IN THE SHOES OF… Joanna Nadin

 

What's life like in someone else's shoes (or bunny slippers)? This month Françoise Price invites author Joanna Nadin to tell us about her day.

Author Joanna Nadin

6am

 

'Adult fiction is the only age band I can read entirely for pleasure' 

I used to do the graveyard newsroom shift at a radio station, followed by four years at Downing Street with an 8am meeting, and then I was up with my daughter at six for school for a decade, so I still make use of that body clock alarm. Now I’m awake (albeit still in bed) with tea, reading and the radio. Always adult fiction as that’s the only age band I feel I can read entirely for pleasure, and usually on a Kindle (I’m a Netgalley member, which is such a gift for a compulsive reader). Right now it’s Blue Sisters by Coco Mellors, which, like Ann Napolitano’s Hello Beautiful, is a retelling of Little Women – highly recommend both.

 

 

8am

 

First writing of the day. I joined Writers' Hour in lockdown when I was struggling to find the motivation to write and missing company. There’s something incredibly encouraging about the accountability that comes with being in a ‘room’ with like-minded people. It runs on Zoom four times a day (8am in four different time zones) and there’s usually about 200 of us, including novelists, journalists and academics. I have a daily target of 500 words, and I usually hit it before the hour is up, meaning I could, in theory, bunk off for the rest of the day… 

 

10am

 

Instead, more writing. I love the buzz of company when I work (probably having cut my writing teeth in chaotic newsrooms and a busy political office) so on Mondays and Fridays I write in Boston Tea Party, which is roomy and light and likes writers. Luckily Bath is full of children’s authors, and a bunch of us bagsy a booth and write side by side for the morning. Today I got to write with Lou Abercombie (Fig Swims the World), Clare Furniss (The Things We Leave Behind) and Catherine Bruton (Bird Boy). I’m always juggling projects – at the moment I’m finishing the third YA novel set in the world of the aristocratic Mannerings, as well as doing structural edits on a MG novel When the World Ends (my first novel partially written in narrative verse) and an adult novel After Darcy (a contemporary sequel to Pride and Prejudice). Today, the Mannerings won out as I really want to get this draft done before the launch of the second book in the trilogy: Birdy Arbuthnot’s Year of Yes.

 

2pm

 

Home via the canal, and more ‘writing’. My former colleague and continuing mentor Julia Green always used to tell students that some of their most important writing could be done staring out of the window. For me that ‘window’ is walking, cycling or swimming. I don’t like exercise as a rule, but repetitive motion allows me to jettison everything else that’s pressing (booking an MOT, organising a work event, prepping a Powerpoint for a festival) and let ideas percolate. It’s when I do a lot of my plotting – hanging out with my characters and taking them down different paths to see which one works best.

 

3pm

 

Class books for Joanna's academic work

 

My first agent gave me some sage advice when I signed with her: ‘Never leave your day job until your advance is three times your salary.’ That’s never happened, and so for a long time I carried on working in politics and then freelanced as a speechwriter. When the political climate switched, I began my PhD in Creative Writing at Bath Spa and became a lecturer in Writing for Young People. Now I’m an Associate Professor at University of Bristol, and for two and half days a week I focus on academic work. Right now, that’s a chapter on the depiction of class and social mobility in Jilly Cooper’s Rivals, which barely feels like work, as I’m passionate about commercial fiction and the 1980s, and, as an Essex girl, fascinated by snobbery.

 

5pm

 

The local pond where Joanna occasionally swims

 

If the weather is good (and only if it’s good) I find the time to swim in a local pond at a nearby village. It was Anna Wilson (Grandpa and the Kingfisher) who encouraged me to join Writers' Hour, and she introduced me to Glovedippers too, which again became a lifeline in lockdown. This, like my canal walk, could be purely pleasure, but tends to end in solving plot points.

 

7pm

 

'Another of my ‘day jobs’ is a tutor for John Yorke Story' 

Honestly, most evenings I’m curled up in front of the TV (I’m currently working my way through a rewatch of Spiral, as well the brilliant Just Act Normal on BBC Three) but another of my ‘day jobs’ is a tutor for John Yorke Story, and tonight I’m hosting a Zoom for my tutor group on five-act structure. I am a huge believer that story is story, no matter what form, and there is so much we can learn from film and television writing. My own process is shaped by Robert McKee’s screenwriting techniques and John’s dissections of film structure.

 

10pm

 

I have rarely gone to bed later than eleven, not even as a student. I need both the sleep and the routine (late-diagnosed autistic so this, as well as the strict structure of my entire day, is now really making sense). I will attempt to read, but this usually lasts two minutes before I’m out. My dreams will be wild, but none of them in any way useful for a story.

*Header image by Tita Berredo and Ell Rose;

all other images courtesy of Joanna Nadin

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A former broadcast journalist and political speechwriter, Joanna Nadin has written more than ninety books for children and teenagers, including the Sunday Times bestselling Worst Class in the World series, and Joe All Alone, which is now a BAFTA-winning and Emmy-nominated BBC drama. She’s been nominated for the Carnegie Medal five times, and shortlisted twice for the LOLLIES. Her latest MG series is Disaster Diaries and latest YA novel is Birdy Arbuthnot’s Year of Yes.

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Françoise Price is a Feature Editor for Words & Pictures magazine. 

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Ell Rose is Illustration Features Editor of Words & Pictures. Contact them at illustrators@britishscbwi.org

Tita Berredo is the Illustrator Coordinator of SCBWI British Isles and Art Director of Words & Pictures. Contact her at illuscoordinator@britishscbwi.org