Culture Club - How To Write A Best-Selling Novel With Author Diana Reid

00:00:00.000 Getting published, being a young writer in the 2020s and how a debut novel can change

00:00:12.460 your life with author Diana Reid. We're Jasmine and Maggie and you're listening to

00:00:17.800 Culture Club Chats. This is an interview with a person we find interesting and that

00:00:21.920 we think you will too. We acknowledge that the Wurundjeri, Woiwurrung and Gadigal people are

00:00:32.740 the traditional custodians of the land which we live, work and record this podcast episode.

00:00:38.160 We would like to pay our respects to elders past and present. Always was, always will be Aboriginal

00:00:43.820 land. Today's guest is a rising voice in the Australian literary landscape and has been

00:00:52.760 compared to voice of a generation writer Sally Rooney. Diana Reid is the author of Love and

00:00:58.420 Virtue, her 2021 debut novel that tapped into the cultural zeitgeist of feminism, rape culture,

00:01:04.760 privilege and prestige. Love and Virtue saw Diana win the ABIA Book of the Year Award and the Sydney

00:01:11.240 Morning Herald's Best Young Novelist Award. Now she's back with Seeing Other People, a summer

00:01:17.320 novel that follows a love triangle and the relationship of sisters who are more alike

00:01:21.820 than they may think. Thank you, Diana, for being on Culture Club Pod today. We are so excited to

00:01:27.740 have you on. Thanks for having me. We want to know, so we love your books and we love your writing,

00:01:32.160 but we are curious, what do you do when you're away from your writing and your work

00:01:37.040 in a roundabout way I guess I'm asking what are your hobbies okay um yeah I know there are some

00:01:43.020 writers who are like I'm always working I can't stop writing but that's not me I really I can

00:01:48.580 stop quite a long periods of time um so I suppose my hobbies are uh well if you've read my books

00:01:56.120 you won't be surprised to know I really like swimming so I swim all year round I've got a

00:02:03.420 wetsuit um and I've got a little group of friends but a little group chat that's very

00:02:08.480 innovatively called fish and we go swimming at least once a week in the ocean um and I guess

00:02:15.800 I also like cooking and I really like movies like I'm a bit old-fashioned I like going to the

00:02:23.860 cinema and getting a choc top a woman after our own heart sounds exactly like us I'm the swimmer

00:02:30.660 as well. Oh, I'm not the swimmer, but I'll, I'll have a chock top. Yeah. And you're based in Sydney,

00:02:36.480 aren't you? Yeah. Seeing Other People has just been released. Congratulations. Must be so great

00:02:41.600 to finally see it out in the world. Yeah. It's exciting. And for those who haven't yet read it,

00:02:47.220 can you please give us a brief synopsis? So Seeing Other People is a story of two very

00:02:54.420 different sisters over the course of one summer in Sydney. And it's about their complicated,

00:02:59.760 sometimes overlapping love lives and the summer that stretches the relationship almost to breaking

00:03:06.280 point. I love that. Um, we both have sisters. I've got two jazz has one, um, India, her sister

00:03:11.960 actually edits this podcast. So hello India. So we want to know where did this idea of exploring 0.99

00:03:17.880 the relationships between sisters come from? Yeah. So I actually don't have a sister. Um,

00:03:24.140 But I suppose I think I always like writing about female friendship.

00:03:28.480 I think they're always interesting to me, the way women kind of define each other or

00:03:34.600 define themselves in relation to the people that they grow up around. 1.00

00:03:37.760 And I think in Love and Virtue, I'd explored that dynamic in quite a toxic way.

00:03:43.320 Like there were these two women who were very influential in each other's lives, but it

00:03:48.320 was a dynamic of competition and of always trying to be better than the other one.

