Write-Off with Francesca Steele

If you want to write domestic fiction I cannot recommend reading Tessa Hadley, or indeed listening to her here, enough. Tessa, who has been long-listed twice for what is now the Women’s Prize and whom the Washington Post called “one of the greatest stylists alive”, wrote four failed novels throughout her thirties and was finally published aged 46, with Accidents in the Home. She has now written eight novels and is one of the modern masters of domestic fiction, burrowing into the complex inner lives of middle aged women and the clashes between them, their feelings and the outer world. They are books of enormous sensitviy but also, as Tessa says here, born of a lot of control and labour, and while Tessa is clear about how compelled she is to write she is also keen to dispel the idea that it is in any way easy. “I’m a slow and painful writer.. writing in a knot of constipation” she says,. I find her story as riveting as her writing. She worked away for years on what she later realised were all the wrong sorts off things - books about big political events when really she was interested in things closer to home. I found her fascinating on how she kept going (even when someone told her nobody wanted to read stories about people in their forties) and how writing is learning to hear what you sound like in readers minds.Do come find me on Twitter - @francescasteele - or Instagram - @francescasteelewrites - I'd love to hear your stories about self-doubt, rejection and – of course – success!

Andrew Sean Greer is the Pulitzer Prize-winning writer of six novels including Less and Less is Lost, which are both bittersweet, tragicomic road trip tales about Arthur Less, a failing and flailing mid-list novelist. But it’s not just through his fiction that Greer is familiar with mid-list despondency. He originally wrote Less when he was feeling exactly that way himself, but then, although it was rejected by 12 British publishers, felt slightly less dependent when it went on to win the Pulitzer! Last he year he published a follow-on, Less is Lost, which his agent actually advised him not to write for reasons we discuss. He did it anyway. I love this interview. Andrew is just such a jolly yet occasionally reassuringly despairing writer, racking up dozens of drafts and being honest about the poverty early writing can involve. I loved in particular talking to him about the details of turning the originally serious Less into a comic novel, and also about finding the diamond heist. You’ll have to listen to end to find out what that means but I think it’s one of the best pieces of advice I’ve ever heard. Find the diamond heist! Do come find me on Twitter - @francescasteele - or Instagram - @francescasteelewrites - I'd love to hear your stories about self-doubt, rejection and – of course – success!

Monica Heisey is the author of the very funny Really Good, Actually, which just came out a week ago and became an instant Sunday times bestseller. It’s about a woman in her twenties getting divorced, which is something that Monica herself did aged 28, weirdly just after she had begun to write a different novel in which her character Kathleen had started to have marriage problems. That book didn’t make it, which we talk about here, but Monica is actually pretty used to things not making it because she’s also a TV writer (her credits include Schitt's Creek) and comedian, worlds in which rejection at various stages really is par for the course. Monica was so great to talk to about outlines; since doing this interview I feel enthusiastic about plotting for the first time ever! We also chat about avoiding writing until characters pop up in your head all the time, and about rom coms (yes, we talk about When Harry Met Sally in this interview), and why heartbreak might actually be easier to write about than love. Do come find me on Twitter - @francescasteele - or Instagram - @francescasteelewrites - I'd love to hear your stories about self-doubt, rejection and – of course – success!