Prolific and award-winning children’s writer and memoirist Anna Wilson (@acwilsonwriter) on bringing real-life experiences to the page, how to write a memoir, writing about real people with honesty and respect and why we must show up consistently to our writing practice.
As writers, there may be times when we must delve deep into the harder ‘themes’ of life - that of grief and loss. How might we start to write about loss and in what medium - a blog? Or a book? And where do we begin? How can we be vulnerable on the page? Join our conversation with Anna Wilson, as we talk about the craft of writing memoirs, having the confidence to tell the truth, and the mindset that has enabled her to write 50+ books.
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Anna Wilson is the author of over 50 books for children and young teens. In 2016 she started her blog Good Grief about mid-life, loss and new beginnings. This eventually led to her memoir A Place for Everything which tells the searing account of a mother’s late-diagnosis of autism – and what it means to care for our parents in their final years. Anna is also an editor and lecturer, a tutor for the London Lit Lab and the Writer's Block in Cornwall and for the Arvon Foundation.
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SHOW NOTES:
[03:53] Anna's love for swimming and how it helped her deal with grief
[06:23] Anna's struggle to write during lockdown
[08:16] How Anna chooses the themes for her books
[11:23] On pitching ideas
[14:42] Anna's blog and how it started
[19:42] How to move from draft to a polished piece + Anna's writing practices
[23:03] What to include and what not to when writing a memoir
[24:56] How Anna decided to write a book about her mom and dad
[27:09] Why Anna suggests reading other people's memoirs
[30:29] Anna shares what the book A Place for Everything is about
[33:39] On being vulnerable in your writing
[37:24] Anna's advice for someone who wants to tell the truth
[38:29] On how Anna came up with the title for the book
[41:21] Why having a good relationship with your editor is important
[44:39] Anna’s favourite writing exercises
[46:10] Pigheaded attitude and being disciplined as a writer
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QUOTES FROM ANNA:
“I think it's quite a pigheaded attitude. I think you have to be pretty disciplined. I love Margaret Atwood when she says, “Show up, show up, show up. And the muse will too.” In other words, don't talk to me about, oh, I'm just waiting for the muse to come. I'm just waiting for that moment when I'm going to feel writer-y, and then I'll write something. Now you've got to show up every single day.”
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SELECTED LINKS FROM THE EPISODE
Connect with Anna Wilson
Twitter: @acwilsonwriter
Instagram: @acwilsonwriter
Website: acwilsonwriter.wordpress.com
Vlad the World’s Worst Vampire
Paddington2 - The Story of the Movie (Movie Tie-in)
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CREDITS
Production by Victoria Spooner. Artwork by Emma Winterschladen
[Intro] Matt: Hello, and welcome to season one of the London Writers’ Salon podcast. I'm Matt.
Parul: And each week, we sit down with a writer that we admire to talk about the craft of writing and the arts of building a successful and sustainable writing career.
Matt: These interviews are recorded live with our global writing community. If you would like to join us for the next recording or write with us at our daily Writers’ Hour writing sessions, head to londonwriterssalon.com for more info. In this episode, we interview writer, editor and writing tutor Anna Wilson. Anna has published over 50 books for children and young teens, and she's won awards for a number of them.
But in 2016, after the loss of her parents, she decided to try something new. She started her blog, Good Grief, to share and process her emotions. And this eventually led to her memoir, A Place for Everything, the story about her family life, what it was like to live with our mothers, undiagnosed autism and the experience of her caring for parents in their final years.
It's a beautiful, beautiful memoir.
Matt: In our interview with Anna, she explains how her writing has evolved over time as our kids have grown up, from writing children's books to teen books to books for adults. We also talk about how she pieces together the narrative arc in her writing, how she brings specificity, the granular details of moments into her memoir and why she decided to push into difficult memories of her mother to include in her book.
We also talk about her ongoing battle with self-doubt despite her prolific success and some of the nuts and bolts topics like landing an agent and how to find and work with the right editor. Anna has a lot of writing friends. And so when we asked her what traits she's observed among them, she says it takes quite a pig-headed attitude and quotes Margaret Atwood: “Show up, show up, show up, and the muse will, too.”
Parul: It was so lovely to talk to Anna about her writing [and] editing process. She was warm and really gave us a wonderful insight into the process of writing memoirs and the publishing industry. This conversation was recorded in front of a live audience online during the lockdown in 2020. Let's get started. We hope you enjoy our conversation with Anna Wilson.
Matt: So Anna, one of the things that we'll be speaking a lot about tonight is your memoir that's coming out next month, which started or that maybe the germs of it started in 2016 when you started your blog called Good Grief about midlife loss, new beginnings, and in particular, your relationship with your mother, which we'll dig a lot more into.
And this led to the forthcoming book, which is your debut memoir called A Place for Everything, which tells the searing account of a mother's late-stage diagnosis of autism and its far-reaching effects on a whole family.
Parul: Yeah. I mean, the other thing is I see—I know we've spoken about this before. You've been a tutor for quite some time. In fact, we met on the Arvon Foundation, but you'd been a tutor there, or you've been a tutor for the London Lit Lab and the Writer's Block. I feel like I could just keep talking about all the many things you've done and how much you've contributed to literature. I think it's wonderful. But here's our official welcome. Matt and I were so happy to have you as part of the salon podcast.
Matt: Thank you, Anna.
Anna: Thank you.
Matt: So you joined us for one of our rituals that we do here at the London Writers’ Salon is the Writer's Hour, which many people listening to and watching come to religiously. You joined us. And while many of us struggle to wake up for Writer's Hour, somehow you had managed not only to show up at Writer's Hour all dressed up, but you had gone for—you went for a swim and looking through your blog and other things, it seems like wild swimming. It's something that you enjoy doing? Is that like a daily practice for you, or where does wild swimming sit in your life?
