Hello, and welcome to the London Writers' Salon podcast.I'm Matt.
And I'm Parul.And each week we sit down with a writer that we admire to talk about the craft of writing and the art of building a successful and sustainable writing career.
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 information.
In this episode, we talk to the award-winning cookbook writer, blogger, and novelist, Kate Young.We talk to Kate about how her blog went viral, how she turned her blog into a series of cookbooks, and what goes into a pitch for a cookbook.
She's also started writing rom-coms.
Her debut novel, Experienced, has been published to critical acclaim, and we talked to her about her approach to plotting rom-com, how she adds depth to rom-com characters, her approach to writing sex scenes, and what she thinks every rom-com book should have.
Kate was a lot of fun to talk to.I walked away from that conversation both wanting to be more ambitious in my own writing, but also knowing it's important to take success in the publishing industry lightly.So without further ado,
I hope you enjoy our episode with Kate Young. Welcome to the London Writers' Salon, Kate.Thank you.Thank you so much.So lovely to have you here.And thank you as well for dialing in while you're back home in Australia.Yeah, it's very nice.
I'm so glad.And so today we're going to be talking about rom-coms and cookbooks.Those are two things that are dear to your heart.And from what I've read, food and literature have always been a part of your life.
If you had to choose one, what food and book do you most fondly remember from your childhood?
Gosh, I think in terms of books, I grew up in Australia, but to parents who'd lived for a decade in the UK just before I was born and including when I was born.
So I grew up with both a large collection of Australian literature, picture books like Possum Magic, YA like John Marsden's Tomorrow and the War Beyond series, both of which are very important to me in different ways, but also grew up
a lot of English literature and was sort of absolutely obsessed with moving back to England, which I did when I was 21.
So I think in terms of books that I grew up with, I really loved the Alfie and Annie Rose series when I was a kid, Charlie's books.
And I really had a great adoration of particularly Danny the Champion of the World, which was my favorite book when I was a kid. And what about food?
It's really nice being here and being reminded of how good tropical fruit is and how good seafood is here.So I grew up in Queensland, which is particularly fantastic for both of those.So great prawns, great avocados, great mangoes.
Yum. We're going to be talking a little bit about your career today as a writer and as a cook, but actually over the years you've had a number of jobs.I believe you're a theatre producer and a teacher as well.
Later on, and we're going to talk about this very shortly, you started a blog.But before you started a blog, Were you thinking about writing publicly?Was that like a secret ambition of yours?Were you scribbling to yourself every day in a journal?
It was my first ambition when I was a kid to write a book and then I went to school and did really well at science and maths and did really well where there was an answer.
And all of my best school subjects were something where I could learn the answer and then go in and give it.And that is not English at school.English at school is particularly in Australia, I think, in terms of our curriculum.
And so by the time I was in secondary school, I had very much gone, no, I'm not a writer.That's not my best thing.That's not what I do well.I really love reading.I always have.I've always been a big reader.
But I had definitely, if not abandoned, then sort of decided that that as an ambition probably wasn't for me and wasn't where I was going to end up.
And so it was something that had very long in the past been something I'd wanted to do, but certainly I did not start a career as an adult being like, what I would really dearly love to do is be a writer.
So I feel really lucky that I kind of came back to it later.
I love the story of how you came to writing.I understand it was in 2014.It all starts with cooking.You made a treacle tart because you wanted taste.You'd never tried it before.It was Harry Potter's favourite dessert.This led to a blog.
Can you tell us a little bit about that story?How did the treacle tart lead to a blog?
Yeah, I think it's something that I was really interested in was the food that I'd loved as a kid that I had only ever read about.So the food I loved only in imagining and only in sort of not having a tangible connection to.
And so a lot of that was stuff from children's literature, but also stuff that I'd read about as, you know, somebody who was in my late teens and was reading about adult books.And it was a really lovely collection of
sort of ideas and things that I wanted to taste.And I was a theatre producer in 2014.I had come over to England to work in theatre.That is very much what I wanted to do.
But being a producer is very much, I guess, being the person who says, we don't have budget for that.We can't make that work.That's, you know, that's a lovely idea.
but when we're going to sort of curtail that slightly and make it more like this, particularly sort of in learning departments, which is where I worked in, we always had very, very restrictive budgets.All theatre does, but we really did.
And so it was really wanting to find a creative project that was my creative project, something that I could do that nobody was like, here's what you can do, here's what we can't do, here's the parameters.
And having a blog seemed like a good way to just go,
every week i'm going to read something and i'm going to cook something and it's going to be something new to me it's going to connect me with where i grew up and it's going to be like a thing that i can do for me that doesn't involve having to say no we can't we can't make that happen because a blog is very i guess like quite low investment i don't know if anyone listening has a substack now or something similar but it functioned very much in the same way where it was just like
I gave myself a goal of every week I was going to do a new recipe.I wanted to learn new things.I wanted to write about them.But even then, it wasn't with a goal to it being a book or anything like that.
It was very much just, I want to do something creative that is my creative thing.
I love that.And so this was your friend, I think, who sort of said, this is a great idea that you're writing about.
Yeah, totally.Yeah.He was like, you know, that could be a thing.It's worth reading about.It's fun to read about.
So you said you were writing once a week.And how long were you spending on these blog posts?
honest at that point it was far more time on the cooking and photography so the writing was like definitely a part of it as well but trying to capture it and trying to make something that looked appealing and looked good and also that was that I tested a couple of times that was going to be a recipe that worked that I kind of cookery writing is so much
a combination of, yes, evocative sort of sensory food writing to make somebody go, I'm only reading about this thing that I really want to taste it now.