00:03:52.460 so I think I wanted to kind of explore a more wholesome side of that dynamic in this book

00:03:59.380 like I felt like I wasn't quite done with it but I wanted to explore two women who

00:04:04.700 do define themselves by reference to the other one sometimes in contrast to the other one

00:04:09.820 but it's also very supportive and there's a lot of love there um so yeah I I imagined what it

00:04:16.540 would be like to have a sister and I wrote that and yeah what was the question no you answered it

00:04:24.080 perfectly yeah I'm so surprised that you don't have a sister because like yeah it sums up so

00:04:30.880 well like thinking of the scene where um the elder sister goes to like kind of save the younger one

00:04:36.860 at a party and like just that immediate like I'm gonna go get her like just take the housemate's

00:04:43.480 car and like that is such a sisterly relationship like even if you're fighting so yeah I've really

00:04:49.180 resonated with the relationship there oh thank you I'm so glad it sounds like you're a good sister

00:04:53.940 yeah yeah um yeah no I think I I think as a novelist as well like any kind of family

00:05:03.680 relationship is always interesting because they're obviously inherently high stakes

00:05:07.560 because as you say like it doesn't matter if you're fighting or how you feel about them on

00:05:12.660 that given day they they're still the most one of the most important people in the world to you and

00:05:17.560 that kind of doesn't go away so I think when you're writing a friendship the worst case scenario is

00:05:24.240 like oh well you just stop being friends and that might be sad but like you'll have other friends

00:05:28.420 whereas with sisters like you you're never going to get another one so you can't those relationships

00:05:34.540 are so irreplaceable so I think it makes any conflict much higher stakes. I would love to

00:05:40.340 know what went into the research of um looking into the relationships between sisters so I just

00:05:47.420 read a lot of novels with sisters in them um and I tried to focus on novels where there were pairs

00:05:53.640 of sisters because in in this book there's only two of them and they um have had not a super

00:06:00.020 traumatic but I guess a bit of um a disrupted home life so they've grown up in a very codependent

00:06:06.900 way. So I read a bunch of books that had sister pairs. So I read Sense and Sensibility, which is

00:06:15.320 the sort of paradigm, two very different sisters novel by Jane Austen. And then I also read

00:06:21.180 Howard's End, which has almost the identical pair of sisters to the one in Sense and Sensibility

00:06:28.200 and the one in my book. It's like the older one is more rational and reasonable. And then the

00:06:31.940 younger one is a bit more emotional and charming. I was actually thinking when I was reading it

00:06:36.540 about Jane Austen and like the female relationship so yeah interesting that you say that reference

00:06:41.220 yeah so I didn't read Pride and Prejudice because she's got four sisters yeah I just want one yeah

00:06:46.800 and also as well as the sisterly relationships you kind of briefly reference lockdowns and COVID

00:06:53.500 um I've seen online on Twitter and stuff people like writers all across the world um screenwriters

00:07:00.000 etc saying like I'm not even I don't even want to touch COVID like no one cares about it we just

00:07:04.880 want to avoid it why did you decide to include this in the book when so many other writers have

00:07:10.120 avoided it yeah well I sort of included it in a cop-out way because I sent the book just after

00:07:16.420 COVID so yeah I do agree with those other writers on the internet I think that lockdowns I just have

00:07:24.120 no interest in writing about them because they were so boring and also we all lived through them

00:07:28.660 and everyone's experience of them was very particular so I just think people don't need

00:07:33.180 to hear from me about my musings on them you know like people have thought about them enough

00:07:36.660 um but I also but then that puts you in a difficult position because you can either

00:07:41.520 write in the past just before COVID which is I think what a lot of writers have chosen to do

00:07:47.360 I feel like a lot of contemporary fiction books now set in 2019 or you can imagine a world after

00:07:54.220 so I chose to do the latter and that was also because I wanted to write about characters who

00:07:59.180 were at a point in their life where they were kind of reassessing who they wanted to be they're

00:08:04.880 they're out of you they've been out of uni for a couple of years and I think adulthood has proved

00:08:09.820 harder than they expected so they're kind of reassessing what it what it is they want from

00:08:14.300 life and I thought that the post lockdown months were for a lot of people that kind of time of

00:08:22.600 reassessment like I think a lot of people had picked up new hobbies in lockdown or um you know

00:08:28.980 had relationships that changed. And I think a lot of people kind of reemerged and were in this phase

00:08:36.620 of rethinking what they wanted from their life. It was like a rebirth. So yeah, that's why I said

00:08:42.940 it after lockdown. I love that. I mean, this is so broad, but morality and philosophy are big

00:08:49.200 themes in your work. You also studied philosophy at uni. What's your relationship like with both