Anna: Now it's daily. Yeah. In the winter, it's maybe three times a week because it depends where I am. And in the winter, it's harder to find safe places to swim cause obviously you can't really swim in a river because the, you know, the current's too high. The river might be in spate. The sea can be really rough. The tides can be wrong. So the winter's tough, but I do try and go back three times a week. But at this time, yeah, it's actually twice a day at the moment, so—
Parul: Wow. I'm so jealous. That sounds great.
Anna: I sort of hesitated to say that, knowing that so many people can't get to anywhere to swim during a lockdown. So I feel very, very blessed at the moment.
Parul: Do it on behalf of us.
Matt: Yeah. That's what I was going to ask. What does that give you? I did like maybe two weeks where I was by a little stream, and it was cold as hell and every morning, I jumped into it. After a while, your body starts to heat from within. And it's—something about it, setting that at the beginning of the day. And I was curious, you know, does it give you something physically, emotionally, spiritually? What does that give you?
Anna: Yeah, I think all of those things. That whole physical shock thing is great, especially when it's really cold. Cause that's all you can deal with. So I found it actually really useful when I was dealing with grief because it meant that every day if I went swimming, all I could deal with at that moment was being in the moment and dealing with the cold and sort of surviving it.
And it helped to kind of shock me out of any negative thoughts or anything like that. And that was how I started swimming regularly, actually with a friend who encouraged me to do it for that very reason. And then it became more than that. Yeah. So it actually feeds my writing a bit like, you know, walking and running can do the same.
I know lots of other people use similar things, meditation, whatever, but these practices can really help the sort of the subconscious flow a bit more easily because it's quite easy at your desk to get really stuck on something and go run in circles, but go down to the beach, jump in the sea and then quite often something is unlocked.
Parul: That makes sense to me. I've seen that definitely in a lot of writers—especially writers who've been writing for years and years. There's a method of trying to unblock. So someone shared an image with me of this man on a mountain, standing halfway up a mountain, and there are two ways you can look at this. So either he looks up and thinks—or she—I've got so far to go, or he looks down and thinks, “Look how far I've come.”
And a lot of the writers I know can often look up and forget to look down. You've written so much. So when I look at your career from afar. I think, gosh, you've come so far. Are you always able to have that perspective?
Anna: I’m terrible having that perspective. And in fact, at the moment in lockdown, I've been having a really hard time writing. And my husband's been doing his nut because he says that I'm that exactly, that I'm always looking up and thinking I'll never reach the peak, you know. I’ll never achieve what I've set out to achieve. And, you know, he has to sit down and give me a good talking to and say that, you know, he quite often says to me, “If you could talk to your 20-year-old self, would you not say, look how far you've come.”
The reality is there's always more to do, and there's always more to achieve. I don't think creative people [are] ever happy with what they've done, and if they are, then maybe that's not right, because maybe they don't seem creative. I don't know. Perennially dissatisfied.
Parul: You know, we met at Arvon many, many years ago. I was an intern for one of the publisher's Faber or, I can't remember… Quercus…one of them, and you were writing Pup Idol, which then came out in 2008. It was quite early on. Still, if you look back to that Anna Wilson who was writing, what advice would you give her now?
Anna: Probably the same that I should be given myself now. It's just to believe in myself because I went to that course thinking I'm an editor who happens to have written a couple of books, and I didn't really think much of what I'd written.
Our tutor, Steve, took me aside and said, “You are a writer.” And it was like some kind of benediction, you know? And I went home, and I said to my husband, “I've had an epiphany. I'm a writer.” “Oh, you’ve been a writer for years. What are you talking about?”
Parul: So it was Steve. It was Steve Voake who is still a tutor on—
Anna: Yeah, at Arvon and he also teaches at Bath Spa, which is obviously another part of my journey as well. I guess confidence is something that I'm always battling with.
Parul: I'm also curious because you've written so many books, there are different themes. So I was looking through it, and I was thinking, okay, cute puppies, cute kittens, monkeys. And then there's the sort of—the one-offs you've written and the nature writing. The Paddington Bear’s a one-off, the children's Almanac as well. How did you come to choose these themes? Are they phases that you've just gone through? Is it because publishers approached you, or is it vice versa.
Anna: Yeah, I think it's a bit of both. Definitely phases. I think there's a bit of a joke running to the family that my writing seems to have grown up with my children. And now that they're adults, I finally managed to write a book for adults. My first book that was published was a picture book when my daughter was a baby. Then I started to write short stories that were the sort of thing you'd read to sort of a four or five-year-old at bedtime.
Then I started writing chapter books that my daughter was reading herself, then slightly longer novels. Honestly, my writing seems to have grown up with them, so definitely phases, but I think that's because they've inspired me so much at that particular point in their lives. I was listening to them.
So their dialogue, their activities, what they're doing with their friends, what I was listening in on all fed into my writing. And of course, it's just life, isn't it? Life feeds your writing. So it's whatever you're experiencing at that time [that] feeds into what you write about. And my last series for children, Vlad the World's Worst Vampire, that's actually going back a bit. That's for seven to tens. So I've sort of stepped back in time a bit. I wrote that while my parents were quite ill. I was actually having therapy at the time in the fourth—I think it's the fourth book, little Vlad the vampire is really struggling with his relationship with his mother.
And he sort of confides in that kind of butler who's a bit like a sort of a large figure, you know, like the Addam's family. And he sort of says, “You know, I'm never going to satisfy her. I'm never going to make her happy.” And I'll write this, and my husband read it, and he went, “Oh my God. You just basically turned your therapist into a great ogre Butler.”
