Write-Off with Francesca Steele

It's hard to express quite how much I love Liane Moriarty's writing. I have read all of her books, some of them many times, and I just think she combines such a good eye for women's interior lives and the complex issues we confront in ordinary, everyday life with a great sense of humour and unique momentum. Liane published her first novel at 38, spurred on when her sister Jaclyn, also an author, was published. Her first attempt, though – a children's book – was, she says, rejected by everyone. I love listening to Liane talk about sibling rivalry and support and the embarrassment of that first rejection.Before The Husband's Secret and Big Little Lies became bestsellers, Liane spent years as a mid-list author and is very honest about the little humiliations she endured before hitting the big time, like doing events where no one turned up. I love Liane's observation that she's always trying to get back to the simple joy of writing as a child, unencumbered by publishing needs or expectations. I hope you enjoy listening to her as much as I did. This season is sponsored by the wonderful Jericho Writers https://jerichowriters.com. Listeners of the podcast can get an exclusive 15% discount on membership by going to www.jerichowriters.com/join-us and entering the code Write-Off.You can find me on Twitter at @francescasteele and Instagram at @Francesca_steelePlease do rate or review the podcast on your Apple podcast app – it helps more people find out about Write-Off, and also I just really like seeing the reviews! Our GDPR privacy policy was updated on August 8, 2022. Visit acast.com/privacy for more information.

You probably know David Duchovny from decades on our screens as the FBI agent Fox Mulder in The X-Files and the TV show Californication, as well as the recent Judd Apatow film The Bubble and last year's Netflix hit The Chair, a campus comedy in which David plays himself – taking the mick out of himself.It's not often that Hollywood and literary fiction collide in this way but David Duchovny is in fact now a successful novelist as well as a musician and actor, with four novels under his belt and a new novella, The Reservoir, out this June. We talk about how David originally intended his debut, Holy Cow, to be a film until it was turned down everywhere he took the idea, how he planned to be a professor and use holidays to write – his father was a magazine writer and playwright so it was a long held dream of David's to be a writer too – and how his teenage poetry was bad, just like (he says) his early acting skills. You can find me on Twitter at @francescasteele and Instagram at @Francesca_steelePlease do rate or review the podcast on your Apple podcast app – it helps more people find out about Write-Off, and also I just really like seeing the reviews!This season is sponsored by the wonderful Jericho Writers https://jerichowriters.com. Listeners of the podcast can get an exclusive 15% discount on membership by going to www.jerichowriters.com/join-us and entering the code Write-Off. Our GDPR privacy policy was updated on August 8, 2022. Visit acast.com/privacy for more information.

This interview has a special place in my heart because Joanne Harris, the prolific author known for the gorgeous Chocolat, among other things, was the first person I ever interviewed. I spoke to her for my university newspaper 20 years ago, and she was, thankfully, very nice then and remains very nice today. I'm not sure I've spoken to a more adventurous novelist. Joanne fearlessly tackles whichever genre she is interested in at the time and indeed isn't fond of the notion of genres at all actually. We talk about her excellent new thriller, A Narrow Door, and how it felt to write that compared with, for example, her 'gastromances' (not a word she's keen on, completely understandably) such as Chocolat. We also discuss her making (and burning) a sculpture out of rejection letters, rewriting her fantasy novel Runemarks from scratch because her daughter wanted to see it published and how mistakes are all signposts on the road to success. Oh, and also the time she met Harvey Weinstein. You can find me on Twitter at @francescasteele and Instagram at @Francesca_steelePlease do rate or review the podcast on your Apple podcast app – it helps more people find out about Write-Off, and also I just really like seeing the reviews!This season is sponsored by the wonderful Jericho Writers https://jerichowriters.com. Listeners of the podcast can get an exclusive 15% discount on membership by going to www.jerichowriters.com/join-us and entering the code Write-Off. Our GDPR privacy policy was updated on August 8, 2022. Visit acast.com/privacy for more information.