00:08:55.700 of those I guess things and how did you actually become interested in it yeah I so my relationship

00:09:01.960 with them is that I they're very integral to the way I write so I think both of my books so far

00:09:10.340 have started with a moral question so with love and virtue I had this idea about looking at consent

00:09:17.640 not just in terms of consent to sex and bodily autonomy but also consent to tell your own story

00:09:25.780 and then with and then that also had the idea of the bigger question of are you a good person or

00:09:33.360 do you just look like one and then with this book I wanted to look at where we draw the line between

00:09:38.780 being self-fulfilled and pursuing your own goals and desires and just being selfish

00:09:43.720 so yeah so I think those big confusing moral questions are just very interesting to me

00:09:50.620 and I think that novels are a really good place to explore them because you can go into a lot

00:09:55.060 of complexity and you can kind of really tease out the gray areas and then while I'm writing I

00:10:01.660 also I sound such a nerd I can read lots of I read a lot of philosophy essays and stuff

00:10:08.720 to get other people to tell me what they think about these moral questions and so when I was

00:10:14.140 writing Seeing Other People I read two essays in particular that like really informed the plot

00:10:19.260 so yeah and and how I got into this yeah why am I like this I don't know um I yeah I'm not sure

00:10:28.160 I studied philosophy at university and I think it was because I really liked English literature

00:10:34.140 like at school and I was such a big reader but then I didn't want to do English at uni

00:10:38.660 because you had to read so much um you had to read like I don't know a novel a week or something

00:10:45.520 stupid and I was like I don't have the time I'm just gonna do philosophy and then I can read an

00:10:49.400 essay a week and then I loved it so yeah there you go that's why we do arts degrees and your 0.99

00:10:55.700 debut novel Love and Virtue is uh obviously set on an Australian uni campus um so you studied law

00:11:03.400 right yeah I did law and philosophy at Sydney and what made you pick that up and then quit

00:11:10.260 yeah good question I picked it up because I just didn't know what else to do um and I I think a

00:11:20.100 lot of people who are like interested in humanities and a bit type a do law as a kind of safe option

00:11:27.900 because it's more vocational than just doing an arts degree. So that was me. Yeah. To this day,

00:11:33.700 I can't really give you a better reason. I just, yeah, that's why I did it. And I should say as

00:11:39.020 well, there was no external pressure. I made that decision all by myself. And then I quit. So I'd

00:11:45.860 actually, I finished the law degree and I actually had a grad job at a corporate law firm. And then

00:11:50.980 I took a year off in 2020, the year after I graduated, which was basically just like a gap

00:11:55.880 year and that was I think just because I knew that the law wasn't for me and I was really just

00:12:01.260 procrastinating having to do the job and then that ended up being the year that I wrote Love and

00:12:06.100 Virtue and now that's my job and that's my life so yeah it wasn't through any kind of um it was

00:12:14.200 really just luck that that happened and I would probably be a very bad lawyer now if it weren't

00:12:19.080 for Love and Virtue. I want to take you back kind of to that time back in 2020 you were 24 years

00:12:25.680 old and yeah you were starting to write love and virtue what was that experience like yeah it's so

00:12:32.480 funny because it totally changed my life but now I can't really remember it that clearly um so so

00:12:39.440 in that so I'd taken that gap year and what I had planned to do was do some a bunch of independent

00:12:45.500 theatre stuff so I'd been very involved in theatre at uni and then I was gonna do um and a few

00:12:53.180 independent shows just at small theaters in Sydney as a like director slash producer and then I was

00:12:58.620 going to do a show at the Edinburgh Fringe and then COVID happened so all of that got cancelled

00:13:02.260 and then I was like at home living with my parents and I just had nothing to do

00:13:06.380 so I wrote Love and Virtue and it was such a fun writing experience because I genuinely didn't

00:13:13.700 expect it to go anywhere and I really I was literally just doing it to pass the time like

00:13:18.700 I was like I don't have a job at the moment I've got nothing else to do I might as well just fill

00:13:25.460 my days with this word document um but yeah it's really cool that I got to have that experience

00:13:31.640 because in hindsight I actually look back on that and I think that's probably the ideal way to