I sent it to my therapist and she just roared with laughter and said, “Yep, you've just worked through it all by writing about yourself as a vampire. Well done.”
Parul: That's fun. That's the joy of children's publishing, right? That's the beauty of it.
Anna: Sometimes publishers asked me to do stuff. So actually, Vlad was the case in point. I was approached to write that series, and it came at the right time because I had no ideas.
I was really struggling because of everything that was going on. And so it was lovely to be given a brief and then to be able to run with it and create my own characters. And similarly, the nature almanac. I had written the blog that you mentioned earlier, I had out of that actually written a picture book that is yet to be published, and I was showing it to my editor.
Of the back of that, she rang my agent and said, “Do you think Anna would write some non-fiction?” So, yeah, that came out of a publisher's idea and our collaboration. It can work both ways.
Matt: How many books have you written? We were debating this. We couldn't figure out—we couldn't count the number. Do you know how many you've actually written?
Anna: I counted them on the shelves, but it's about 50. If you include the—
Parul: Not too shabby.
Anna: Well, I mean, some of them are tiny.
Matt: And so if you look at the journey of you from that first picture book, all the way up into this memoir, some of these books a publisher approached you. Some of them you pitched. As you've written more and become more prolific and more work is out there, has it become easier to either pitch ideas or what is it like being someone who's written 50 books versus someone who's listening who might have none? Is it easier for you, having done those 50?
Anna: For a time, it was because I had the same editor, and she was really my champion. So she could go to an editorial meeting and acquisitions meeting and she could say, “Anna's got a new idea.” And, you know, I had a bit of a track record, so that worked fine. And then she left, and I had to start all over again, really, and actually ended up leaving that publisher because I'd lost my champion really.
And so now, now it's tough because, in the children's book world, it's changed so much in the past five to six years. It's so celebrity heavy. So we already got a really good sales record and mine’s average. I haven't got a fantastic sales record compared to people like Frank Cottrell-Boyce or Maz Evans, or, you know, the sort of the middle-grade writers that are up there…people like that.
I'm not in their league. I'm certainly not in David Walliams’ league. So it's really tough for children's writers right now. And then pitching the adult because it was so different writing a memoir, you know, it was a completely different market. I had to get a different agent because my children's agent wouldn't represent me.
She didn't know what to do with it. So I just—I went through the slush pile again. I had to submit my manuscripts like a newbie. The whole experience of being published as an adult writer has felt like I'm a new girl all over again. So yeah, it’s tough.
Parul: It is interesting how they are such little microcosms in the world. You work in children's [and] it feels like a wonderful little pond, but you're right. I understand the changes. I've definitely got friends in publishing houses say—especially since the merger has happened—there's this sort of edge towards wanting, needing to be commercial.
Anna: Yes. I think how it can work is I've definitely kept in touch with everybody. So as editors move around, I've got a couple of people who I can say to my agent, “Oh, maybe send it to them.” You know, it's not a guarantee, but it's a foot in the door that other people don't have. So that's been great. And also, the other thing it's done is it's opened me up to be able to do tutoring because I've got a bit of a track record.
You know, people can see that I've been published, and they know that I know what I'm talking about, hopefully. That second strand to my work, if you like, has been easier because of the publication.
Parul: It is interesting to me that when you mentioned how on that course, Steve Voake gave you the confidence to believe you're a writer. This is after having written a few books. And this is—even though you were an editor, I don't think I've ever met anyone who doesn't struggle with that no matter where they are on their journey.
Anna: Yeah.
Parul: It's a real fear. Like everyone feels it like, “Me? Really?” It sounds like going into a new area as well. Again, you're having to go through that again.
Anna: Oh, definitely. I think so. There's something very scary about sending your work out there as well, especially when it's very personal, you know. You sort of—you read it yourself, and you give it to your nearest and dearest, and they tell you it's great. And you've always got this little voice thinking, “But what if, what if people think it's terrible?” Really, you don't put yourself out there for no reason.
Parul: And actually, that brings me to your blog. I remember years ago, you must've started writing your blog, and you shared it on Facebook, and we were in touch, but not, you know, we weren't talking regularly, and I read it and I remember thinking, gosh, this is so honest and so raw. Was that difficult to start? That's how you started talking about what you'd gone through with losing your mother or your mother going through the diagnosis of autism. Can you talk us a little bit through that journey?
Anna: It's also with my father because my father died two years before my mother and I spent the first year of that period of grief dealing with my mother and her diagnosis.
It was a terrible, terrible year. And I came out at the end of that year with my own health problems and stuff. I remember we came down here. We haven't moved to Cornwell yet, and we came down to Cornwell for a week. And I got up one morning and it was the anniversary of my father's death. And I just thought I’ve got to write about that.
Cause it was just, it was quite incredible. I was in Thailand when he was dying, and I got a call from my sister to say, “Can you come back now?” And we were on a remote island, and it took me 36 hours to get back to be with dad. And he had been given 36 hours left by the palliative care nurses, and he lived for 37 hours.
And so I had an hour with him before he died. I mean, I still think about it. The other day I was thinking how amazing that I've had an hour with my dad while he was dying. It was unbelievable to be with him. And so I had to write about it because I've always coped with everything through writing as far back as I can remember. If I was in a mood when I was a little girl, I'm scribbling a diary.
If I were super happy, I'd write a poem, you know, and that's just the way I've dealt with everything. And so I had to do it, and I just thought—I don't know why I thought I'd write a blog. I'm pretty sure I don't know why, but I just thought I'm g oing to write that scene, and I want it to be crafted, and I want it to be not just for me. I just want to put it out there. And I honestly didn't think anyone would read it. I definitely didn't think anyone would comment. And then it just became, it was like someone had taken a quarter out of a bottle. And I just thought I've got so much to say about grieving and about my parents and about my relationship with them.