But it's the combination of that and also the sort of, I guess, like weight of responsibility of going,
Cooking is tricky and it demands somebody going out and buying ingredients and committing time to it and committing an evening to it of making something they've not made before.
So even in the early days of doing a blog, I felt a real responsibility of like, is this going to work?So I spent a long time developing and making sure that that worked, like in my evenings after work, and then I would sit down and write.
And the early ones that were on the blog were kind of you know, maybe a hundred word introduction to the recipe of just, this is my relationship with the book.This is why I'm cooking this thing.This is my, these are my memories of it.
This is what I feel about it.And it wasn't until I guess, like I'd been doing it for a couple of months that I started going like, oh, these bits of writing are getting longer and longer and I'm enjoying it more and more.
And the sort of storytelling aspect of it really came to the fore and was something that I was really enjoying doing.
I'm so curious about that because actually one of the things that we'll explore as we talk about cookbooks is how you weave narrative into what is a very factual set of instructions.
I was looking at some of the recipes that you were coming up with, like a Whipple scrumptious fudge millet delight from Charlie and the Chocolate Factory, and honey buns from the Magic Fireway Tree, and really some fascinating recipes you were getting there.
So I have two questions.The first one is, you're wholly making up these recipes.You're just imagining what might be in them and then trying to discover whether it tastes as you imagine it.Is that right?
Essentially, yeah.And the blog is quite different from then how the book worked as well.So the wonder of a blog is that it doesn't have to create one big narrative journey.And it also doesn't have to fit in with a collection of other ingredients.
So this all changed when it came to turning the blog into a book and turning the idea into a book.But at the time and initially, It really was just a, what is something that I've always wondered about?
What is something that I've always thought sounded fantastically delicious?I also, candidly, in the first year of doing it, it was all baking and all sweets because I really wanted to be on bake-off.
So I loved baking, I loved cooking, and I was like, this is going to be my way of kind of training myself to be on Bake Off.But I unfortunately am somebody who fits a very common demographic on Bake Off, so I did not end up doing it.
I applied to Bake Off in 2015 being like, here are all these loads of things that I've tried over the past year.So it really was about challenging myself to go, I've never done chocolate work, I've never done
you know, this kind of complicated baking.I've never made, you know, I want to make a tart that is really fantastic.And so it was thinking about all of the things I might want to use and might want to taste that also taught me a new skill.
So what was the reception to your blog in the beginning?
So I never missed a week of putting out a recipe, including when I was on holiday or really busy with a project at work, I would commit to doing it every single week.
And I think that my mum used to read it on multiple computers so that it looked like I had more readers than I did. And there were weeks where I was like, yeah, you'd have like a handful of people reading it and that would be really nice.
And it took about 18 months for it to be picked up and then read by a lot of people.So I'd been doing it for 18 months when it was picked up by the Guardian.
And I suddenly went from a readership of like a few hundred people on a good week would go on the blog to like 20,000 people went on it in a day.
And so it really was a moment of just going, there's a whole backlog of all this stuff I've been working on.There's a bunch of recipes I'm really proud of.
And it just felt like it got picked up at the right time when it had been going for long enough.
I'd love for you to tell us that story of this fried chicken and rolls recipe that got your attention.
Basically, The Guardian in maybe June of 2015, I can't remember when the book came out, but we're looking for people's memories or relationship with To Kill a Mockingbird to celebrate the release of Go Set a Watchman.
And I have continued to have very complicated feelings about Ghosts That I Watch when coming out in that I don't think it should.
I don't think that a book should be released that was somebody's first draft of a story they then did in a different way after their death.
But I do have great memories of reading To Kill a Mockingbird, which a friend gave me when I was 10 years old, a sort of friend of my dad's who was somebody in my life who gave me a lot of different books.
I remember reading it when I was 10 and I remember reading it when I was 14 and then studying it at school.
And I had made a few months before, just by chance, the breakfast that Calpurnia makes on Atticus Fincher's first day in court, which is fried chicken and rolls.And so I sent this photo along that I'd taken of the fried chicken and rolls.
And the woman who worked for the Guardian Books team, Anne Mata, said, unfortunately, we can't put this photo up because we found it online here somewhere.This is on somebody's blog.But if this is your blog, let us know because we think it's great.
And within sort of the next couple of days, they'd chosen 10 of the photos and 10 of the books and featured them in sort of a linked thing that just a photo series on the Guardian linking back to my blog.
I love that it worked, the proof of concept, right?You're putting this out there.I also love the serendipity there, that you weren't searching for it, but you had the backlog of recipes and the right time came.
So around this time, your blog was taking off and at some point you got a column at the Guardian.Was that off the back of a series that you did with them?
yeah, that was essentially it.So they were really expanding their online content at the time.
So the Guardian Books team, I think, had had a reduced amount of space that they had in the paper, but their response to that was to put a lot of stuff online.
and so I think there was a period of sort of two years where a bunch of people blogging at the time, some who were blogging reviews, some who were blogging general like publishing stuff, and some who were blogging sort of other recipes and things like that.
I was the only recipe one, but some who were blogging like other sort of weekly ideas, they essentially reposted our blogs.