00:13:36.480 create like I think that in that kind of totally free no one's ever going to look at this I'm not

00:13:42.880 worried about what anyone's thinking I think that environment is probably when you're going to have

00:13:48.120 your freest or your most authentic self-expression um as a follow-up to that then you were talking

00:13:54.080 about how you had like no pressure running your first book what about your second book after you

00:13:59.300 know well deservingly it's been so hyped um it's been really loved around australia what was that

00:14:04.080 experience like well i didn't have quite so much pressure because i um so my publisher when they

00:14:12.440 bought love and virtue they bought a second book and they encouraged me to start writing a second

00:14:16.700 one immediately to avoid this problem because they were like um if you've already got a draft

00:14:21.900 of it done by the time your first one comes out then the whatever the reaction is to the first

00:14:26.520 one it can't affect it so that's what I did so I by the time Love and Virtue came out I'd done a

00:14:32.560 not very good like it wasn't publishable or anything but I had a draft of seeing other people

00:14:37.080 so it was kind of too late to go back um but it was having said that though it it was still

00:14:45.280 different because I knew that even if it never made it to print, my publisher would at least

00:14:50.380 read it. You know, it's like, it's that difference of knowing that someone in the world will read it

00:14:54.560 versus maybe this will just live on my desktop forever. And it was very good that I'd had that

00:15:01.040 lockdown experience because I knew I just had to trick myself into thinking that no one would

00:15:06.380 ever read it. So yeah, it's like this weird thing. You just have to lie to yourself. So every day I'd

00:15:10.360 get to the computer and I'd open the Word document and I just say to myself, whatever I write today,

00:15:15.020 I can always delete it or I can always put it in the bin no one has to see it and I think that's

00:15:19.240 how I'll proceed probably for the rest of my career yeah you just have to lie that's such a

00:15:24.240 good way to put it I was wondering how um your second novel came out so quickly after the first

00:15:28.240 but that makes so much more sense now yeah it's because um yeah there's always about nine months

00:15:33.340 between buying a book and it being published so it's quite a yeah it's like a baby yeah yeah and

00:15:40.700 I think a lot of people would like to know how to go about writing a book and like so you it's 2020

00:15:49.840 and you're at your parents writing this book did you then like shop it around publishers do you

00:15:54.780 just email them like how did that process happen to you getting a publisher yeah so my I should

00:16:00.400 say in terms of how to write a book I literally googled how long is a book at the start oh my

00:16:05.980 god I love the transparency yeah and then it was very a very fruitful google search I found this

00:16:11.480 like reddit thread that just listed all the different genres and like famous books and

00:16:16.160 exactly how long they were and I was like oh thank you I'll do that then um I and then okay

00:16:23.220 so in terms of getting published I so I showed it to two friends from uni um one of whom I'd

00:16:31.520 written sort of scripts with before who um is quite harsh not harsh but is a very considered 0.98

00:16:39.660 reader and I was like okay he'll be honest and he'll tell me if it's a piece of shit um and then 0.93

00:16:45.060 I gave it to another friend who's always been very supportive and so then I was like oh I'll have 0.97

00:16:49.160 some positive feedback and some negative feedback to work with um and then the friend who's always

00:16:53.780 been very positive just by pure coincidence had worked for a woman who like 10 years ago had

00:17:00.120 written a memoir and so he was like you should send it to her because she knows about publishing

00:17:06.120 in Australia because she's been published before so he gave me her number and I just cold called

00:17:10.380 her and then she read the first three chapters and then she encouraged me to talk to agents

00:17:16.600 um and then I literally just cold called agents so I just rang them up on the phone and was like

00:17:22.700 I probably sound like a freak but I've written this manuscript this is what it's about do you

00:17:26.560 want to read it um and then from that I got an agent and then the agent submitted it to publishers

00:17:32.660 but yeah I appreciate that that story is probably quite frustrating for other people because

00:17:37.620 I suppose the lesson in that if there is any is that obviously the work has to be good but

00:17:43.680 that's just not enough there's so many other pieces of luck that have to fall into place like

00:17:49.240 I was lucky that not a lot of people were writing in COVID so when I called the agent they

00:17:53.900 they were happened to be looking for stuff at that time and I was also lucky that like normal