And I think I wrote almost one post a week to start with. There's a lot in that initial year, 2016. And then, yeah, I just kept posting stuff because people were messaging me and just saying, “Write more. This is great,” you know. My boss at Bath Spa she said, “You got to write this. You’ve got to make this into a book.” And I was still thinking, yeah, yeah. But it's just me, and I’m just pouring my heart out.
Matt: When you read those first posts, what did that look like? You said you wanted to not just write for yourself. You wanted to share it. So what did that first version of sharing look like?
Anna: I definitely spent some time on it. It wasn't just a splurge, so I did craft it. I did mould it into a scene that had a chapter you feel about it. It had a beginning, a middle and an end. And I guess I was slightly self-consciously playing with a certain style of writing that I hadn't used before, but I knew I wanted to keep it short and sweet, and I knew I wanted it to be good enough that someone would want to read it. You know, this sounds terrible, but some books you read, they just aren't edited or crafted at all. And they're just a complete sort of word vomit. And I don’t want it to be that because I thought, “Well, I can do that in my journal,” you know. That's my morning pages. I don't want it to be that. So I was very aware of the fact that it was a blog and that hopefully, somebody would read it. I guess I thought my family might read it.
Matt: Did you actively send it to them and say here I wrote this, or did you kind of keep it quiet? Do you remember? We have a lot of bloggers who are listening that I got started with writing through a blog as well. The way I started was I decided to take a sabbatical from my job for seven months and just write about what the hell I was doing, which I didn't really know at the time. But I sent an email to like 50 friends and family saying, I'm starting this blog. If you want to follow along, here's how you can subscribe. That's how it started for me. And I guess I'm kind of curious [about] the origin story of that. So do you remember what that first share looked like for you?
Anna: I wasn't as organised as that. I think I sent it to my sister and my cousins and that was it. And I've never asked anyone to subscribe because I'm hopeless to that kind of thing. Maybe I should.
Parul: I think you went onto Facebook cause I do remember seeing—
Anna: Yeah, because—yeah, my sister and a couple of my friends said to put it on Facebook, so yeah.
Parul: And who was commenting? Because you already had a little bit of an audience, probably from your children's side of things. Did you find that they were coming and reading about your—it's [a] very different subject?
Anna: Booksellers that I knew were, and other writers. That was it, really. No actual readers that I know of. No children's book readers. I mean, children wouldn't have been anywhere, I don't think so.
Parul: No, I didn't get a sense of that. I think it's interesting who your first readers are. [I] guess those booksellers are adult readers so.
Matt: You said something really interesting, and it's something that we've spoken about before, the difference between the word vomit and then something that's crafted for a reader. And sometimes I say, I write for me, but I edit for you.
I was curious, how do you find that line? I guess maybe because you’re prolific, you've written a bunch of books, you've worked with editors. Is there any kind of tricks and tips or a judgment on, “Am I just vomiting here? Or is there a story that someone might enjoy?” Do you have any practices that you use to help gauge that?
Anna: I definitely have a shape, a sort of narrative arc in mind with shorter pieces. With actually most of the memoir, that was a whole different thing. But, yeah, with writing blogs or short stories or articles, anything like that, I initially do a complete vomit because I don't necessarily know what the point is of what I'm writing. I just have an idea, and I go for it. It's a bit like doing a jigsaw puzzle.
I have maybe a paragraph here, a paragraph there, little notes here. Then I find, oh, I've actually repeated myself there and there. So I'll move that to there. And then it starts to form a shape, which is how I write my novels for children as well. I'm hopeless at doing plans, so I'll write a chapter cause I fancy it, and then I'll write another chapter, and it might not flow on. But after a while, I'll have a critical mass of words, and I'll start to feel the shape coming together. And it is literally like doing a jigsaw puzzle. I might've done the edge of the puzzle and bits of the middle. And I'm trying to see how I can join the edges to the middle. Does that make sense?
Matt and Parul: Yes
Parul: It’s your editorial brain. I feel like it's your editorial hat coming on.
Anna: Yeah. When I read somebody else's raw, raw manuscript, like a student's manuscript. So they've never been edited before. They're not published, whatever. That's the same thing I sort of go, I sort of plunged into it. It is like swimming or plunging and then go, “Oh, okay. So you got this character doing that, and you've got that scene over there. You haven't quite seen where they're going yet. Maybe we could cut that chunk out and leave that alone,” and that's how I sort of give my feedback, really.
Parul: I've worked with a few memoir writers, and often they struggle with creating a setting, especially when it's a complex setting and then reading your work. I thought, actually, you do this really well. And I feel like there's this specificity, you know, this concept of specificity breeds universality, and you really take us into the heart of a moment. Is that something you do consciously? Do you think that's part of the magic of you trying to build a world for us?
Anna: I mean, I don't do that in a first draft by any means, but it's definitely in the back of my mind that that's what's needed because there's nothing worse than reading setting for the sake of it. Sometimes people just fall in love with the setting of their novel or whatever it is, and they want to tell you exactly how the light shines on the water and the taste of the chocolate, whatever it is, and it's got nothing to do with the story or the characters, and you just end up getting bored and really not enjoying [the] book. That happens.
So I think my drafting—in my drafting, my editing, I definitely think hard about that. I don't always get it right, which is why I need an editor.
