Transcript
Speaker: Hi guys, quick one before we get into the episode.
Speaker: This episode is sponsored by Zencaster, which is the production suite that I've used from the very beginning of this podcast.
Speaker: And if you're interested in starting your own podcast, hang around at the end of the episode for our 30% discount referral code.
Speaker: Thanks.
Speaker: So our podcast is called Right and Wrong.
Speaker: Are these your notes?
Speaker: Are these your notes about what we're going to say?
Speaker: Anything.
Speaker: It's a short answer.
Speaker: So how many novels did you not finish?
Speaker: Oh my God, so many.
Speaker: It was perfect.
Speaker: What's she talking about?
Speaker: This is not a difficult one.
Speaker: Ooh, a spicy question.
Speaker: I love it.
Speaker: This is it, guys.
Speaker: The big secret to getting published is you have to write a good book.
Speaker: You heard it here first.
Speaker: Hello and welcome back to the Right and Wrong podcast.
Speaker: I'm Jamie and I'm very lucky to be joined today by a million copy best-selling author and vice president of the Romantic Novelists Association, the one and only Julie Cohen.
Speaker: Hi, Jamie.
Speaker: Hi.
Speaker: Welcome to the show.
Speaker: Thank you.
Speaker: I'm very happy to be here.
Speaker: And it's nice of you to call me the one and only.
Speaker: There are a few other Julie Cohens around, notably an Oscar-nominated film producer who did a film about Ruth Bader Ginsburg, which is extraordinary.
Speaker: Oh, it's nice that you are researching other famous Julies, Julie Cohens.
Speaker: I get her emails sometimes.
Speaker: Oh, yeah.
Speaker: I like to keep up to date with her work, but her work is fantastic.
Speaker: So do check her out too.
Speaker: Oh, that's great.
Speaker: Nice little plug for a fellow Julie Cohen.
Speaker: We're all great.
Speaker: Yeah, it sounds like it.
Speaker: Let's focus on you.
Speaker: Let's talk about you.
Speaker: You've been, I mean, you've been writing professionally for a long time now.
Speaker: Yes.
Speaker: Two dozen books out at this point around that number.
Speaker: And the new one coming out August 4th.
Speaker: Tell us about Summer People.
Speaker: So Summer People is out in hardback on the 4th of August and also audiobook and ebook.
Speaker: And it is set on a remote island off the coast of Maine, which I'm from Maine, as you can tell from my accent.
Speaker: It's set on a remote island off the coast of Maine called Unity, where there are no cars and where the core community is about 60 people year round.
Speaker: But every summer, there's an influx of rich, well-off summer people who really drive the economy of the island.
Speaker: And the story is a love story.
Speaker: between two women who fall passionately and madly in love with each other when they meet on the island.
Speaker: One of them is a current resident of the island and one of them is a former resident of the island who's come back as a summer person.
Speaker: But the problem is that they're both married to other people.
Speaker: That is an issue.
Speaker: Yeah.
Speaker: And you're a member, an advocate of the LGBTQ plus community.
Speaker: So is there a sort of autobiographical element to some of this, the experience?
Speaker: That's a good question.
Speaker: I wrote this book soon after getting divorced.
Speaker: And this book is not just about an affair.
Speaker: It is also the story of two marriages and what goes wrong in those two marriages.
Speaker: So...
Speaker: In that aspect, I think there's some autobiography involved.
Speaker: That is, I was thinking about the lack of communication between married people, the things that can go wrong between two people who actually very much care about each other.
Speaker: So I think that aspect is autobiographical.
Speaker: The affair itself is pure fantasy on my part.
Speaker: Yeah.
Speaker: Because I did not have an affair while I was married.
Speaker: That's good.
Speaker: But part of it is both of these women are coming out at later stages in their life.
Speaker: They're in their 30s, early 40s.
Speaker: And that did actually happen to me.
Speaker: I came out as bisexual publicly in my mid 40s.
Speaker: So I think that wrestling with that aspect of yourself that maybe you didn't have the time or the space or the ability to...
Speaker: express and confront when you're a younger person and then coming to it later in life when you everybody thinks you should be settled that is uh quite autobiographical and something that i have experienced myself yeah well i mean write what you know so very um it's very authentic and compelling the way the way you tell it thank you
Speaker: And I mentioned that you are an advocate for the community.