So for the first couple years I didn't get paid for it, but the exposure was great, which is a terrible argument for doing creative work, and I now like look back on the way that you say that, which is
oh you do it for the exposure and disagree with it but also it was a really good opportunity and I was doing it at the same time as having a job and I was doing it at the same time eventually as writing my first book.
It was really good exposure and it after sort of a year and a half of them reposting stuff it turned into them paying me to write a column for them every week so I essentially started writing my blog for them instead.
I'm always curious about the correlation between having a column and that actually increasing your following or follower's audience.Did you notice a correlation with increasing followers?
Yeah, I did.Yeah, yeah, absolutely.
I think that both being on a hub like Substack, like WordPress, essentially extended my readership in the first place because it was somewhere where other people were linking to people's work and doing all of those things.
being on twitter and on instagram at the time i am not on twitter anymore but i'm still on instagram they both really like increased readership but certainly being somewhere that was that is the guardian increased the readership and like sent people back to my blog or sent people to like my instagram page or other stuff i was doing
And is your blog still around today?
It's not.So it is archived on the internet, but essentially we, that my publishers eventually were like, there's a lot of the stuff that like, you know, it essentially ended up being free online, which I never had a problem with.
And all of this stuff is still on The Guardian.And I'm not worried about that being there, that that feels great that it's there.But I think also I was very much aware that I had lived a lot of this time very openly online when nobody was reading it.
And I felt more complicated about people going back and reading the first year of the blog while I was really finding my feet.A lot of my work was just there as I was finding a voice and figuring stuff out.
I felt much more like, okay, the stuff that's on The Guardian isn't going anywhere.
i know that that's not going anywhere but that feels like the later years of the blog and it felt i felt happier with that staying up there and essentially when i was approaching the novel coming out um this year i just archived some stuff and when i feel really good about people not being able to go back and read the stuff that i don't feel as is as representative despite the fact that i think it's quite charming to have like all my whole progression of stuff there
I understand that challenge.I think many of us feel that and it's definitely easier when you have a smaller number of followers on anything.
You're a lot more open, so I sympathise with that.
And actually, what you mentioned around the publishers encouraging you to archive is a little bit reassuring because we often have writers who have a blog or want to write, maybe release some of their work online and are worried that it will stop them getting a deal.
But it sounds like that didn't stop you getting a deal, it just meant you had to archive it.
well, it definitely got me the deal.And in fact, they only ever were kind of, you know, suggesting it and going like, oh, okay.
And so, you know, it'd be great sometimes if maybe certain recipes that ended up in the book, once I kept developing and put them back up, they were like, that one's still online.How do you feel about that?Do you stand by that version of the recipe?
You've worked on it for another three years. And it was far more about being like, I feel like the definitive version that I'm really happy to be out there is the one in the book.
And I didn't want to go back and edit everything that was on the blog, not least because it feels very disingenuous to go back and be like, this thing I wrote in 2016, I'm now rewriting in 2021 or whatever it is.
So I felt very much like definitive version of the blog is the book and that that is now what exists.
If you had to start a new blog today, what would you do differently?
So I have just started a Substack because I really miss the immediacy of a blog.I miss the immediate response to a thing.
I think so often writing is incredibly lonely and for years at a time you're kind of the only person who knows your characters or knows your work. you know, it's, you're doing it sort of in isolation and working on a thing.
And I really miss like putting a thing out every now and then and having people go, ah, me too, yes, I agree with that.
So I have a subset called The Organized Lesbian and I write about things that make my life better or easier than like small moments of organization.
I've only just started it, and I started it in the midst of putting the novel out, which was a terrible idea.But what feels nice is to go, I have not committed to a timeline.
I have not committed to there being a certain number of ones that get released every week.The first blog was very much like, I will put a recipe out a week.I will do this.I will commit to it.
And this feels far more like, when I have a fun thing to say, I will say it.
I love that.Do you have any other rules for yourself?It's really hard sometimes to keep your sanity when you put a blog out because you want attention on your words but then you worry about what people might say about your words, both good and bad.
Do you have any rules for yourself to just keep you level-headed?It sounds like first you're not pushing yourself to publish at a rigid routine.Is there anything else that you tell yourself or you live by?
I think that particularly blogging and that kind of writing can be incredibly personal, and I think it benefits from being incredibly personal.
I love reading people's blogs, the way you get to hear about people's lives, but I think that I was very clear
sort of, we'll get onto this with the rom-com and stuff, but I for example have never wanted to write about my own dating life because it feels in a way like incredibly unclassy to just to make that the narrative and the story.
So I think like what feels fun is having found a thing that allows me to write a little bit about my life but in a way that doesn't feel intensely exposing and doesn't feel like i'm giving too much of my own personal life away.
and i think that the thing with writing food and writing recipes is that so much of it is deeply personal and it's quite fun to me at the moment to write something that is a bit personal and a bit about my life but also in a way that i get to curate and be clear about and share what i want to share and not be in a situation where i'm like oh i need to talk about how my week was and how
all these people in my life, it feels much more like I'm going, here's one fun snippet from my life.
Sounds like you've set your boundaries for yourself.
Yeah, I think so.I think that's the better way to say that, yes, exactly.
Now I read somewhere or heard somewhere that Nigella Lawson helped you land an agent.So you had this Guardian column, you had the blog that was doing really well, Nigella Lawson maybe retweeted something or reposted?
Well, so it was even before I had the column, it was before, she essentially, that collection of 10 photos, she just, after that happened, she started following me and then reposted one of my photos a few weeks later.