Jeffrey Archer is a bit different from many of my usual guests. He's not at all sentimental, he's very confident – I mean this is a former MP who went to prison for perjury after all – and in many ways that confidence seems impenetrable. But this is, I think, what makes him so interesting to listen to because even Jeffrey Archer is afflicted by self-doubt and even Jeffrey Archer has had to come up with strategies for dealing with it, even if sometimes the strategy is basically just being ferociously productive. Since his first book, Not a Penny More, Not a Penny Less, was rejected by 17 publishers before selling in 1976, he has sold more than 300 million copies of his books worldwide, which makes him one of the top 25 fiction authors of all time.We talk about his incredible self-discipline when it comes to his writing routine, how lots of editors rejected his debut because none of them believed he would write a second book and how he would not have made a good prime minister! You can find me on Twitter at @francescasteele and Instagram at @Francesca_steeleDon't forget that I list my guests' books at my online shop https://uk.bookshop.org/shop/francescasteele. This helps fund the podcast so please do buy there! Also do rate or review the podcast on your app - it helps more people find out about Write-Off, and also I just really like seeing the reviews!The lovely Scott Elliott helped me produce this season. Please do consider him for all your pod needs. https://www.podcastconsultant.co.ukThis season is sponsored by the wonderful Jericho Writers https://jerichowriters.com. Listeners of the podcast can get an exclusive 15% discount on membership by going to www.jerichowriters.com/join-us and entering the code Write-Off. Our GDPR privacy policy was updated on August 8, 2022. Visit acast.com/privacy for more information.

I loved talking to Abi Elphinstone, a bestselling children's author who writes about dreamsnatchers and sky gods and wildcats. She has been called a worthy successor to C.S. Lewis by The Times, and talks regularly at schools about her writing process, with great enthusiasm even when the kids mistake her for JK Rowling. I was especially grateful to Abi for fitting me in when she was practically moments from giving birth, and I think that's testament to how she's always keen to chat about her work whenever she can. We actually haven't had an author on Write-Off before talking about rejection at the agent stage specifically but Abi is an extremely good example. She was rejected a grand total of 96 times before she got her first book deal, and she is not afraid to talk about it, once posting some of those rejections online. We talk about what she learnt from all that feedback, how her dyslexia stood her in good stead for years of hard work and mapping out stories before she starts. You can find me on Twitter at @francescasteele and Instagram at @Francesca_steeleDon't forget that I list my guests' books at my online shop https://uk.bookshop.org/shop/francescasteele. This helps fund the podcast so please do buy there! Also do rate or review the podcast on your app - it helps more people find out about Write-Off, and also I just really like seeing the reviews!The lovely Scott Elliott helped me produce this season. Please do consider him for all your pod needs. https://www.podcastconsultant.co.ukThis season is sponsored by the wonderful Jericho Writers https://jerichowriters.com. Listeners of the podcast can get an exclusive 15% discount on membership by going to www.jerichowriters.com/join-us and entering the code Write-Off. Our GDPR privacy policy was updated on August 8, 2022. Visit acast.com/privacy for more information.

Chris Paling, a BBC radio producer, had an auspicious start as a writer, accidentally stumbling across a very starry agent with his first attempt at writing a novel. That novel didn't actually sell though, along with several others, and later in his career, after he had been published, Chris began to keep a diary of his musings about the industry. Not originally intended for publication, that diary is in fact now published as A Very Nice Rejection Letter, a lovely, very funny book. Chris is really good on that sort of sixth sense as to whether something is working or not, and we also talked a lot about whether writing is really a dialogue with yourself or something you are desperate for other people to hear.You can find me on Twitter at @francescasteele and Instagram at @Francesca_steeleDon't forget that I list my guests' books at my online shop https://uk.bookshop.org/shop/francescasteele. This helps fund the podcast so please do buy there! Also do rate or review the podcast on your app - it helps more people find out about Write-Off, and also I just really like seeing the reviews!The lovely Scott Elliott helped me produce this season. Please do consider him for all your pod needs. https://www.podcastconsultant.co.uk Our GDPR privacy policy was updated on August 8, 2022. Visit acast.com/privacy for more information.