Parul: Yeah. I was going to say that the other thing that I find people struggle with when they're writing memoirs is knowing what to include, and you've included some things that are pretty harrowing and so raw and touching like you described [the] look on your mother's face and your emotions as a child witnessing that. How did you make those distinctions? Was there something that you didn't include? Was there a lot that you took out?
Anna: Yeah, I have to say I'm not just saying this cause I know she's listening, but huge thanks to Kate, my editor, because she pushed me a bit on that. And I'm really grateful she did. In my first draft, I was quite passive in some of those scenes.
I was sort of recounting them. Like I was writing a diary saying this happened, and then this happened, and Kate quite rightly said, “You've got to take us there. You know, the reader needs to feel that.” And I knew it. I mean, I knew it even before she said it, and when she said it, I was like, “Oh yeah, I know.”
And then, oh, it was awful. It wasn't—
Parul: Kate just said (in the live podcast chat), “Haha. You know you're being watched.”
Anna: [laughs] I’m being watched all the time. No, but I mean, I do genuinely mean it. It was necessary, but it was really tough. Yeah.
Parul: I was saying this to Matt before we were chatting to you. I was just saying to Matt, and I was like, “I wonder if you feel the same emotion I did reading this.” Because I've known you, but I've never obviously seen these backstories. I sat there staring at the computer, and my partner was like, “Are you okay?” And I was like, “I'm fine. I'm just—I just feel really sad. I just, I wish that she didn't have to go through this.” And I was thinking it was so heart-wrenching for me, so it was a really well-done job in terms of writing.
Matt: And I'll echo that too. I mean, I don't know you. This is the first time we've really spoken. And I did the same. I was sitting on the couch today, just kind of like deep in thought with your story and because not everyone might know even what we're talking about, so we jumped around a little bit. So you started your blog as processing the grief of the loss of your father. Where did that merge into so that eventually you started talking about your relationship with your mother, which eventually led to the book? So can you tell us a little bit about that?
Anna: Yeah, it's an interesting one because it got to a certain point with writing the blog where I thought I've got to write a book about my dad. I've got to write a book about grief and dying and him, and then people kept saying, “What's the book about?” So that sort of meander off a bit and start talking about mum, and you know, and I'd say, “Oh, it's got a bit nature writing in it.” And I remember I actually got on the train once and ended up sitting next to an editor I know from Chicken House—which is a children's publisher—completely out of the blue, I just ended up sitting next to her. And she said, “What are you writing?” And I started rambling about the blog and how I was going to turn it into a book. And she just looked at me, and she said, “You have to just be able to tell me what it's about. I think you need to really think about what this is about.” And I know that [...] damn it she’s right. And then I went swimming with a friend, and she said, “You know, it's about your mum, don’t you?” And I was like, “Oh, it can't be because everything in my whole life has always been about mum.” I can't write a book about her. I need to give a voice to somebody else.
And then I went home and thought, eh, it's about a mum. It was a really hard process. And I remember the same swimming friend said to me, “You need to go to the place of most resistance with your writing.” And she was right. So I hope that answers the question, but it's a difficult one to answer.
Parul: Interesting.
Matt: So then, did that shift what you were writing on the blog, or did that just kind of tie the thread together of what it was about or did actually then you started to go deeper into the relationship with your mum and what you were experiencing.
Anna: The first draft—it gave me the thread. Rages. I couldn't think. Where does this start? You know, where on earth do I start? Some of it's to do the childhood, some of it's to do now. And then, I realised I had to have a dramatic scene and basically, the most dramatic scene was my mum was so ill that I had to step in. And that's how my life changed as well. So that sort of became obvious in the drafting, but it was a constant process of changing and editing and redrafting and rewriting.
I mean, I've got so many versions of this book. Very very hard to find out where the—
Matt: Do you know how many versions you have?
Anna: I mean, I must have over 20. I must have. Yeah.
Matt: Wow.
Parul: So you, you didn't have any over—you know, because there are so many different methods for writers out there for planning and structure. Was there any—did you use any methodology in particular? Do you have one in your head that you used?
Anna: I read a lot of other memoirs to see how other people did it, and I try to borrow some ideas from some of them, but in the end, that didn't work for me in an obvious structural way. I think I learned a lot from reading other memoirs. Because I think I really believe that's the way you learn to write as clearly. But at one point, I was obsessed with The Outrun by Amy Liptrot. Absolutely obsessed. I think I read it six times. I've underlined bits of it. I’ve dogged bits of it. I've copied bits of it out, you know, ridiculous. And I was looking at the structure of hers.
And I was thinking, right, so what I need is I need a thematic structure. I need chapters about this aspect of mum and chapters about the nature, and chapters about dad. Really, all I was doing was gathering my blogs together in piles and just going [...], and it wasn't a book. Again, that was sort of just part of the process, I guess. Agonising. I mean, I wish I had a process where I could plan, write, move on. But I just can't do that.
Parul: Yeah. But what you're talking about, it makes sense, right? It's looking at a mass of works that we believe in.
Matt: To kind of tie it all together, now that you've written a book, can you explain what it's about for all of us? So we've started to read it. It doesn't come out until July. Can you give us a kind of a brief synopsis? What is the book about?
Anna: I mean, it is about mum. It is about how we didn't discover that she had autism until she was 72. By which time, she had been so severely ill with mental health problems that she couldn't live on her own anymore. She was in a residential care home. Learning that she had autism was like somebody had let me and my sister out of a glass box because, for years, we'd been screaming. There's something wrong. I'm not using wrong in [...] because I don't believe that autism is having something wrong, but for mum, there was something different about her.
There was something that made her feel that something wasn't quite right, but nobody would ever listen or help us join up the pieces. And so the book is me making sense of the woman that I'd thought I'd always known, but had I known that she had autism, perhaps I would have treated her differently. Perhaps our relationship would have been different. So it's a recasting of my life and her life through the lens of autism, I suppose.