It was completely low-key, by chance.She managed to come across the thing and went, huh, a fun idea, and then reposted one of my photos some weeks later.
I'd already kind of had a couple of agents get in touch after the Guardian feature of the recipes, going, this sounds like a book idea.Would you like to meet?Would you like to talk about this?And I at the time was like, yeah, you're maybe right.
Maybe that is a thing I could do, but felt very I think because cookery writing is so innately useful and so practical, I essentially felt like I didn't really have the credentials to be a food writer.
At the time, I had this weird sense of imposter syndrome of just being like, I would love that, but it feels like I don't know whether that's a thing I'm allowed to do or I can do.
But I met two agents and they were both fine, but my meeting with them did show me that they were really interested in the idea but not particularly interested in me.
So the idea of being literature and food, but that it could have been done by anyone and they were just interested in the way that you'd sell that idea.
and then I met a third agent who genuinely seemed and she was the one who got in touch after the Nigel Wilson post.
Yeah, yeah, so she got in touch and she just seemed really interested in me and in what literature I loved and what kind of book I would want to write and what I would want it to look like rather than sort of coming in and telling me what version of it would sell.
And so I think that that immediately felt like a conversation I wanted to have and it filled me with sort of a sense of, okay, maybe there is something here and somebody is interested in the book I would want to write.
I'm curious, if someone is thinking about pitching a cookbook, what do you think they should include?Given your experience so far, what do you think they should include or consider in their proposal to an agent?
so proposal to an agent wise i think like like with most writing i think the publishing industry is an industry that loves to compare sort of different work and go oh okay i can fit you into this box in my head because your work that you want to make is like x and y and i think that having a real awareness of where you fit in the sort of food writing scene is a really useful thing so are you somebody who is writing
narrative storytelling, like narrative non-fiction alongside your food writing.Are you somebody who is very recipe focused and what you want to do is like a collection of really useful recipes?
Are you somebody who is writing about a particular cuisine that we've maybe seen some of but not loads?And who are the other people writing about that cuisine?I think it's what agents or publishers really want to see is like
where you would fit into the industry, because it's not a huge industry.Food writing can feel quite narrow.
And I have another cookbook coming out next year, and that will be my first one that's not a sort of literary cookbook that is about food and literature.
So it's taken me, I guess, like eight years of doing this to be in a position where my publishers are going
yes we can sell a book on your name rather than on this idea and we're interested in you writing recipes rather than just this great fun idea that I had years ago and so I think it is like about demonstrating where the niche is what you're bringing to food writing that isn't there yet what the gap in the market is or like what you're adding to a place that does already does already exist if that makes sense.
That makes sense and it sounds a lot like any non-fiction proposal, sort of trying anything where you sit in the market.
Given your knowledge of food writing community, how much importance have you seen agents place on the background or the social media following?Is that important?
I think, yeah, I think both of those things are important in different ways in a way that I kind of wish that they weren't but I think that they definitely are because so much of publishing is you selling your own book and your publishers will be behind you and they will support you but so much of it is you selling your book and I think the complexity of social media is that it doesn't work as well as people want it to.
It is not as easy to galvanize readers on it as people think it is.It is not as easy to use it as a marketing tool as people think it is.
There are lots of really useful and brilliant and warm and rich communities on social media, but it doesn't necessarily mean that a book will be a hit.It's really difficult to make that happen and to make that happen with a social media following.
However, there is a sort of belief and an understanding that you're going to need your own following to do something.
I think a lot of cookbooks that are written are also like either, yes, you have a following and this is the kind of writing you do, or you have a restaurant and you are writing about this specific type of food.
I think that there are books that fall outside of those two categories that are being written, and there are people who don't have enormous followings who are writing beautiful cookbooks, but I think it feels to me like it's always been important to have my own place to talk about recipes and talk about food writing.
In everything that you've done to promote your books, you've written four, I think, and edited one.What has worked for you?If you have a sense of whether it's an email list or live events or social media, what do you think has worked for you?
I think social media has worked, but I think it also has shifted.I think social media worked really well in 2017.And I think that in a really boring way, the way that Facebook bought Instagram, they changed the way that the algorithm works.
And when GDPR came in, you couldn't collect people's data in terms of what photos they were liking anymore and sell that data, that changed how Instagram worked because that rule and that law does not apply to video content.
So you can collect data and sell data on what videos people are watching on Instagram, but you can't do it for photos.And it means that
if you are frustrated by your instagram account and if you are frustrated by the fact that mostly videos get promoted to your feed and you are constantly fed ads rather than your content of people you chose to follow, that is the reason.
it's because of what can be sold and how your data can be used and all of those things and i think it is harder to leverage that than it used to be.
I think that Instagram did… I don't really know about Twitter, I don't have the same sort of like Twitter understanding, but it used to be, I know, a real site that you could leverage something on and you could really… it worked for users.
And in a way that I'm not trying to be like Tim Canhat or like conspiracy theorists about it, it just simply doesn't work for users anymore.It works for meta. it works for people collecting your data and pushing you ads and selling you stuff.
so i have found the thing that has been the most useful to me is going to bookshops to do um like to go on signstock going to bookshops and meeting booksellers talking to booksellers
putting myself in front of people, because booksellers are the greatest possible asset that writers have.
They are the people who will buy your stock, they will sell your book to somebody who comes in, they will pass your book across the table, and that privilege and a joy you cannot buy.