Speaker: As part of your involvement with the RNA, you founded the Rainbow Chapter.
Speaker: What is that?
Speaker: So the RNA is the Romantic Novelist Association, and we're a professional organization of people who write relationship fiction.
Speaker: It's not necessarily romance fiction.
Speaker: My story, Summer People, is not a romance novel.
Speaker: It's a love story, but not a romance novel.
Speaker: And so it's about relationship fiction.
Speaker: And
Speaker: The Rainbow Chapter is a subgroup of the RNA about people who either identify as LGBTQIA+, or who write stories about people who identify that way.
Speaker: So it's a really nice, safe space within that community.
Speaker: The cliches of romantic fiction is that it's between a man and a woman.
Speaker: And there are so many more possibilities for romance and love in this world.
Speaker: And we wanted to make sure that we were representative of all our members and also of all the stories that are being told.
Speaker: That's great.
Speaker: That's a wonderful initiative.
Speaker: Thank you.
Speaker: We marched in Pride this year and then the one before that with under the banner, Love Stories Are For Everyone.
Speaker: And it was great because we were marching and people would go, what?
Speaker: Romantic Novelist Association?
Speaker: What the heck is that?
Speaker: And then they would see our banner saying Love Stories Are For Everyone.
Speaker: And you could actually see, you know, people in the crowd going, oh, yeah.
Speaker: Yeah, that's great.
Speaker: Yeah.
Speaker: Queer books.
Speaker: Let's do it.
Speaker: Yeah, that's great.
Speaker: And it sounds like a lot of fun as well.
Speaker: It is.
Speaker: It's really, we have a really good time.
Speaker: I always say that our chapter is the most fun, but I'm sure, you know, I'm a little bit biased.
Speaker: Yeah.
Speaker: And I noticed that you were talking about the classifications of books just now.
Speaker: And you said it's a, it's a, some of people is a love story, not a romance story.
Speaker: What's the main distinction though?
Speaker: Well, a genre of romance story is usually between two people who are not generally married to other people.
Speaker: Generally, they're single or recently single.
Speaker: The reader expects a certain type of story and to have a certain type of ending.
Speaker: genre romance is a very specific genre and it has really strong reader expectations of what they want to read.
Speaker: And if you market your story as a romance and it doesn't have those expectations met, your reader will be very disappointed.
Speaker: So I like to make a distinction between romance fiction and romantic fiction or relationship fiction or a love story, because a love story can have any type of ending.
Speaker: There can be a tragic ending or happy ending or the
Speaker: characters or three characters or however many might not end up together.
Speaker: A love story can be between more than two people.
Speaker: Or there can be complications.
Speaker: There can be several love stories within it, which I think some are people has.
Speaker: It's also the story of two marriages as well as the story of a new love.
Speaker: And also the story of the past relationships too.
Speaker: So
Speaker: Love story is much broader than romantic fiction and romantic fiction is much broader than genre romance, which has very specific criteria.
Speaker: So like a cozy mystery would have very specific criteria or a spy thriller would have very specific criteria.
Speaker: It's a genre within itself with reader expectations.
Speaker: Yes.
Speaker: Yeah.
Speaker: Yeah.
Speaker: No, that, that makes perfect sense.
Speaker: You don't want to be reading your, um, spy thriller and then suddenly aliens invade.
Speaker: Exactly.
Speaker: Exactly.
Speaker: The reader would be really annoyed with that and throw the book against the wall.
Speaker: And that's something we like to avoid as authors.
Speaker: Yeah.
Speaker: Don't set people up with the wrong expectation.
Speaker: That's very wise words.
Speaker: And Summer of People is out August 4th.
Speaker: You can pre-order it right now.
Speaker: Let's dial it back a bit to when you were, I mean, it's a while ago now, 2006, which I think is the year that you published your very first novel.
Speaker: Yeah, but it's even farther back than that because I sold my first novel in 2004.
Speaker: Oh, and it wasn't published till 2006?
Speaker: And it wasn't published until 2006.
Speaker: And actually, I sold one novel in 2004 and then very quickly sold five more.
Speaker: So I had six novels published in 2006.
Speaker: Wow.
Speaker: Was it six?
Speaker: No, it was five.
Speaker: Sorry, five novels published in 2006.