Parul: It's beautiful. It's called A Place for Everything that's been published by Harper Collins. It's out in July 2020. We'll be sharing the links in the podcast transcript. Yeah. It's really beautiful. And I can see this if—I'm sort of still reading it—but I can see this journey that you're undertaking. You're sort of discovering yourself. You're shifting your worldview perspective as you're navigating the sort of loss of the mother you knew.
Anna: Yeah.
Matt: One of the things that stuck with me, or, you know, again, I'm still reading it, but is how truthful it is. And what I mean by that is the thought process you're having about your mum while she's whooping and while she's causing a scene in the supermarket, the thought process you're having, and actually being honest with what she's going through, I mean, that really struck me because we were talking about truth-telling and one of our writers in our Writers’ Hour read a quote by James Baldwin about as much truth as one can bear. That process of writing the truth, how was that?
Did it take a few takes to write it down? Or were there things that you wanted to hold back on, but you pushed forward anyway? I know you touched on a little bit, but that truth-telling for you, what was that process like?
Anna: I had to be truthful about it because I needed to be heard because, as I say for years, I've been trying to say there's something not quite right. And actually, even after mum's diagnosis, they were friends of hers, of her generation who didn't believe it. And they were quite angry that I was saying that. I was saying, “This is great news. We found out mum’s got autism,” and people were saying, “No, she hasn't. She's not very good at maths. And she's a perfectly sociable person.” And all the sorts of things—oh they were quite angry. So the book was really a bit of a how…I mean, it really was. It was a bit of a going out into the woods and howling and just saying, “This is how it really was. Please listen finally to how it really was.”
I went on a second [...] actually, which was writing fiction for adults while my parents were both very ill. And I had a private conversation one night with one of the other students, and he said to me, “You have got to stop worrying about your mother reading your writing.” So I was thinking, I've got to stop worrying about who's going to read this because it's got to be truthful.
And if I try and soften the edges, smooth it down, you know, and Kate helped me a lot with this because I think I was still doing that a bit. You know, for it to be authentic, I had to go there, but I've spoken to other memoir writers since you've said is it's like you're bleeding all over the place.
Parul: Yeah. In fact, that was exactly what I was really curious [about] as I was reading that. How your sister or other family members have received, or even your children or your husband, that side of you. Have you had much of a reaction from whoever you shared it with so far?
Anna: I made sure that I sent it to my sister and my uncle—my mum's brother—before I submitted it to anyone. And I said that I've written this book. I fully intend to try and get it published, but obviously, if you're unhappy with this, we need to talk about it.
I thought I can't. It's not fair. And I also wait. It sounds awful, but I waited until my mother had died. It just wouldn't have been ethical for me to write about her when she was still alive. But my husband, so yeah, he read an early draft and didn't actually say very much, and he's now only just now rereading it.
So it's a bit late if he's got anything to say. And my daughter's studying to be a medic, so she was really interested in the mental health aspect of it, which she obviously remembers as a younger teen, but not in the same detail. And she was very moved by it. So I've had a lot of support from them all, yeah.
Parul: And it's really, it's super hard to be public, even if you've written something, even just from the little things that sort of I've done publicly, or Matt and I have done publicly. We do them, but we still think, “Well, you know, wish no one would see me.” Have you felt that? Have you felt vulnerable?
Anna: I do feel vulnerable, but I feel that it's such an important subject. I mean, leaving aside anything that's happened to me or my family. The more people I speak to with autism, particularly women and girls, the more I am determined to get this book out to as many people as possible because it's so misunderstood, and there's so little chance of diagnosis. And even when you're diagnosed, the support isn't there.
I was speaking to a man earlier today who was diagnosed at age 48. And honestly, his story is, I mean, he's written about it publicly as well. He attempted to take his own life just as my mother did; he's gone through the mental health services and everything I was talking to him about. It was like, just going, “Yes, yes, yes,” you know. “This happened to me. Oh my goodness,” you know. I've always put myself to one side with it, really. So when people say, “Oh my goodness, it must've been so hard for you,” and everything, I'm genuinely at the stage now where I think it's not about me. It's about mum. It's about other women and girls like her.
Parul: Right. You're allowing people to be seen in the way that you've talked about your life.
Matt: When did that intention occur? So was it from the onset as you were going through the publishing process or now as you're starting to talk to people about it, is this bigger intention arising to the forefront?
Anna: Yeah, I think the latter because once I’d been accepted by the publisher, there was obviously a certain amount of editing, redrafting, as I've said. And one of the things Kate and I talked about was how to organise the chapters. And we came up—I can't remember how—it might've been Kate's idea. So I can't remember, but one of us came up with the idea of quoting from other sources on autism.
So I ended up doing a vast amount of reading to do that. And in the process, [I] was talking to more people getting in touch with more people. And that's when I think it really hit home that I needed to do this for others as well as for myself. I don't want that to sound, I don’t know, self-serving.
Parul: No, I think it's beautiful. I can understand that.
Matt: Is there much out there right now in the way that you're talking about it around these topics?
Anna: There's very little, I think. This is the first book that's been written from the perspective of a child of a woman with autism. There are other books where people have written about their children who have autism. There are a couple about girls. It's mainly about boys and men. So it's quite unusual, I think. I didn't know that when I wrote it. I found that out, and that sort of helped my pitch. I found out listening to Women's Hour. I hadn't realised until I came across the program by chance that it was such a problem for women and girls.
Parul: I'm really curious now that you're here. So you've got your book coming out in the summer. You've also got a huge history in children's books. Has this changed your view of publishing? Do you now want to focus more on adult writing?