And it is something that has felt incredibly important to me, and the support that I've had for the novel with booksellers who I've had this relationship with from writing cookbooks has been extraordinary.
The way that people have followed me into the next thing has been so moving and overwhelming.And I just think, particularly in Britain, we have such a great community.
of booksellers who work really hard to put the best possible books and the books that they love in front of readers who come in.And I think people are shopping more in bookshops.
There's lots of data about the fact that ebooks and audiobooks did not have the detrimental and disastrous effect on people buying books and hardcover books that we thought that it might and that there was an assumption that it would.
And so I think that it feels quite galvanizing and motivating to know that there is still a real potential to go into bookshops and go, hi, I'm part of this.And it just does feel really, I think, moving and good to be part of that community.
And that is the thing I have always found the most useful.
Long live the bookshop and long live booksellers.I love that.I love that.I think it feels like in the war of technology versus humans, that's a win for the humans.Totally.I've actually been surprised recently.
I've had a number of bookshops reach out to me, like new bookshops wanting us to maybe do events there and this is spurring me on to do that.I'm not sure.
Yeah, there's lots of independent bookshops that are popping up and new things opening and niches that are being found and bookshops that are opening with really specific goals and audiences in mind.
And I just think there are a lot of people doing it really well at the moment.
I love them.I think it's maybe time to move from the sensory experience of food writing to writing about sex, your writing of rom-coms and love.So tell us about your debut novel experience, and I believe you have it to hand as well.
Oh yeah, it is this. So it is actually the second novel that I have written in a group of writers.This is something that's fun to talk about.The first novel I wrote was a sad gay novel set in the past.It took me six years to write.
It was a kind of murder mystery that was also a domestic drama that was also a sort of very quiet love story.It had a lot of different things going on.It was 110,000 words, in between each of my cookbooks.
I would return to it for a month or so, and then I finished it during the third lockdown we had and thought, great, this is my new thing.This is what I'm going to do now.And I gave it to my agent in the middle of 2021.
Although I'd spent sort of the past, the previous few years being like, well, obviously I am not a novelist.Obviously I don't know how to structure novels or write novels or what I'm doing.
I obviously did have some part of my brain that was like, this is my new thing.This is going to be great.She is going to love this.I have worked so hard.I have learned so much.It probably needs work, but it's going to be magic.
And she took me out to lunch in mid-2021 and she was like, I don't know that this is something I can sell.And she was like, it's like seven different books, and maybe you could read this book by Patricia Highsmith about structuring thrillers.
And I was like, yeah, I have read it.And all of these things of just every idea that she had, I was just like, oh, this book is dead to me, and I don't want to do any of this work. So I think that I was absolutely heartbroken.
I really thought she was going to drop me, or at least was going to go like, okay, so we're going to get to the end of your cookery writing and then that will be it.I will be done with you.
And the reality was that she went, take it, go away, spend six months working on a redraft of it, take these things into account, maybe X, Y, or Z can happen.
And I went home and put that novel in a drawer straight away, and I've never looked at it since.It was a real moment of just being like, oh, I think this is not a thing that I can do.
And it felt like an enormous sort of risk of my time and my money and my finance to have spent so long on a thing that I was just going to shelve.But I kind of went, you've learned loads.And financially, I decided I sat down and I was like,
I can give it one more go and I can dedicate another month of time where this is my job that I'm going to do, and then a thousand words a day that can't be part of my paid work, so that has to go alongside the other work that I'm doing to get paid.
So I can give myself one unpaid month of writing on this novel and then working on something else.
and then like up to five months of giving myself some time every day but having to get a novel finished and I can't take another six years I just have to like write and I was like if I get to the end of that six months and Zoe again says this is bad stop trying to do this I will at least have had to have fun like I felt like the biggest thing was just if I could have fun doing it if I could write something that felt fun and good
then at least if it wasn't good, if at least if it wasn't something that was going to sell, I could send it to some pals and be like, hey guys, I tried to write a novel.I hope you enjoy.
And so I basically was like, what would I have the most fun writing?And the answer was a rom-com.I love romantic comedy.I love, I love the genre.I have always loved reading it.I've always loved watching them.
they fill me with such sort of warm brilliant enthusiastic joy.i felt as well like as a gay woman there aren't nearly enough rom-coms about queer women that a that exist full stop but b that also aren't about a person who thought they were straight
meeting somebody, falling in love and going, oh my god, I guess I'm bi or gay.There's great sort of richness in the queer coming out story, but I think I was much more interested in going, what is the bit that is after that?
What is after you are part of this community and you are discovering for the first time what it is to be in this community and date people and do stuff?So the character I wanted to write about is somebody who came out not because
she fell in love with somebody but because she realized she was gay.
And then what it is to have fallen in love with somebody, have that first relationship before the story starts, and then be in that relationship and have her perhaps perceived lack of experience or lack of time in that community become something between them that might be an issue.
and what it is to then go out and go, okay, so essentially the plot of the book is they have this, her girlfriend, the first scene of the book is the central character and her girlfriend are in bed.
Her girlfriend goes, I think that it's going to become a thing in our future that in terms of women, you've only slept with me.And why don't we go on a break for three months?
You can go out and have all the experience you could have had in your twenties if you don't.And then we'll get back together in time for our friend's wedding. the book is those three months and then the fallout of those three months.
Essentially, the whole point of writing was just what would I have the most fun writing?What would be pure fun if it was never going to sell to a publisher?