00:17:58.980 people the tv show had just done really well so they heard like uni campus novel young people and

00:18:06.380 they were like yep we know that sells we'll have a read of it so I think that can be really

00:18:12.300 frustrating but also it can be comforting because it means that if you write something and you send

00:18:16.180 it somewhere and it gets rejected it's not necessarily a reflection on your work it might

00:18:20.660 be that all of those other factors just have haven't fallen into place you know so and I yeah

00:18:26.120 I did have so many artistic endeavors that never worked prior to that so yeah I think um it's yeah

00:18:33.600 it's doing the work but then it's also just like waiting for circumstances to conspire in your

00:18:38.720 favor. Speaking of normal people you have previously mentioned in another interview that you

00:18:44.620 find it flattering when people do compare your work to Sally Rooney can you talk to us about

00:18:51.380 that because some people find lumping women into like categories and comparisons can be a bit

00:18:56.440 redundant totally yeah and I totally I completely accept that and I see how it probably objectively

00:19:03.400 is I mean yeah redundant or it also I suppose reductive to just compare all women writers as

00:19:11.140 if they occupy their own cultural space and you know you have the women over here and then the

00:19:15.520 men over there um but I think just because I personally love Sally Rooney's work and I admire

00:19:23.420 her so much I'm never gonna tell anybody to stop making that comparison um having said that though

00:19:29.660 I probably think it is not technically that correct I think that Sally Rooney has a much

00:19:36.700 more innovative style I think my writing style is much more old-fashioned so to be honest it

00:19:42.840 probably is reductive and it probably has more to do with the demographic similarities between me

00:19:48.240 and her like we're both white young university educated women but I'll just take it you know

00:19:54.340 yeah I'd take it as well such a compliment we love Sally Rooney on this part um sorry I keep

00:19:59.980 clamoring to the mic because I have so many questions that just keep popping into my mind

00:20:04.340 but I want to know what your relationship is with social media especially like personally but then

00:20:11.640 also you know book talk is so big and people have lots of loud opinions on the web yeah so I don't

00:20:19.500 have tiktok or twitter I only use instagram and my relationship with it is I would say as healthy

00:20:27.580 as possible for someone who's grown up online so like I'm definitely addicted to my phone

00:20:33.580 and I definitely have to like when I'm in a big writing spell like when I'm drafting I have to

00:20:40.820 leave my phone in a different room and turn the internet off on my computer like I have no

00:20:45.400 organic self-control I have to impose it and then in terms of an author I'm an author of being an

00:20:52.920 author I'm quite deliberate about I always want my books to be the product not me Diana to be the

00:20:58.860 product. So I just don't put that much out there on social media. Um, and I'm not really interested

00:21:05.140 in influencing anybody, not that I think I could, but I just think that you have to have just for

00:21:12.780 me personally, that's the kind of boundary I've established in my mind. I'm selling the book and

00:21:17.720 if people like the book and they interact with the book, that's awesome. But I don't want them to

00:21:22.820 rope me and my personality in with that brand if that makes sense yeah that's such a good

00:21:30.060 way to put it like having the boundaries up and I do think that does come across because

00:21:35.320 when Mags and I were talking we're like I wonder if she's shy like you don't we don't really know

00:21:39.660 much about like you as a person your books just kind of speak for themselves which I think is

00:21:44.400 such like a a great thing to have these days when everyone does have the personal brand etc

00:21:51.280 sure totally and I like I should say that's not a dig at people who have personal brands like I

00:21:57.640 think that they I have a lot of respect for people who can sustain that but I just think for me

00:22:02.820 my priority is to write good books and I think if I was also trying to maintain a robust or

00:22:11.360 effective personal brand that would take time away from the books and so I yeah I'd just rather spend

00:22:17.140 the time writing I love that you thought I was shy that makes me like I'm so mysterious mysterious

00:22:22.180 yeah mysterious I think we are quite like shyness or anything a bit extroverted nowadays is like

00:22:29.300 mysterious and cool because I don't know me and like we have a podcast where we yap on

00:22:35.260 every week on a microphone like we are not mysterious no it's funny because I'm not I'm

00:22:41.660 actually not shy at all and I like I really had to consciously when I found out the book was being