Anna: I'd like to be greedy and be able to keep both because I do love writing for children, and I've actually gone back to writing picture books. So I've written a couple this year. That's in the pipeline now. I've got one more nature book coming out as well. So for the next couple of years, at least I can still call myself a children's author. So hopefully, that will continue. And I just never say never because I don't really know what I want to write about next.
I'm trying to write a novel at the moment for adults, which is unusually for me, plot it out. And the plotline is sitting on my desk at the moment, but I'm finding it hard in lockdown to write, actually. I'm finding it hard to write characters that I believe in, and the dialogue is really tripping me up.
Matt: Going back to the theme of truth. Do you have any advice for someone who's trying to tell the truth, but maybe is struggling to be that vulnerable or any advice on how to start that process? What have you used to help tell the truth better?
Anna: I've always kept a journal, and I really kept it religiously when mum and dad were ill to the point where I use those really fat paperchase journals, you know, the one with the cloth sort of covers and usually takes me a couple of years to get through one.
I think I filled up two whole notebooks in a year of mum and dad's, you know—the worst, the worst time. And I was so truthful in those because it was journaling. So I was writing like no one was watching. And I used them a lot then when I was writing the book because I went back to fact check things and I would phone my sister and say, “Look, I wrote this in my journal on Monday”, then whatever, you know, “Do you remember this?”
And I think, writing like no one’s watching is the only way to really get it initially. And then it's up to you in the crafting and the editing. How much [do] you want to actually reveal to the audience.
Parul: Just have one last question around the title because A Place for Everything seems like a really beautiful title, especially when you read the book, and you see the theme that comes through, which is the fact that your mother would have a place for everything.
She was very particular about how things were kept. Did you have any other titles in mind? What's your process? And I realised sometimes probably your editor might get involved with this as well. What was the process of choosing a title for you?
Anna: I'm really bad at titles, so the working title was Missing the Boat because I thought she's missed the boat of diagnosis. And I had to put a lot of water images anywhere in the book for various reasons. So I thought, well, that's it, I'll go with that. And actually, I always knew it was a working title because it doesn't tell you anything. So Kate and I were chatting, one of the wonderful editorial conversations that we had.
And I said, “Do you know what are we going to do about the title?” And she said, “Oh, you know, there'll be some phrase or something in the writing that will just spring to mind, and it'll come out of what you've already written.” And then we almost looked at it. I'm sure it was almost simultaneous. We looked at each other and went, “A Place for Everything.” Literally, just kind of sprang out too. I think I've repeated it so many times. In my first draft, she probably had to cut it out about 150 times.
Parul: That was confirmed in the chat. That that was how it was.
Anna: It's amazing. It's never happened like that before.
Parul: There's something really lovely about that when you're reading a book, and you see that phrase. It's almost like if I would cut open your book, that's what I would see—that colour running through. I mean, you could read into it, and it was sort of like your place, like where do you fit.
Anna: I mean, that was a subconscious thing, but that's definitely that, yeah.
Matt: So I'm curious. I know we've kind of bounced around a lot, but talking about your conversations with Kate, what does that relationship look like between you and—sounds like Kate is an excellent partner in this. Are they phone calls? Is it every week? Is it every month? What did that interaction look like between you?
Anna: I mean, I think we've only met for editorial conversations maybe three times. Hmm, I have to confirm that, but they were very, very long conversations. And I mean, I'm not just saying that because she's here, I'm really not, but they were probably the best editorial conversations I've ever had because she's so insightful. I would sit there feeling as though I was having a chat, but I'd come away feeling exhausted. Like I've been through a kind of three-hour tutorial, and everything would sort of just filter through after the event. And everything would just make sense because she's just so good at picking out strands and themes and, you know, knowing what to bring to the fore, what to knock back and what to get rid of.
And she was so sensitive. Because obviously, it's, you know, she's not talking about characters, which is what I'm used to talking about. She’s talking about real people. I mean, I've absolutely loved every minute of working with her. And I hope she’s listening when I say, I hope this isn't the last time we worked together. So yes, it's really great.
Parul: It's that relationship between an editor, and a writer is so intimate, right? Because you have to be really—
Anna: I've been close to my editors. Sometimes it's been harder than others, but this was a good one. Yeah.
Matt: Sorry. Did you choose Kate or was she given to you?
Anna: She was given to me from the heavens above.
Matt: If someone's on the hunt for an editor, whether it's someone to read over their blog posts or work with their book, maybe they're self-publishing and they want to hire someone, what sort of qualities would you look for in an editor? So it sounds like you had a connection there, and she was [a] quasi life coach and, you know, editor into one.
Are there any other qualities you would look for in a good editor?
Anna: I think someone who is sensitive to what you're wanting to write and how you're wanting to write it. So my worst editorial experiences have been with people who really want to be writing it themselves. So they end up trying to put their own writing on it, their own voice, their own take. And they're not really listening. And I say this as much because I have, well, I still am an editor. I’ve just edited a project for someone. You have to put aside your own wants and desires almost. If that makes sense. You have to be willing to really listen and hear what it is that the other person's trying to do.
And it has to be compromised because there might be times when you think, oh, I just really want them to cut that bit out, and they really want to hang on to it. And you know, you've got to be able to develop the relationship so that you can both be listening to each other and be willing to compromise.
Matt: It might be a rabbit hole, but I'm curious about the creative writing that you teach. I'm not sure what the question is, but just what do you do? What sort of teaching do you do and how often, and what's that look like?
Anna: So, do you mean how does anyone teach creative writing? I have been asked that and—
Parul: Draw around your philosophy, like, what do you think is needed to write well, to master the craft, [to] level up?