So you send your character into the wild west of dating, which is where all the humour ensues and the funny anecdotes come about.And this book worked.So your agent liked it, she picked it up.What did you do differently?
So you'd said that you'd read Patricia Highsmith's book on writing thrillers before.What resources did you use to write this romantic comedy?
So this is where I become a giant nerd and reveal that I watched and read a hundred rom-coms and I built an Excel spreadsheet that tracked the narrative beats of rom-com because the joy of rom-com in the same way as sort of thriller in the same way as lots of other genre novels is that
there is a formula and the formula is like the function.
It's a great thing that we should hold on to rather than a thing that we should be worried about or embarrassed about or what really is too predictable or whatever else you might accuse rom-com of being.Rom-coms are predictable.
That's the whole point.That's the whole game.You should know by 12% of the way through the book who the main character is probably going to end up with because it's somebody that they have a meet cute with and then can't be
together with in the beginning, but then maybe you're going to be together with by midway through the book.And then they're going to have an argument and things are going to fall apart and then they're going to get back together.
There is a way that rom-com works.And so I watched and read loads of them and sort of tracked all those inevitable, rather than predictable, inevitable narrative beats
and sort of worked out what felt really satisfying and worked out what really works and, you know, took out the outliers and came up with a sort of standard deviation like limit of when the characters should meet.
when they should have their first conflict, when they should have the moment that almost happens and then doesn't happen, when they should have what should happen at the midpoint, when they should have their argument, like all of the things that happen in a rom-com.
I sort of plotted it out based on a lot of other people's fantastic work.And then before I sat down to write, I spent the month that I had given myself to do this
plotting out every single beat and going, okay, so a rom-com is about 90,000 words and I want about 27 chapters, so it's going to be about three and a half thousand words a chapter, and that this chapter is then going to focus on x, y, and z. And between my first sit down and mapping that out and the final draft,
that is now printed, very little structurally changed.There are a handful of things that I kind of mixed around, and in the middle we reshuffled a couple of chapters when I ended up getting editors working with me.
But although we did a lot of character work and a lot of the editors were utterly invaluable, they were amazing, but structurally the book was kind of there from the start.
I love this.I love this attention to detail.And it was all in a spreadsheet.Were you using note cards?What tools?
Both.So I did a lot of spreadsheet work.I really like spreadsheets.
I think the ex-producer and teacher and all of that in me really recognises the value of spreadsheets and is a way of collecting data and being able to put stuff down that you're going to work on.
so i really love spreadsheets but yes note cards were my other big things so my note cards wise i wrote up what was going to happen on every chapter and i stuck it on my wall and i kept working on each of those things and i kept adding up
different spread of different note cards and like going oh maybe this scene would be useful too this would be another good thing to add this would be a thing to add and so it was a combination of stuff that was on a screen and tangible in the world and I had both sort of a notebook that I wrote loads of the book in and and particularly because a load of the book I wrote while I was at a bookshop and working at a bookshop and
on my lunch break or during quiet hours or when i was on a train going between places or when i was in a hotel room at night after we catered a wedding like the whole thing about me being able to write it in amongst the work that the other work that i had to do and where i paid my rent is that i did a lot of it by hand
So it was a real combination of stuff that I would write in a notebook or write in a journal.I was writing in like a fat moleskin full of initial drafts of scenes and then laptop when I had my laptop with me.
So I think it was a nice combo of tangible real life and on the screen.
Thank you for sharing that.Now, you talked about watching 100 films or so and tracking the plots.Now, obviously, some rom-com films are better than others.Some of them hit us particularly hard.Were there any that really stood out to you?
If someone wanted to know, like, your top three rom-coms, maybe just based on the impact it has on the audience?
I mean, in terms of perfect structural beats, they're the ones that kind of map to this structure that I worked out that I think works really well.Bridget Jones's diary fits it perfectly.Everything happens exactly at the moment you want it to happen.
Characters enter at the moment you want them to enter.There are arguments exactly when they should be.There are moments of hope and pushing you forward exactly when they should come.
And the other one that fits it perfectly is When Harry Met Sally, which is, again, just like every time you want it to do something, every time you want them to have a little moment of almost, every time you want there to be a suggestion that something could happen, it happens.
And it's just structurally a perfect rom-com.And emotionally too, I think they're both fantastic films.But yeah, there is something about this because the genre
demands that you are, you know, that you're anticipating something and that you know what's going to come next, both of those do a perfect job of delivering to you exactly what is being expected, what you're expecting.
What's interesting about rom-coms, whether it's a book or film, is that even when they follow the same formula, they hit us differently.I imagine some of that has to do with the character development, the depth of that story.
How did you think about adding real depth to your characters and adding in that emotional pull?Was there anything you were doing to think about that?
My big thing was just that I wanted the people to feel very real.I wanted them to feel like people that my friends and I would know in real life and that we'd be gossiping about and being like, have you heard what Bette's doing?Absolutely deranged.
She and her girlfriend are on this break and she's doing this thing.Like I wanted it to feel like we could know them, that they felt really, really real.
And so part of that for me, and I think, I don't know how I would do this in other genre, but in rom-com, it just feels really important to be like, I know
what is happening every day of the narrative for my characters, even the days that we don't see in the plot.I know their favorite foods.I know where they went to school.I know what they're doing.Loads of information that's never going to come up.
I did lots of character development work before sitting down to write. and that's not just the protagonist, but that was the protagonist, the core love interest, the sort of other love interest, and the flatmate.
