writing something and your end goal is that I do want this to be published and I do want this to be, you know, go out to market, that will have to change for publication.
00:25:58
Speaker
Yes.
00:25:58
Speaker
Yeah, absolutely.
00:26:00
Speaker
Absolutely.
00:26:01
Speaker
You know, I absolutely love writing ridiculously long sentences without, you know, just ramble on for ages that are full of like funny, quirky words.
00:26:10
Speaker
But, you know, no one wants to read that.
00:26:11
Speaker
I mean, I think I've snuck a few in.
00:26:15
Speaker
Every now and again, it's fine.
00:26:16
Speaker
But like, it's like when, when you're doing that multiple times on the same page, you know, it's heavy.
00:26:22
Speaker
It's really heavy.
00:26:23
Speaker
But you know, it's almost like I just have to vomit all of the really ridiculous phrases out and then just go back and just sawdust.
Reflecting on the Publishing Journey
00:26:33
Speaker
all over and then yeah yeah you have the the first draft where you just do whatever you want and then you come back and you're like okay i've got to be sensible now yeah exactly okay okay be serious big girl shoes now come on yeah exactly exactly so you've now that you've gone through the publishing machine um and uh and you've actually sort of documented it on your website um your you you've got a whole blog on lucybarkerwrites.com
00:26:59
Speaker
which anyone can go and go and look at and you can see the various steps from like when you first signed with your agent to edits to signing with the publisher all this that the other yeah if you could go back to the beginning of of this whole experience uh knowing what you know now would you do anything differently
00:27:16
Speaker
No, not at all.
00:27:18
Speaker
I've been so lucky.
00:27:21
Speaker
I probably would have savored it a bit more.
00:27:23
Speaker
I just remember just being really hot and sweaty and a bit like, oh, about it.
00:27:28
Speaker
No, I don't know.
00:27:30
Speaker
It sounds very arrogant to say, but I feel like I've been really lucky, really lucky.
00:27:38
Speaker
And, you know, I think it's really easy, though, to look at a debut that comes out and people like it and it just be seen in that bubble.
00:27:47
Speaker
But I know that lots of your guests have talked about this as well, that, you know, I've been doing this for years.
00:27:52
Speaker
Yeah.
00:27:53
Speaker
I have been working my...
00:27:57
Speaker
really hard on it for years you know um it's all I've ever wanted to do you know um it's all I think about you know I I do feel incredibly lucky it's a proper dream come true but equally you know you put the time in you persevered
Resilience in Writing
00:28:16
Speaker
Yeah.
00:28:16
Speaker
And I think, you know, resilience is the absolute key to writing.
00:28:21
Speaker
It really is, you know, and resilience, you know, you've got to take the crits.
00:28:25
Speaker
You've got to listen to what people have to say about your writing, because if it's not working for them, it's not going to work for the wider audience either.
00:28:33
Speaker
Yes, exactly.
00:28:34
Speaker
One of the things I heard about critique as well is when you are either reading or listening to however you're doing it, you should never try and defend your book because everything that someone is saying critically about your book, unless they're being facetious for no reason, everything someone is saying...
00:28:55
Speaker
Everything someone is saying, that's their experience and you trying to defend it doesn't change their experience of what it was.
00:29:03
Speaker
What you need to do is figure out why, if that's not the experience you intended for them to have, you need to think to yourself, I wonder why that was what came out and whether I want to change that or just accept that that is it and maybe change something else.
Value of Critical Reviews
00:29:17
Speaker
Completely, completely agree.
00:29:20
Speaker
I'm actually more interested in, I mean, obviously I'm grateful for every single review, but I'm finding the ones where there are kind of like, I really enjoyed it.
00:29:29
Speaker
However, they're really helpful, really helpful.
00:29:34
Speaker
You know, you put them in your back pocket and you're like, right, I'm going to make sure that this happens or, you know, I pay more attention to this.
00:29:41
Speaker
But at the same time, you do have to remember that your no book is going to please everyone.
00:29:46
Speaker
No, no.
00:29:46
Speaker
So I think it's almost a failure if your book is sort of pleasing everyone because it feels difficult for people to love it if everyone likes it.