If you don't already know Sandra Newman, you are going to be hearing a lot about her in the next year or so. Her new book, The Men, about a world in which everyone with a Y chromosome vanishes, is out this June, and she is also currently writing a much anticipated feminist retelling of George Orwell's 1984. Sandra has experienced plenty of failure, notably when her publisher declined to publish the second book in her two book deal, We discuss unlikeable books, and she tells me all about the time she pulled off a remarkable publicity stunt fort her first ever play when she was a creative writing student, only for it to get savaged in the press. You can find me on Twitter at @francescasteele and Instagram at @Francesca_steeleDon't forget that I list my guests' books at my online shop https://uk.bookshop.org/shop/francescasteele. This helps fund the podcast so please do buy there! Also do rate or review the podcast on your app - it helps more people find out about Write-Off, and also I just really like seeing the reviews!The lovely Scott Elliott helped me produce this season. Please do consider him for all your pod needs. https://www.podcastconsultant.co.ukThis season is sponsored by the wonderful Jericho Writers https://jerichowriters.com. Listeners of the podcast can get an exclusive 15% discount on membership by going to www.jerichowriters.com/join-us and entering the code Write-Off. Our GDPR privacy policy was updated on August 8, 2022. Visit acast.com/privacy for more information.

When The Girl on the Train came out in 2015 and went straight to number one on global bestseller lists Paula Hawkins was pitched like a debut. But in fact Paula had written several previous novels, romantic comedies, under a pseudonym, the last of which hadn't done well at all, leaving Paula feeling seriously rejected. What I loved about talking to Paula is they even though she is now one of the most famous thriller writers alive, she remains extremely cautious and circumspect, with vivid recollections of how it felt before she was successful and before she started to really love what she was writing, Her latest book, A Slow Fire Burning, is out now and is, I think, her best yet, a really clever mystery with a lot of subverted tropes and jokes about book writing. We talk too about not being able to give publishers what they want, the horror of bad reviews - yep, she had them - and the book that The Girl on the Train very nearly was until another author wrote it.You can find me on Twitter at @francescasteele and Instagram at @Francesca_steeleDon't forget that I list my guests' books at my online shop https://uk.bookshop.org/shop/francescasteele. This helps fund the podcast so please do buy there! Also do rate or review the podcast on your app - it helps more people find out about Write-Off, and also I just really like seeing the reviews!The lovely Scott Elliott helped me produce this season. Please do consider him for all your pod needs. https://www.podcastconsultant.co.ukThis season is sponsored by the wonderful Jericho Writers https://jerichowriters.com. Listeners of the podcast can get an exclusive 15% discount on membership by going to www.jerichowriters.com/join-us and entering the code Write-Off. Our GDPR privacy policy was updated on August 8, 2022. Visit acast.com/privacy for more information.

I find this interview so inspiring. Matt Cain is a successful arts journalist and at the time of his first book submission he was Culture Editor for Channel 4, praised in particular for his coverage of the Woman's Prize for Fiction. But 2010, the semi-autobiographical book Matt had been working on about a child growing up -like himself - gay in the north of England - was rejected in part for being what he says were coded ways of saying it was “too gay”. Matt's book was put up for submission three times over the next decade and rejected by more than 50 agents and editors. Matt didn't give up though and today that book is published as the wonderful The Madonna of Bolton with the crowdfunding publisher Unbound. We talk about how he really tried to learn from the feedback on early submissions, how creative rejection changed him - almost more than homophobic bullying did - and how his therapist made it into his book.Don't forget that I list my guest's books at my online shop https://uk.bookshop.org/shop/francescasteele. This helps fund the podcast so please do buy there! Also do rate or review the podcast on your app - it helps more people find out about Write-Off, and also I just really like seeing the reviews! You can also find me on Twitter at @francescasteele and Instagram at @Francesca_steeleThe lovely Scott Elliott helped me produce this season. Please do consider him for all your pod needs. https://www.podcastconsultant.co.ukThis season is sponsored by the wonderful Jericho Writers https://jerichowriters.com. Listeners of the podcast can get an exclusive 15% discount on membership by going to www.jerichowriters.com/join-us and entering the code Write-Off. Our GDPR privacy policy was updated on August 8, 2022. Visit acast.com/privacy for more information.