Speaker: And I had a child.
Speaker: But that was two years and concurrent nine months in the making.
Speaker: Because I sold my first book in 2004, and then just right before that, I had signed with an agent.
Speaker: I actually sold my first six books to Mills and Boone.
Speaker: And those are genre romance novels, which is why I really talk about the difference between a romance and a love story.
Speaker: So I sold my first six books to Mills and Boone, but I...
Speaker: had signed with an agent before that for standalone romantic comedies.
Speaker: And I was writing those for headline.
Speaker: And because they were both the initial books in new imprints for both publishers, it took a little while to get those off the ground.
Speaker: So even though I sold my first book in 2004, I just kept on writing.
Speaker: I kept on writing.
Speaker: So I had a real backlog.
Speaker: They finally hit the shelves.
Speaker: Yeah.
Speaker: Wow.
Speaker: So you must be, you must be, do you sort of keep up that pace nowadays?
Speaker: Do you, are you always writing something?
Speaker: Oh my God, no.
Speaker: I'm middle-aged now.
Speaker: So yeah, no way.
Speaker: And I'm a mom.
Speaker: I did all of that.
Speaker: I mean, some of it I did when I was pregnant, but I did all of that before I was a, before I was a parent.
Speaker: I was working full-time as a teacher while I was doing all of that, but that left more emotional energy for writing than being a parent did.
Speaker: Sure.
Speaker: Yeah, I can understand that.
Speaker: So you said you sold some books to Mills and Boone, but then after that, you signed with an agent to write a book for Headline.
Speaker: So was that a direct thing with Mills and Boone where you had pitched directly to them to publish the works?
Speaker: There was no agent involved?
Speaker: Yes.
Speaker: Well, I had been trying to write.
Speaker: So as a new writer, I was pretty stupid.
Speaker: And I see they always say write what you love to read.
Speaker: And I love to read everything.
Speaker: I really am very wide in my reading tastes.
Speaker: And so it was difficult for me to decide what it is that I should write.
Speaker: I knew that I wanted to write, but I didn't know what.
Speaker: And I
Speaker: So I decided to try to write for Mills and Boone because I used to read them because on holiday, I used to flip straight to the sex scenes, to be honest.
Speaker: And so I thought I would try to write for them because they are short.
Speaker: You didn't need an agent.
Speaker: They're only about 50,000 words.
Speaker: You didn't need an agent.
Speaker: The expectations are very clear.
Speaker: Some people say they're formulaic, but it's more that the expectations are very clear.
Speaker: You need a certain type of ending.
Speaker: You need a certain type of story.
Speaker: And they're very limited.
Speaker: There's only two people involved.
Speaker: They're very limited subplots and secondary characters.
Speaker: So I thought, gosh, that's got to be really easy to do.
Speaker: So I'm going to write one of those because it's going to be so easy.
Speaker: And then maybe I'll write some other stuff.
Speaker: But spoiler alert, it is really, really, really not easy to write for Mills and Boone.
Speaker: Yeah.
Speaker: It is very difficult because the reader expectations are so specific.
Speaker: And also because the readers of these novels don't just read one, they read a lot of them.
Speaker: So you have to be fresh and interesting and
Speaker: whilst still hitting all the correct beats and emotions and structural elements.
Speaker: So it's quite difficult to write a Mills and Boone novel.
Speaker: Very difficult to write a Mills and Boone novel.
Speaker: And so I had to write several of them before I even got close to that.
Speaker: So I was writing, I wrote five novels, manuscripts targeted at Mills and Boone, and they all failed except for the fourth, which was long-listed in a competition.
Speaker: And because I'd written five and they all failed, I was like, no, forget this.
Speaker: I'm going to try to write something else.
Speaker: So I wrote a standalone romantic comedy.
Speaker: and pitch that to agents.
Speaker: And I actually signed with my agent pretty much exactly one month before I sold my first book to Mills & Boone.
Speaker: And I remember calling my agent and saying, hi, I just got a contract with Mills & Boone.
Speaker: And she said, oh no, oh no.
Speaker: I'm trying to pitch you as a standalone writer.
Speaker: I was like, no, that's fine.
Speaker: That's fine.
Speaker: I can do both.
Speaker: At which I did for a while.
Speaker: I wrote both.