So they're the four central characters in Experienced.And I sat down and I had all of that information about all four of them, and I did all of that before I started writing.
And loads of it changed and developed as I was writing, like there were things that felt more true or more like in a way that you get to do when you're writing, more convenient, more useful to like have them work in a particular way or want a particular thing.
um but i think as well like the game of a rom-com is in making the sort of the bit or the hook a convincingly realistic barrier to a relationship so what a rom-com is is essentially introducing you to two people quite early on in the narrative and asking you to believe that they're not yet together for really valid true reasons but also that by the end of the narrative those reasons have gone
those reasons have been resolved, they are things that they have worked on, and that these characters are together and will be happy for the foreseeable future together.
That is like the game of the rom-com is getting them from they couldn't possibly be together to of course they are together, this was always inevitable.And part of that challenge
in when you're going to write something super realistic is in going, what are the things that are preventing these characters from being together?
What are the things that they are bringing to this interaction, to this, you know, this friendship or relationship or whatever it is that is preventing them from being able to be the person that is with this person in the end?
And how are they then going to resolve those things?And it's useful to like have them have conflicting problems and things that they bring, that they can't reconcile together, but that obviously through the narrative they're going to reconcile.
So my biggest thing for developing the central character was just going, okay, there is this woman who, in chapter one, instead of saying to her girlfriend, you're being mad, I'm fine, you're fine, we're having a great time, we don't need a break, says, oh yeah, that probably sounds like a really good idea, you probably know me better than I know myself.
And the real question was like, who is this woman?Why is that her initial response?Why is that a realistic thing for this character to do?How is she somebody that goes, yes, I will go out and do this because I really want to be with you?
And the whole character sort of started from who is the person who says yes to this proposition.
throughout your study of rom-coms, have you come across any storylines that subvert this a little bit?So they work but they somehow don't quite fit this perfect plot or the expectations?
Yeah, there's lots of ones that do that.What is really fun is it's such a broad, fantastic genre that there's so many different great stories that are told in this rom-com structure.
When I wrote this, and I have talked to people about writing it, a lot of people have asked about it subverting this genre.
And I think that we often see, I guess, like, I kind of still think that it's the queerness of it in mine that people think is a subversion, because really it's not subversive.It is absolutely 100% like doing the genre.It is doing it so clearly.
So I think, like, I am very interested in where things subvert.I think the greatest subversion of the genre that exists is One Day, which is an utter rom-com, like beat for beat, perfect rom-com, until 85% of the way through the novel.
And at the 85% of the way through the novel bit, which is normally your final crisis moment that brings the characters together and that challenges them, and that maybe they say no to
and they need to say yes by 90% like that final moment is such an overwhelming moment of shock and oh my god because you have been essentially reading a rom-com for 85% of a book and then the normal rom-com ending the rug is pulled out from under you and it's why it's so effective it's why it does it so well because you are you have been taken into this like this real sense of like
here is the narrative beat we're expecting.
Here is the thing that's going to happen because at 25% they go to Greece and they have this almost moment and then at this point they do this and at 50% it's the low point and they're not talking and this will build up and at 75% they're in Paris and it's happening and it's happening and then what happens at 85% happens and it completely subverts the entire structure of the book.
It's why it's such a clever book.
I love that.It's almost like if you play with the context of it, because in a way you could argue that's when he really feels true love.That's when he really knows he loves her.
So lovers do meet, but unfortunately not in real life, not in person at that point.I always think Killing Eve is sometimes a bit like that.There's a scene where they're about to kiss and instead she stabs her. Yeah, end of season one.
Yeah, wonderful subversion.I'd love to talk a little bit about sex.You have a fair bit of sex in your novel.Did you enjoy writing those?Was it difficult to write and did you hold back?No, it wasn't hard to write.
It's really fun.It's a thing that I think is really fun to write about. I know I've talked to a bunch of writers who are like, oh my God, I can't, I never do this.I never, no, absolutely.I can't possibly write about sex.
It makes me feel really uncomfortable or it's, I find it really tricky or I find it really, you know, really difficult.I approached it very much like I was just writing the continuation of a conversation.
really it's not that different from two characters talking.It is you are describing their bodies doing different things, but essentially they are continuing to have the same kind of conversation, it's just happening in a different way.
And I do think that the biggest tip I have if people want to write sex is that sex, like eating, is a full sensory experience and it's useful to think about like what people are feeling and hearing and tasting and touching and all of that.
So it is like a useful thing to just be super aware of what all of your senses are doing.But apart from that, I'm essentially writing it.
Like I didn't, I talked to a bunch of people like, oh yeah, I get like into this particular outfit or I light a candle or I do a thing.And I was like, oh, I did none of that.
I just kept writing the scene that I'd started with a conversation and then took them here instead.And then that scene finishes and we go to the next scene.It's such a part of the plot of the book.
The sex is so innately important in the narrative because it's so important what she learns from the sex and what the sex emotionally does for her.
what things she is taking from it, that it felt really important to show the sex on the page, that it wasn't going like, and then she went off and she did sleep with this woman and here are her feelings about it, but that you're instead seeing those feelings happen as they happen.
I think that it felt really important that there's a lot of it on the page.But in my second novel, there's far less of it because it's not part of the narrative in the same way.
So I hope the same sense of desire and joy and pleasure is on the page, but it's not narratively as crucial as it was in the first book.So there'll probably be less of it.
Just for the time check, we probably have around five minutes, maybe a couple of questions left for me, and then we're going to hand it over to you.So if you have any questions for Kate, please do put that in the chat.