Welcome back! Clare Chambers is kicking off this season. Clare has written nine published novels - her first when she was just 26 and her latest, Small Pleasures, a wonderful book long-listed for the Woman's Prize last year. But just before Small Pleasures there was a failed novel that nearly caused Clare to give up on writing altogether. It took her five years to write and then no one wanted to buy it.We talked about her feeling her career was over aged 50, working as an editor herself for the legendary publisher Diana Athill, how she switched from being a pantser to being a committed plotter and being given permission not to be funny. Don't forget that I list my guest's books at my online shop https://uk.bookshop.org/shop/francescasteele. This helps fund the podcast so please do buy there! Also do rate or review the podcast on your app - it helps more people find out about Write-Off, and also I just really like seeing the reviews! You can also find me on Twitter at @francescasteele and Instagram at @Francesca_steeleThe lovely Scott Elliott helped me produce this season. Please do consider him for all your pod needs. https://www.podcastconsultant.co.ukThis season is sponsored by the wonderful Jericho Writers https://jerichowriters.com. Listeners of the podcast can get an exclusive 15% discount on membership by going to www.jerichowriters.com/join-us and entering the code Write-Off. Our GDPR privacy policy was updated on August 8, 2022. Visit acast.com/privacy for more information.

What do you do when you've written an entire book you hate? Martha, the narrator or Sorrow and Bliss, is intelligent, critical, loving, cruel: an incredibly nuanced unforgettable character. She suffers from an undiagnosed mental health condition and when we meet her she has just split up with her husband Patrick. It's a very wise, sad funny book, with a unique, dry tone. I absolutely loved it.I love it perhaps even more now that i know it was born of failure. Meg Mason is a journalist, originally from New Zealand now living with her family in Australia, who had previously published two books: a memoir about young motherhood called Say It Again In Nice Voice and a novel, also about young motherhood, called You Be Mother. Under contract to write a third book, Meg laboured over a project she loathed for a year before handing it in and feeling so wretched that she declared that she was done with fiction altogether. Until suddenly she found herself sneaking back out to her writing she'd and writing secretly just for her own pleasure about two characters called Martha and Patrick and how their marriage had failed. Meg is very gentle, self-deprecating, insightful and very surprised and curious herself about this extraordinary U-turn. We talked about how Martha and Patrick actually existed in her failed novel in a different form, banning thesaurus.com and how to tell the difference between a difficult project that's worth pushing on with, and one that isn't.You can buy Sorrow and Bliss and books by all my guests here, along with the excellent George Saunders book and the Ann Patchett essay collection Meg mentions in this episode: https://uk.bookshop.org/shop/francescasteele Our GDPR privacy policy was updated on August 8, 2022. Visit acast.com/privacy for more information.

What a year the Booker prize winning author Douglas Stuart has had. Born on a housing estate in Glasgow Douglas and his siblings were raised by a single mum who died of alcoholism when he was 16. In his 30s, by this time working in fashion in New York, fouglas started writing a book about a little boy similar to him - Shuggie Bain, a kind, resilient, gay child struggling to fit in to his working class Thatcherite community and trying to take care of gregarious, well-meaning, alcoholic mother. Ten years later, the novel finally finished, it was rejected first by agents, then by 32 editors in the US alone. some of them even told his agent that the book was likely to win a big prize but that they didn't know quite how to sell it. Then last year at the age of 44, Douglas won the £50,000 Booker prize, the second Scot ever to do so. Judges said itwas destined “to be a classic”.It's a remarkable reminder of how even the most accomplished books still have to find the right desk at the right time.You can buy Shuggie Bain – and books by all my guests – here: https://uk.bookshop.org/shop/francescasteele Our GDPR privacy policy was updated on August 8, 2022. Visit acast.com/privacy for more information.