00:22:47.560 published I made a very conscious decision around social media and stuff because I'm yeah I'm

00:22:52.920 normally I'm a huge overdiscloser and yeah I was just like okay you gotta rein it in. I have

00:23:00.000 actually a follow-up question about this social media decision that you've made because I'm

00:23:05.400 wondering this is oh my god I was gonna say it's projecting but it's not I'm no way similar to JK

00:23:10.600 rowling or whatever but like is there a part of you that has seen kind of the backlash and fallout

00:23:15.840 of major um figures and authors that has maybe pulled you back from wanting to participate in

00:23:23.140 the space or is that kind of not really an issue um I don't think it's an issue at this stage in

00:23:27.800 my career I sort of I always joke that if you ever got cancelled that would be that would show that

00:23:33.200 you were doing really well because you have to like be famous enough to be cancelled um but I am

00:23:39.820 I suppose the internet is not the friendly place

00:23:45.180 that it used to be in some ways.

00:23:48.640 Like I think that maybe, no, that's probably not a good way

00:23:51.780 of putting it.

00:23:52.280 I think that we're more alert now to how the internet really

00:23:57.980 is forever and like things that you put up 10 years ago

00:24:01.580 can be discovered and kind of raked over and analysed.

00:24:07.960 and yeah I so I suppose I do have a kind of wariness about how stuff I put on the internet

00:24:15.840 might be interpreted but I also think I'm sensitive to the fact that seeing the trajectory of people

00:24:21.700 like JK Rowling does make you it's made me more cognizant of like if I have an opinion on something

00:24:31.040 I'm I always ask myself like is am I the right person to have an opinion on this and then also

00:24:38.900 because I have written opinion pieces for the Sydney Morning Herald and when I'm writing them

00:24:42.880 I'm always very conscious of I guess you would call it cancel culture but I actually think to

00:24:48.340 be honest that made me a better writer because every sentence that I wrote I would ask myself

00:24:52.380 if that sentence got pulled out on its own and put on Twitter would there be a way to perceive it in

00:24:58.420 a really negative light and it just made it a better sentence do you know what I mean because

00:25:02.360 then asking that question would make me express myself more clearly and make sure that nobody

00:25:06.480 could misinterpret it so I think that it does make you warier but I'm not sure that the wariness is

00:25:12.060 necessarily a bad thing I think it just means people have to say what they mean and have to

00:25:15.700 think about whether they should speak at all you know yeah and words words have meaning obviously

00:25:22.880 like I saw a great thing on um Twitter yesterday about Graham Norton talking about cancer culture

00:25:29.300 if you haven't seen it and he just says like it's not cancer culture it's just accountability like

00:25:34.680 people are learning that yeah people are learning that they have to be accountable for their words

00:25:40.380 which I think is maybe what you're saying about like pouring over every sentence and like

00:25:45.080 yeah I don't know what I'm trying to say but like words have meaning basically no for sure and it's

00:25:50.300 and I do think that that's an element of it I think I personally have a problem with people

00:25:56.140 being held accountable for things that they did like decades ago um it obviously depends on the

00:26:01.680 scale of what they did but I think when people's like very old tweets and stuff get pulled out I'm

00:26:06.480 a bit like oh well are they the same person now that they were then and you know maybe what was

00:26:12.080 funny then is for legitimate reasons not funny now but at the time it meant something different

00:26:17.140 so I think that yeah that's where my problem with it is because I think that it's very hard to

00:26:22.380 interpret things retrospectively because we're not looking at it with the lens that people would

00:26:27.560 have looked at it at the time but in terms of comments that are made now yeah I just think that

00:26:34.680 you should always give a lot of thought to how anyone might receive those comments and if there's

00:26:40.560 a possibility that a large portion of the population might be offended then express yourself better you

00:26:45.300 know yeah I kind of want to go back in time a bit to I'm just curious to know what it was like

00:26:52.040 after Love and Virtue and the way that blew up in like Australian literature when you just wrote

00:27:00.940 it kind of like because you had obviously had a story to tell but you said you had like spare

00:27:05.320 time in lockdown what was that whole experience like going from like just out of uni in lockdown

00:27:11.680 to then being like you know getting told that you're one of the best young authors in Australia