Anna: No, it's a really good question because I was never taught it. So, I mean, some of my harshest critics have said, “Oh, goodness sake, don't you just do English literature and read those books.” And you know, “Charles Dickens didn't go to [a] creative writing college.” I think it's a brilliant thing to do. And I wish I had been able to do it myself because what I hope to do is give people a toolbox. They might already be a writer and not realise it, but they might be spending too much time on setting, not understanding how dialogue works, having no concept of narrative arc, whatever it is. And when I teach a whole course, I try to give a week to each sort of area of writing.
So [I] might do a week on pace, a week on structure, a week on dialogue and then pull it all together. That's what I would do if I were teaching a whole course. If I'm tutoring or mentoring someone, it's much more like an editorial relationship. So I'll look at somebody's whole piece of work, and I'll try and tease out the various themes and so on.
But along the way, I might give them little exercises or prompts or hints to improve their dialogue or their setting or whatever it is. So, yeah, it's sort of giving a toolbox, really.
Matt: Do you have any favourite exercises if anyone wants to do a little practice of writing more creatively or any exercises you would send us on our way with?
Anna: My favourite one is the setting one, actually, which I'm going to be teaching on Saturday, and it's a visualisation exercise, but it's sort of using all the senses. So no, just sight. So it's like mindfulness, really. I usually give an idea, like if you're writing for teens, I quite often say, imagine a bedroom because the bedroom is really important for a teenager. And then I'll say, you know, there's no one in it, but I want you to think about everything else that is in the room because that will actually help define the characters.
So I'll say, you know, first of all, close your eyes, imagine what you can see in this room, you know, is it dirty? Is it clean? Is it ordered? Is it messy? All their books are there, is there music, whatever. And I'll take them through. We'll spend a few minutes. They'll visualise that. Then I'll take them through, you know, what does it smell like?
Are there smells coming in from an open window? I go through all the senses in that way. Everyone with their eyes closes. And then we'll sort of just come out of that, and everyone normally comes out sort of a bit, “Oh,” and then it'll be sort of right. Ten minutes, write a scene set in that room, and you can put the character in, you can give them someone to talk to, or you can just describe an emotional state, but the setting will feed into all of that. And that's really fun to do.
Parul: That sounds really fun.
Matt: It sounds like we need to take your course.
Parul: Well, actually, you know, Anna will hopefully be doing some classes with us at London Writers’ Salon, which will be great. I have one final question to leave on, and it is quite open-ended, but you have been around a lot of writers.
Either you've been an editor for them, or they're your friends, or they're in the industry. Are there any commonalities you see amongst them, common mindsets, personality traits? What does it take to be a writer for years and years?
Anna: I think it's quite a pigheaded attitude. I think you have to be pretty disciplined. I love Margaret Atwood when she says, “Show up, show up, show up. And the muse will too.” In other words, don't talk to me about, oh, I'm just waiting for the muse to come. I'm just waiting for that moment when I'm going to feel writer-y, and then I'll write something. Now you've got to show up every single day.
And if it's just the morning pages, that's fine, but you've got to do some writing every single day. So discipline. A curious combination of never being satisfied but also being quite dramatic about what it is you want to say. I know that sound contrary, but you know, this is my story, and I want to tell it like this, but oh, it's not good enough, so I've got to redraft it, and I've gotta redraft it, and I've gotta redraft it, which is also partly discipline, I suppose, as well—and then being very observant. So always on the lookout for stories. And if that means stealing them from somebody else, because I do that quite a lot. I don't mean other writers. I mean, people I have conversations with. They'll tell me something about their life, and I'll go write that down, might go in a book.
Parul: I love that. I love that. I love all of that. Pigheadedness determination, showing up, being persistent, being observant. [It] actually sounds like a very beautiful character.
Matt: Well, thank you so much, Anna. This was great. We loved it. In the chatbox, people are getting a lot from this conversation.
So your book, A Place for Everything, about the account of your mother's late-stage diagnosis of autism it's out on July 9th. Great. Do you have any asks of us other than read the book? Anything we can do to help?
Anna: Well, yeah, definitely by the book, people. It's available as an ebook and an audiobook as well [...]
Parul: Can we follow you on social media?
Anna: Yeah, follow me on social media. I'm on Twitter @acwilsonwriter and Instagram. And I have a Facebook page. I’m everywhere. I'm completely—all social media. I've got two blogs and a website. Yeah, follow me on social media, retweet me and chat to me on Twitter. I love Twitter. I know it's going through a bad phase at the moment. Everyone's grumpy about it, but I love Twitter.
Matt: Great. Well, we'll share all that—links and everything in the show notes. Anna, thank you so much. We loved it. Imagine a round of applause right now. Thanks, Anna.
Anna: Yeah, you’re welcome. Thank you for having me.
[Outro] Parul: Thank you for tuning into the London Writers’ Salon podcast. If you'd like to join these weekly interviews live for the chance to ask our guest writers your burning questions. Well, you can become a member at londonwriterssalon.com forward slash pound membership. You'll get access to our library of salon interviews and workshops, our private online community, where you'll find world-class resources on the craft of writing and find creative friends.
Honestly, we think it's the best writing community in the world, and we would love for you to join us.
Matt: And if you're a writer struggling to find time to write like so many of us, you're welcome to join our free virtual hour-long, silent writing sprints called the Writers’ Hours. We hold them four times every Monday to Friday.
And all you need is something to write with, a hot drink to cheers us with, and the desire to write. We think it's the world's best virtual co-writing space for writers, creatives, and, frankly, anyone who just needs to get something done. You can sign up for free at writershour.com, and we hope to see you there until we write again. Cheers, everyone.