Speaker: But the great thing about writing for Mills and Boone, because I wrote so many so quickly, I
Speaker: was that I was able to make some money.
Speaker: It was better paid back then in the early 2000s.
Speaker: I was able to make enough money to give up my teaching job and write full time because I had six books published in one year.
Speaker: Or is it five books?
Speaker: God, I have to count.
Speaker: Sorry.
Speaker: It's six.
Speaker: It was my first five mils and boons and one with headline.
Speaker: So I was able to become a full time writer relatively quickly because I had so many published at once.
Speaker: Well, that's amazing.
Speaker: And then I only wrote one more book for Mills and Boone and then I concentrated more in my standalone career with my agent.
Speaker: Right.
Speaker: And is that the same agent that you are currently with?
Speaker: It is.
Speaker: Yes.
Speaker: I've been with her since 2004.
Speaker: Wow.
Speaker: Well, that's great.
Speaker: It's nice to hear that, you know, you've obviously got a really good partnership going.
Speaker: Yeah.
Speaker: It's outlasted my marriage.
Speaker: Well, there you go.
Speaker: Yeah.
Speaker: Communication and mutual respect, Jamie.
Speaker: Yeah.
Speaker: Yeah.
Speaker: That's, it's actually a funny thing.
Speaker: Cause I was, I've, I've had, um, a number of editors on the show and, um,
Speaker: even though most of the time the contact between an editor and author is not going to be as much as an author and an agent.
Speaker: But I have said that the relationship between an editor and author sort of goes very deep very quickly because you have to sort of jump straight away into a point where you're being very honest with each other, more so than in like most other relationships.
Speaker: Yep.
Speaker: And very vulnerable.
Speaker: You have to be very vulnerable with this person.
Speaker: It's slightly uneven because I do think that the author is more vulnerable than anybody else in this situation.
Speaker: But also, in an ideal world, they have the most power and control as well.
Speaker: In an ideal world.
Speaker: Theoretically, they do, yeah.
Speaker: Getting back to you.
Speaker: So 2004, you sold your first books.
Speaker: You've been writing a long, long time though.
Speaker: How much has your process and approach to writing changed since then?
Speaker: A lot.
Speaker: It really has changed a lot.
Speaker: I have evolved a lot of techniques.
Speaker: My books have changed substantially.
Speaker: The early books, the Mills and Boons, but also my early rom-coms were very straightforward.
Speaker: They had a very straightforward structure.
Speaker: I think fairly straightforward conflicts.
Speaker: They were mostly
Speaker: my stand standalone romantic comedies were mostly first person.
Speaker: So there was only really one protagonist.
Speaker: Um, and as I've gone on, my books have become much more complex structurally and also, uh, thematically.
Speaker: So, um,
Speaker: I will have – Summer People has four point of view characters, for example.
Speaker: I wrote a book called Together, which was told backwards.
Speaker: I wrote a book called The Two Lives of Louis and Louise, where it's set in two different universes with the same character, except the same character is a different gender in each universe.
Speaker: So they've become, and I've been looking at subjects, not just about romance, but, you know, I look at subjects such as marriage and grief and alcoholism and faith and gender and sexuality.
Speaker: And so the scope of them thematically and structurally is,
Speaker: in the craft has changed a lot from when I first started out, when I would just sort of sit down, design the characters and just go for it.
Speaker: Now I really have to plan in advance.
Speaker: I have to think a lot about the ups and downs of the narrative.
Speaker: I have to think a lot about the theme and their interrelation between plot and subplot.
Speaker: And again, it comes down to reader expectations, but sort of how my reader is going to react to certain ideas and certain concepts and certain like the endings and how the book is put together.
Speaker: So I think I've learned a huge amount of
Speaker: through writing, I've really sort of done my apprenticeship in public by just writing and, but trying to push myself with every single book I write to do something different.
Speaker: That's going to be interesting to me, not just in the characters, but also in the, um, in the execution and the concepts.
Speaker: Yeah.
Speaker: I've wrote a historical novel.
Speaker: My last novel was a historical novel set in the Victorian period called Spirited.
Speaker: So, um,
Speaker: They've all taken slightly different techniques of planning and techniques of research and techniques of putting them together.
Speaker: But I am much more systematic and thoughtful and...
Speaker: I plan a lot in advance before I even start, which I never used to do.