00:27:16.540 um yeah it was awesome it was obviously the best time of my whole life um yeah so it's funny the

00:27:24.800 I would say the best time was actually before it came out just when I sold it and I realized that

00:27:30.620 I could work as a writer which was not something that I'd ever ever thought was a real possibility

00:27:36.260 and especially not as like a full-time job that was just unreal like I can only talk about it in

00:27:43.520 hyperbole it was dream come true like I cried a lot I was just yeah I was just so happy all the

00:27:51.080 time it was like obnoxious um and I and yeah I think it was nice as well because I'd sort of

00:27:57.780 gone quite far in a different career which I was not super passionate about so I think I had and

00:28:04.080 still have a real appreciation of how lucky I am to wake up every day and do something that I would

00:28:10.560 do anyway, you know, like that I just love and I want to do. And then in terms of it coming out,

00:28:16.280 it came out in lockdown. So that was probably healthy because I felt quite removed from the

00:28:21.120 response to it. Like it was all happening literally through a screen. And yeah, I mean, obviously it's

00:28:27.340 so lovely to get this response to it and it's so kind and I'm very grateful but I also think

00:28:34.580 there's an element of it that doesn't really feel real like I think for me I always think that

00:28:41.500 I'm sort of my harshest critic and even though I'm very grateful when readers say they respond

00:28:47.960 to the work or when it gets awards and stuff that you know and that's an amazing opportunity

00:28:52.240 and it helps with sales it doesn't actually change my opinion of the quality of the work

00:28:57.580 if that makes sense like I'm I sort of I'm very grateful for those things happening as a career

00:29:02.540 opportunity but at the end of the day if like I think that there's a certain bit of the book

00:29:07.660 that's weak there's no amount of external validation that will change that opinion. So

00:29:12.660 Diana you've had a lot of experience in theatre and we even previously mentioned Normal People

00:29:18.160 as a TV show, would your books being adapted into something on stage or TV on screen actually

00:29:27.560 be appealing to you? Yeah, I would love that. So yeah, if anyone's listening to this podcast

00:29:33.320 with deep pockets, slide into my DMs. Yeah, I would love that. I think it would be interesting

00:29:41.200 though. I think that novels will probably always be my first port of call. And I think that's

00:29:46.940 because it's very hard once you've experienced the level of control of writing a novel I think

00:29:52.840 it's very hard to give that up like when you're writing a book the characters look how you want

00:29:57.240 them to look and they stand where you want them to stand and they just and if you want to set it

00:30:01.320 somewhere you can you know like if you like in Love and Virtue there were you know some of the

00:30:06.940 characters had like the most expensive waterfront mansion and you just write that and you're like

00:30:10.660 yeah it's marble everywhere whereas I imagine if you're making it for a tv show there are some

00:30:15.280 constraints on that. But I guess the flip side of that is that I am, as I've said before, I'm not

00:30:23.740 actually a super introverted person and I do like working in teams. So I can imagine working with

00:30:29.340 people to bring something like that into the world would be very creatively fulfilling.

00:30:37.380 I think seeing other people, you can so easily picture it as like a mini series or something.

00:30:42.580 for those who haven't read it it's set in yeah like you said a summer in sydney and it's just so

00:30:49.120 visual like the scenes of them at the beach together you can almost like feel the heat

00:30:54.160 like on your skin it's so so beautiful so um yeah i hope that that comes to fruition for you

00:31:01.600 thanks yeah you couldn't film it now though it's always raining in true true yeah honestly when i

00:31:08.800 was reading it I pictured um the one like the youngest sister honestly I'm not going to name

00:31:15.240 the person because it's a bit embarrassing but I pictured her as this model I've seen on like

00:31:20.140 Instagram um but I just love the idea of like having thousands of iterations of the characters

00:31:26.340 that you have written in like every person's head and they just all have different tweaks because of

00:31:30.560 our lived experience and the way we read books all differ even if we're just digesting the same

00:31:35.740 bit of text um so yeah what I was about to say with my question before is that of course it's

00:31:41.960 your book standalone so well just as books themselves as a piece of text but it would

00:31:47.780 be very cool to see it on screen or on a play or a musical imagine yeah no for sure also no shame