00:29:55
Speaker
I think the only way you please everyone is if everyone's like, yeah, it's pretty good.
00:29:58
Speaker
Yeah, it's all right.
00:29:59
Speaker
Yeah.
00:29:59
Speaker
Yeah.
00:30:00
Speaker
Yeah.
00:30:00
Speaker
It's that kind of mediocrity where you're like, you're just above mediocrity.
00:30:04
Speaker
We're like, yeah, it's okay.
00:30:05
Speaker
Inoffensive.
00:30:07
Speaker
There's a goal to be mediocre.
00:30:09
Speaker
To be perfectly mediocre.
00:30:13
Speaker
And you know what?
00:30:14
Speaker
The thing is, we all find, you know, we all have different tastes in books.
00:30:17
Speaker
What, you know, what I like may be different to what you like.
00:30:20
Speaker
Exactly.
00:30:22
Speaker
And you're right.
00:30:22
Speaker
And I think, you know, I found Stacey Halls an absolute inspiration because I think that she changed, Stacey Halls and Jessie Burton, they changed what we perceive to be as historical fiction.
Inspirations in Historical Fiction
00:30:37
Speaker
I think, you know, they suddenly created this story
00:30:42
Speaker
accessible kind of page turning and I think you know historical fiction's always had that but they just feel like they changed it a little bit yeah speaking of um people that inspire you uh we are towards the end of the episode which means it's time to ask the final question which as always is Lucy if you were stranded on a desert island with a single book which book would it be
00:31:11
Speaker
Oh, see, I think I think I would probably go for the poisonwood tree by Barbara Kingsolver.
Desert Island Book Choice
00:31:17
Speaker
OK.
00:31:18
Speaker
When it's really fat.
00:31:19
Speaker
So it would give me a lot of time to read.
00:31:23
Speaker
But also, I think it's about survival and it's about I think it will also have some tips on how to grow things.
00:31:31
Speaker
But I think the heart of it is so generous and generous.
00:31:36
Speaker
warm and kind, it would feel like a hug every time I picked it up.
00:31:40
Speaker
Even though, even though some grim things happen.
00:31:43
Speaker
But that's life, right?
00:31:44
Speaker
That's life.
00:31:45
Speaker
Yeah.
00:31:47
Speaker
You only appreciate the, the, the nice things in life because bad things also happen, I guess.
00:31:51
Speaker
Exactly.
00:31:52
Speaker
Exactly.
00:31:53
Speaker
So, uh, yeah, so I take that.
00:31:56
Speaker
Okay, well, that's a great choice.
00:31:57
Speaker
Always good to have something that is heartwarming, but also reminds you that it's not all sunshine.
00:32:01
Speaker
Death is around the corner.
00:32:02
Speaker
Yeah, exactly.
00:32:03
Speaker
Death's just around the corner, guys.
00:32:06
Speaker
Just around the corner.
00:32:07
Speaker
And on that note.
00:32:11
Speaker
No, literally on that note.
00:32:12
Speaker
Yeah, exactly.
Follow Lucy Barker
00:32:14
Speaker
Thanks so much for coming on.
00:32:15
Speaker
It's been really fun chatting with you and really interesting hearing all about your writing and your journey and Victorian mediums.
00:32:22
Speaker
Oh, thank you so much for having me.
00:32:24
Speaker
I've absolutely loved it.
00:32:26
Speaker
And for anyone wanting to keep up with what Lucy is doing, you can follow her on Twitter at Lucy Small Bark, on Instagram at Lucy Barker Author, or as I mentioned previously, head over to her website, Lucy Barker Writes dot com, where you can read through her.
00:32:41
Speaker
the blog of her kind of whole journey through writing and publishing.
00:32:45
Speaker
It's a really fun and interesting read.
00:32:46
Speaker
To make sure you didn't miss an episode of this podcast, follow along on Twitter, Instagram, TikTok, Facebook, and to support the show, head over to the Patreon page.
00:32:53
Speaker
And for more Bookish Chat, you can check out my other podcasts, The Chosen Ones, and other tropes.
00:32:58
Speaker
Thanks again to Lucy, and thanks to everyone listening.
00:33:00
Speaker
We'll catch you on the next episode.