Speaker: And that is, that's partly because I am a lot older now and my memory is really, really bad.
Speaker: And then partly because it is just so much more complicated that I have to.
Speaker: Like I was planning out, I'm writing a book now, obviously I'm always writing a book.
Speaker: And I, I,
Speaker: I couldn't work out what was going to happen.
Speaker: I'm quite early in the book, but I couldn't work out what was going to happen in the chapter.
Speaker: And then I went away and came back.
Speaker: Four days later, I went to Harrogate Crime Writing Festival.
Speaker: When I came back, I was like, oh no, what was supposed to happen in this chapter?
Speaker: I've completely forgotten.
Speaker: But fortunately, I had put a line of Post-its on my wall in my office that told me exactly what was going to happen.
Speaker: So I was able to just sit down and go, oh yeah, that, and then carry on writing.
Speaker: Oh, perfect.
Speaker: So it sounds like you enjoy experimenting with different sort of styles and settings, but at the same time as time has gone by, even though you are changing some things, you've sort of developed a well-oiled machine in terms of the process.
Speaker: Well, you say well-oiled machine, and it might look like that from outside, but I think writers all know that
Speaker: you can stumble at any stage of the process.
Speaker: The reason why a process is such a good thing is so that it gives you something to do when things aren't going well.
Speaker: But then if things aren't really going well, you have to make up a whole new process.
Speaker: And the process for every book is slightly different.
Speaker: Sometimes I can, not often, but I have been able to just sit down and write.
Speaker: Sometimes a character appears that is so strong and they just lead the story.
Speaker: Other times it's been more about a concept that's leading the story or a plot element that's leading the story.
Speaker: So you have to reinvent yourself with every single book, not just in what you're writing about, but how you write it.
Speaker: Yeah, that's really a great way to approach it.
Speaker: You're sort of learning a whole new skill set with each story because every story is from scratch.
Speaker: It hasn't existed before.
Speaker: You are creating something brand new.
Speaker: And there are things that happen in the process of writing almost every single book.
Speaker: And they're sort of predictable.
Speaker: Yeah.
Speaker: there'll be a point between 40 to 60,000 words in when I am sure that the book is really, really, really, really bad and I should give it up and get a job.
Speaker: I'd quite like to get a job in John Lewis actually.
Speaker: So I mean, hi, and I want a nice place to work.
Speaker: I don't just want to, and that happens every time.
Speaker: Yeah.
Speaker: I think it's a very relatable experience for most authors.
Speaker: But it always takes me by surprise, you know?
Speaker: even after 20 plus books?
Speaker: Almost always.
Speaker: I have to, I go to my writers.
Speaker: This is why it's so good to have friends who are writers.
Speaker: Cause I go to my writer friends and they say, uh, Oh, you've reached that point, Julie.
Speaker: Oh, so it's coming along well then.
Speaker: Right on schedule.
Speaker: Or I'll go, I'll like be writing something.
Speaker: I'll be, Oh my God, I haven't reached the bad.
Speaker: I haven't, I call it the suckage point.
Speaker: I haven't reached the suckage point yet where my book really sucks.
Speaker: And, and,
Speaker: They're like, that's great.
Speaker: And I'm like, no, no, it's coming.
Speaker: What if I'm doing it wrong?
Speaker: Trying to speed it up.
Speaker: If I can get through it now, then it's fine.
Speaker: Well, the thing is, what if it doesn't come?
Speaker: That really makes me worry.
Speaker: That's like the Dunning-Kruger effect, right?
Speaker: What if it's so bad that I don't even realize that it's bad?
Speaker: Yeah.
Speaker: Well, I guess it's reassuring for all of the aspiring writers and debut novelists out there to know that you, someone who has sold millions of books and has put almost 30 out into the world now, still gets that every single time.
Speaker: Every single time.
Speaker: Every single time without fail and in different ways.
Speaker: I think one of the strengths of writers is finding creative ways to torture ourselves.
Speaker: That's what writing is, isn't it?
Speaker: Yes.
Speaker: To torture yourself and imaginary people.
Speaker: Exactly.
Speaker: Yeah.
Speaker: I did just want to mention that I was on your website and I saw in your bio, you wrote your very first novel, age 11, which is absolutely incredible.