00:31:56.000 about the Instagram thing I like to quote research by Instagram like if I'm thinking about what

00:32:01.360 they'll wear I'll be like who's trendy and like go and like save a bunch of Instagrams yes oh that's

00:32:06.380 also what I wanted to mention to you now we're just like totally fangirling um what I I loved

00:32:13.020 the way as well that you use like trendy things and like Instagram social media um phones in this

00:32:21.540 book I mean it's probably because you are a young person as well but like sometimes when authors do

00:32:26.440 that it's so cringe and I've tried to write you know even in articles you try to write about

00:32:31.220 trends or like fashion or whatever and you're just like oh I sound like a grandma trying to

00:32:36.100 explain this but you did that so well as well so I just wanted to it's not really a question I just

00:32:40.840 wanted to say that I think you did a good job of like explaining modern trends thank you yeah I

00:32:48.720 know what you mean it is hard isn't it you don't want to over explain it because then it kind of

00:32:52.640 sets you at a distance from the trend and I think that's when you sound like a grandma but you also

00:32:57.180 can't just like list brands that won't mean something to anyone so yeah I do think about

00:33:02.960 that a lot I also do have to it's not just because I'm a young person I do have to do research like

00:33:06.940 as I said I'm not on TikTok so I had to like I messaged a group of friends for this book because

00:33:11.280 I wanted the characters to send TikToks to each other and I had to message all my TikTok active

00:33:15.940 friends and be like hit me up like what are the kids watching yes no that's so great to hear we

00:33:24.360 send so many tiktoks to each other so we're all over that um anyway every single week on our

00:33:31.420 podcast we kind of um give recommendations to our listeners about something that we've read

00:33:37.600 watched or listened to that we have loved recently we were wondering do you have any

00:33:42.680 recommendations for us what are you loving right now oh okay what am i loving i've been pretty

00:33:48.320 slack because I have been busy with the promo for seeing other people so I haven't been watching

00:33:55.920 enough but my read is Marshmallow by Victoria Hammond I just finished that I recommended that

00:34:01.880 sorry continue shame okay well you don't need to you're 10 steps ahead of me um yeah it's just a

00:34:09.700 great it's just a great read it's um also her second book and she's a Melbourne writer and

00:34:15.580 it's this it's a book about a very tragic event but it's told in a weirdly funny and heartwarming

00:34:21.920 way that doesn't undermine the tragedy so would recommend that um and then watch what have I

00:34:29.300 oh I haven't really watched much tv lately but for anyone who's not on this train yet I just

00:34:35.060 think succession is the best piece of writing in any medium this century I'm just obsessed with it

00:34:40.260 so get around that have you watched succession maggie i have not but i know i'm very late to

00:34:45.960 this um bandwagon so i must give it a yeah give it a watch on the list yeah have you watched

00:34:52.260 heartbreak higher diana i watched the first episode yeah i yeah very cool i love seeing

00:34:57.800 stuff set in australia yeah it's so refreshing i think between seeing other people and heartbreak

00:35:03.440 High like the era of like young kind of Gen Z younger millennials like sharing their experiences

00:35:12.120 is coming and it's so exciting I think like Heartbreak High is just such a great representation

00:35:17.400 it's so nice to see Australian stories being told just like your books as well so yeah I totally

00:35:23.260 agree it's yeah that's a great call it's just so refreshing to see yeah like familiar scenes and

00:35:29.780 hear those accents and yeah it's also obviously very well made show like it looks awesome

00:35:34.740 yeah well thank you so much for your time that was all the questions that we had for you today

00:35:41.580 um but if people want to know more and buy your book of course seeing other people

00:35:48.280 where can they get that info well you if you want to know more about me you can't

00:35:53.260 yeah good luck no um they can follow me at um on instagram at diana read underscore and then

00:36:03.480 they should buy seeing other people from their local bookshop love that amazing indie bookshops

00:36:09.600 yeah thank you so much for chatting with us today diana we wish you all the best and we can't wait

00:36:15.760 for another book we hope in the forthcoming future thanks I'll get on to it and thank you

00:36:23.920 so much for having me today it was a great chat

Culture Club - October 31, 2022

How To Write A Best-Selling Novel With Author Diana Reid

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