Hello listeners, just a note from us at the London Writers' Salon.Our interviews are recorded in front of a live online audience and so at this point in the interview we turn to audience questions.
Would you like to be a part of the live audience and ask your own questions?Head to LondonWritersSalon.com for more information.You can buy tickets to the online events or get free access to them as a member.
I would love to move the conversation towards money, actually.Advances in money.I know very little about the cookbook world.I know more about the fiction world.
Have you noticed a difference from either your experience or your friend's experience in the level of advances for cookbook versus fiction?Does one genre pay better than the other?
yeah, fiction pays better.But that is my personal experience and the experience of, I would say, some of my friends.
I also have friends who are paid really well for cookbooks, but I would say that particularly my experience of cookbooks is that it never paid me enough to solely write cookbooks.
and to have that as a career that was my one job it was definitely a career but it was part of like a portfolio career of also catering and also working a bookshop and also and also and also and the novel is the first time in my career that i'm like i can take a few years and just do this if i like and that feels like an incredibly lucky place to be i signed a two-book deal and i think that we sold it at a time when
People were really enthusiastic about having more queer rom-coms.I think that it was doing something in the queer rom-com space that not a lot of other things were doing in the UK at the time.
And I think that that meant that we got very lucky with a couple of deals and that we got lucky selling it here and in the US.
and in a bunch of places in Europe as well and I think what I've always wanted is a career that is like a longevity of career rather than one hit book.
I want to be somebody who keeps writing and that people go 10 years down the line, oh I've read this thing and I've just gone back and she's got these other books and I've read them and like I want it to be that rather than just everybody talks about the one book that I've written and so I think that my thing here has been like
a good deal which is what I exactly what I had and what I feel incredibly lucky to have and then to work really hard at that book and all the subsequent things and to have lots of ideas of what I might do in the future and how I'm going to keep doing this but for now to sort of go I am taking advantage this year and last year of being able to do just this for a little bit and to call this my job which is such a privilege and a joy.
Of course, just for some context, you had a seven-way auction, I think, for your book, which is amazing.
I wonder, the flip side of that is it's wonderful getting a big advance and getting a big deal, but on the other side, it can feel like a bit of pressure to perform, I suppose, the results.Even just publishing a book can be quite stressful.
How do you talk to yourself?How have you spoken to yourself internally as you're going through the process of publication and this whole period since June, I think, your book was published?What has that been like for you?
How are you talking to yourself?
I think that a friend of mine who is also a writer said, because a lot of people I think, a lot of writers I know do have a sort of nervous reaction to going, oh I've been paid this much for an advance, the pressure is on, this is feeling like there is a lot of pressure there behind it.
but a friend of mine who's a writer who's written loads of different books and some of them have been real massive hits and some of them haven't done quite so well and she's like just always take the money.
Publishing is gamble, it is like publishing houses gambling on you and sometimes they will have money to put down on the table and they will put all their chips on you and sometimes they won't.
And neither of those times are a reflection of how good your work is.It is simply where the market is at that point and what they think is going to sell.But essentially, it's a gamble because you're a couple of years out from publication.
So you are trying to predict what is going to be true in a couple of years' time.And the world changes incredibly fast.Trends change incredibly fast.
And all anybody is doing is trying their best to figure out what's going to be the next thing that makes them money.
the end of the day publishing is an industry and a business and I know that we are all deeply romantic about books and I do think that that's important and good but I think that it is important too to acknowledge that it is an industry that works because books make money and that really what they are doing is gambling some money on you on your career making them that money back.
But I think that the big thing is just all I can do is write the best book I can and then promote it in a way that works with what the publishers want to happen.
So whether that's lots of interviews or writing or whatever, or it's going out into bookshops and it's going around and talking to booksellers and it's being present in bookshops with readers.And so whatever version of that is going to work,
all of those things feel important and good.And that is my responsibility and my job, essentially, is writing the best book I can and then going out and promoting it.
And I cannot, I think I would drive myself insane if I, and I did drive myself insane in May before the book came out, being in my head about like, is it going to feel worth it?Are they going to feel like it's done what they wanted it to do?
How is this going to work? I keep reminding myself that what I want is the longevity of career and not a thing that does really well for one week.So I am just doing my job, which is going and writing another book and going out and promoting it.
And that is exactly the that is the exact thing I should be doing.
That's beautiful.I think that's a wonderful way to think about your career.It's very reassuring.Maybe for someone who's listening, if they have any trepidation, maybe this will act as a tonic.
Just one final question for me before we head over to audience questions.With the salon, we often talk about the mountaintop, so what we're aiming for.And you've spoken a little bit about this, that you have your other book to deliver.
I know you have a cookbook coming out in 2025 with your friend. If you were to look five years into the future, what are you dreaming of for yourself?
The joy of my career so far is that at no point have I been able to see what five years' time will look like.And that is true of working in theatre.That is true of having moved to London.That is true of every stage of my career, including writing.
If you asked me in 2016 what I'd be doing in 2021, it is not what I was doing in 2021.I was doing different things.I was living a different life.
And so it feels like this real joy of just going, I hope that I am really happy and writing something that is fulfilling.That is all I can really hope to do.I hope I am still having this much fun writing.
I love that.I really love that.Thank you so much.Thank you, everyone.We'll see you soon.Bye, guys.Bye, friends. Thank you for tuning in to the London Writers' Salon podcast.
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