Speaker: It wasn't a published novel.
Speaker: Well, obviously it wasn't published, but I'm saying just to have the conviction at that age to finish a novel.
Speaker: I sometimes struggle with conviction, you know, as a grown man to finish a novel.
Speaker: Just to be able to have done that 11 is absolutely mind-blowing to me.
Speaker: But 11 is before you get scared.
Speaker: Fearless, that's what it was.
Speaker: Fearless.
Speaker: And this is another thing I say about writing is that the process of writing is finding ways of ignoring the fear.
Speaker: Every novelist, any writer who is...
Speaker: writing well has some fear of what they're doing, that they're going to get it wrong, that it's going to fail, that, that they've made a horrific mistake, that they suck suddenly.
Speaker: And I think we all have that fear.
Speaker: Most of us have this fear.
Speaker: Most good writers have this fear.
Speaker: And,
Speaker: When I was 11, I did not have that fear.
Speaker: I was like, yeah, no, I'm going to write this.
Speaker: I'm having a great time.
Speaker: I was writing it in a notebook in cursive and I was drawing all the little maps to go with it.
Speaker: Oh my God, it was terrible.
Speaker: It was like a gender flipped wizard versity, wasn't it?
Speaker: Yes.
Speaker: I love that.
Speaker: I love Ursula Le Guin.
Speaker: She's absolutely amazing.
Speaker: I still love Ursula Le Guin.
Speaker: And in fact, my novel, two novels ago, The Two Lives of Louis and Louise, was very much inspired by both Orlando, but also Le Guin's Left Hand of Darkness.
Speaker: Oh, Left Hand of Darkness is just such... I was blown away.
Speaker: I read that book and afterwards, just for days, I was just thinking about it.
Speaker: And I was like, that was so ahead of its time.
Speaker: Right?
Speaker: Yeah.
Speaker: It feels like it's still ahead of, like, we're not ready for it now.
Speaker: We're still not ready for it.
Speaker: No, I know.
Speaker: It's so deeply human.
Speaker: Yeah, yeah.
Speaker: And at the same time, sort of like...
Speaker: I don't know how to describe the level of empathy that it triggered in me feeling other people's experiences, even though they are aliens who, you know, which would seem unrelatable.
Speaker: It just, she's, she was amazing.
Speaker: Yeah.
Speaker: Amazing.
Speaker: Getting back to you outside of your own writing, you also do teaching, you lecture, you do consultancy and you also run workshops.
Speaker: Is that all stuff that you've sort of just always done?
Speaker: I was a teacher before I was a writer.
Speaker: So when I left university with a degree in English, actually, I left university with two degrees in English because I really liked university.
Speaker: And I wanted to be a writer, but I didn't know how.
Speaker: So it didn't occur to me for some reason at that point that you just had to sit down and write a book.
Speaker: So I decided to become a teacher and I was a secondary school teacher for 10 years, over 10 years in various schools, teaching English.
Speaker: In fact, one of my students moved in next door to me.
Speaker: That was funny.
Speaker: The house next door to me was for sale and someone bought it and they came out and said, hey, Ms.
Speaker: Cohen, how are you?
Speaker: I was like, oh my God, I taught to you back in the 90s.
Speaker: So teaching is something that
Speaker: really is in my blood.
Speaker: I love teaching.
Speaker: I really love being a teacher.
Speaker: And the only reason why I quit being a teacher was because I love being a writer more.
Speaker: So teaching creative writing is something that combines both of those with the added bonus that you very rarely have to give anyone detention.
Speaker: Rarely.
Speaker: I noticed you said rarely there.
Speaker: Rarely.
Speaker: So, yes.
Speaker: So, I have always taught.
Speaker: I was actually teaching creative writing before I was published, which seems a little bit cheeky, but I was given that opportunity to do that, which was fab.
Speaker: And now I do retreats.
Speaker: I lead workshops all over the world, which is great.
Speaker: And I occasionally work one-on-one with authors who have then gone on to be
Speaker: mega bestsellers, which is fantastic.
Speaker: It makes me feel great.
Speaker: When I was in Harrogate this past weekend,
Speaker: Harrogate Crime Writing Festival, two separate published authors came up to me and said, I was on your course before I got published and it really helped me, which is just the best feeling in the world.
Speaker: It's so great.
Speaker: Because when you're published yourself, you spend a lot of the time worrying about fear.
Speaker: You're worrying about your sales.
Speaker: You're worrying about your publishing.
Speaker: You're worrying about your reviews.
Speaker: You're
Speaker: But when one of your students gets published, that is just pure pride.
Speaker: Yeah, yeah, yeah.
Speaker: That's great.
Speaker: All of these things, are they mostly online?
Speaker: Are they also in person?
Speaker: How does it work?
Speaker: It was mostly in person, but then with the pandemic, we moved to online.
Speaker: So I have been doing some online workshops.
Speaker: I'm doing one with the Romantic Novelist Association in November, which is...
Speaker: plotting the great romantic novel by analyzing the film The Princess Bride.
Speaker: I mean, 10 out of 10 film.
Speaker: Yeah, yeah.
Speaker: And I love it.
Speaker: It's so well-structured that I just love looking at it in terms of structure and not just the jokes.
Speaker: And I...
Speaker: also have an online school.
Speaker: I had this workshop called Transforming Your Writing with Post-it Notes or Plotting with Post-its or half a dozen uses for a post-it.
Speaker: I've called it different things, but it's about essentially brainstorming, planning, plotting, and revising your novels using post-it notes, which is what I do.
Speaker: I'm obsessed with them.
Speaker: They're all over my house everywhere.
Speaker: And
Speaker: I'm trying to become a brand ambassador, but Post-it have not yet been.
Speaker: But because that was so popular and I offered it online and I offered it in person, I taught it all over the place.
Speaker: It was so popular.
Speaker: I then recorded it as a series of lectures and workshops, exercises.
Speaker: And I have put that up in my online writing school.
Speaker: So that is sort of there all the time for anybody to access if they want to.
Speaker: Um, so I've been doing that as well, which is great, but also I've been teaching in person, which is so much fun.
Speaker: I'm going to, uh, Canada in October to teach at the Surrey writers conference, which will be fantastic.
Speaker: Oh, cool.
Speaker: So, I mean, it must be nice just being back in, is it presumably big halls sort of lecture style?
Speaker: Yes.
Speaker: Yeah.
Speaker: Sometimes it is.
Speaker: Yes.
Speaker: And I'm such a ham, you know, I love performing.
Speaker: And telling people what to do.
Speaker: I love telling people what to do.
Speaker: Amazing.
Speaker: And if anyone's interested in hearing more about the online workshops, you can head over to novelgazingwithjudycohen.teachable.com.
Speaker: And there are dashes between each of the words in that to find out more.
Speaker: Yes.
Speaker: Or just search novelgazing.
Speaker: It comes up as the first thing, I think.
Speaker: Novelgazing.
Speaker: Yeah.
Speaker: Yeah, just search Novel Gazing.
Speaker: You'll find it.
Speaker: Speaking of helping others, you are, as I mentioned, Vice President of the RNA, a wonderful organization who I've been lucky enough to work with on several occasions.
Speaker: And if all that wasn't enough, you're also patron of the ABC to Read charity, a lecturer at University of Reading, and a judge for the Wingate Literary Prize.
Speaker: Where do you find the time?
Speaker: I don't.
Speaker: How do you do this?
Speaker: I don't, I have to give up like really fun things like watching TV and having friends.
Speaker: That makes sense, I guess.
Speaker: I mean, it's just, you're so prolific, not only with all the books that you come out, but also just the work that you're doing within the industry.
Speaker: It's, it's really inspiring and it's great to see you doing your thing out there.
Speaker: Thank you.
Speaker: Well, you know, when I was starting out and since I've been starting out, other writers have been so generous to me with their time and their advice and their expertise.
Speaker: And that's the only way that you can pay it back really is to pay it forward to other people.
Speaker: And I know the people who helped me were helping me because someone else had helped them.
Speaker: I find that the writers community is just brilliant and so powerful.
Speaker: supportive and helpful.
Speaker: And it's made the huge difference to me, not just in my writing, but in my life.
Speaker: Wonderful to hear.
Speaker: And I, you know, I think I've had a similar experience, even if it's just making lots of friends within the writing community, I think immersing yourself in that community is, especially if you want to improve your writing and sort of with a look to getting published, surrounding yourself with people that are willing to help and give feedback is always a good thing.
Speaker: Yes.
Speaker: And willing to help and give feedback is the key thing because there are always people within any community who are very happy to tear you down.
Speaker: So it's important to find people who you utterly trust so that they can tell you that you suck when you do suck and also tell you that you're great when you are great.
Speaker: Yeah, 100% true.
Speaker: Speaking of advice, I
Speaker: what advice would you give to aspiring authors who are looking to improve their writing and with an aim to getting published at some point?
Speaker: The obvious advice is to read a lot.
Speaker: But I think most writers who are serious about their craft are doing that anyway.
Speaker: But to read a lot.
Speaker: But I think
Speaker: The best advice, aside from reading a lot, which is obvious, is another piece of advice, which is just to write as much as humanly possible.
Speaker: And to write and write and write.
Speaker: And I never took – well, I hardly took any creative writing courses, which is ironic since I teach some now, but I didn't take many courses.
Speaker: when I was an aspiring author.
Speaker: What I did was just write every day, all the time.
Speaker: And I wrote crap.
Speaker: I wrote really badly for a long time.
Speaker: And I still write badly to this day on certain days.
Speaker: I think giving yourself permission to just write and write badly and then work out when you're writing badly and then make it better is
Speaker: is the most valuable thing that you can do.
Speaker: And some people, I think some aspiring authors think that they just have to write one great book and then that's going to be it.
Speaker: The thing is that even when you have your first book published, you're going to have to write another one and then another one and another one.
Speaker: And the more you write, the more you're going to know how to write.
Speaker: It's something you can... It's a craft rather than an art.
Speaker: You know what I mean?
Speaker: It's a thing that you have to get your hands dirty doing.
Speaker: And that means you have to make...
Speaker: huge amounts of mistakes all the time.
Speaker: And it is necessary to make those mistakes.
Speaker: You can't sidestep that painful process.
Speaker: You just have to write and write and keep writing and get it wrong until you get it right and then get it wrong again.
Speaker: Yeah.
Speaker: I mean, it's more akin to, I always think it's more akin to something like
Speaker: playing a musical instrument, you know, and even the greatest violinist in the world has to practice every day.
Speaker: They have to practice new pieces.
Speaker: And just with writing, you need to keep practicing to get better and better and better.
Speaker: Yes, that's a really good analogy.
Speaker: Like a musician or an athlete,
Speaker: Yeah.
Speaker: And that, I think, brings us on to the final question, which is, as always, Julie, if you were stranded on a desert island with a single book, which book would you take with you?
Speaker: So, you know, my normal answer to this is the complete Sherlock Holmes, but I, because Sherlock Holmes changed my life, but actually, you know, I'm feeling really much more feminist today.
Speaker: And I think my book would be Middlemarch by George Eliot.
Speaker: I believe it's
Speaker: One of, if not the most accomplished works of fiction in the English language.
Speaker: Very high praise.
Speaker: I love that book.
Speaker: And beating out Sherlock Holmes.
Speaker: My God.
Speaker: That's a great choice.
Speaker: That's a really, really good choice.
Speaker: Also, it's really heavy and long.
Speaker: You know, if you're going to only have one book, you might as well really make it a nice hefty one.
Speaker: Yeah.
Speaker: So that you can hit wildlife on the head with that.
Speaker: right?
Speaker: It's not only reading material, but also a tool.
Speaker: I think George Eliot would approve of that.
Speaker: Let's hope so.
Speaker: Let's hope so.
Speaker: Well, thank you so much, Julie, for coming on the podcast and sharing your experience and just chatting with me.
Speaker: Thank you, Jamie.
Speaker: This has been really fun.
Speaker: It has.
Speaker: Yeah, it's been great.
Speaker: And for anyone listening, if you want to keep up with everything that Julie is doing, you can follow her on Twitter at Julie underscore Cohen, or you can head over to her website, julie-cohen.com.
Speaker: Google novel gazing with Julie Cohen, and you will find her online workshops.
Speaker: And to make sure you don't miss an episode of this podcast, follow us on Twitter at RightAndWrongUK or on Instagram at RightAndWrongPodcast.
Speaker: Thanks again to Julie and thanks to everyone listening.
Speaker: We'll catch you in the next episode.
Speaker: Thanks again for supporting the show and we'll see you in the next episode.