The Booker longlisted, Women's Prize shortlisted Michèle Roberts is, like her books, wonderfully erudite, perceptive and expressive. Michèle has been writing professionally for more than 40 years and has published 17 novels, 2 memoirs and has contributed to many poetry and essay collections too. She was once poetry editor at the feminist magazine Spare Rib and her 2007 memoir Paper Houses is a vivid account of her involvement is 70s socialism and feminism. Her new novel Cut Out, about the women who helped Matisse create his art, is out in August. She is by any metric a literary success. But it is her second memoir that we discuss in this interview. Negative Capability, which came out last year, kicks off with a series of personal and professional rejections - including her publisher saying no to her latest manuscript - and which sent Michèle into a spiral of self doubt and panic where she initially thought she was having a breakdown. Negative Capability is the story of her recovery and it is a joyful, amusing account of a rich everyday life, but also an honest, clear-eyed view of what it feels like to fail at something that, 16 books in, you think you've become pretty adept at doing. I found Michèle a funny and fascinating guest - and particularly enjoyed her advice about how to make a friend of your inner critic. You can find and buy books by Michèle and all my guests here: https://uk.bookshop.org/shop/francescasteele Our GDPR privacy policy was updated on August 8, 2022. Visit acast.com/privacy for more information.

The British novelist Alex Wheatle has such an extraordinary backstory that when he was working in the writers' room for Steve McQueen's BAFTA winning film series Small Axe, McQueen ended up making one of the films about Alex's own life. Alex was raised in a care home where he was abused. He emgered as teenager in Brixton under-educated and ill-prepared for adulthood, and in 1981 was sent to prison for a year for his involvement in the Brixton Riots. Prison though turned out to be Alex's salvation. There he met a man who encouraged him to revive his childhood love of reading – and from that came his writing. He's now written 17 novels, has an MBE, and in 2016 won the Guardian's Children's Fiction Prize for his YA novel Crongton Knights. Alex defines himself as a survivor not a victim, and I found him an inspiring reminder of what can be achieved through perservance. We talked a lot about the difficulties for black authors in publishing both 20 years ago and now, and also about the extraordinary advantage a love of reading can give kids in even the direst circumstances. Just a reminder that you can buy Alex's books – and those by my other authors – here: https://uk.bookshop.org/shop/francescasteele Our GDPR privacy policy was updated on August 8, 2022. Visit acast.com/privacy for more information.

Ann Napolitano is the author of three novels, including Dear Edward, which spent eight weeks on the New York Times bestseller list, and which is the heart-breaking story of a boy who loses his parents and brother in a plane crash, of which he is the only survivor. Ann wanted to be a writer from the age of ten, but after graduating from her MFA programme in her twenties had her first book rejected by 80 agents. Her second book found her an agent but then failed to sell. Ann was extremely honest about how tough that was, and so interesting too on how raw talent isn't actually the most crucial thing when it comes to a writing career. You can buy Ann's books and those by my other other guests here: https://uk.bookshop.org/shop/francescasteeleHere is the wonderful essay Ann mentions in the podcast about how she writes letters to her future self, to open every ten years. https://www.nytimes.com/2020/01/24/books/review/emily-of-new-moon-montgomery-letters-ann-napolitano.html Our GDPR privacy policy was updated on August 8, 2022. Visit acast.com/privacy for more information.

Julian Fellowes is, of course, rather well known for creating a little TV series you might have heard of called Downton Abbey. And that wasn't his first screen success either, having already won an Oscar for his screenplay for Gosford Park in 2002. Julian has had an eclectic career, appearing on the long-running series Monarch of the Glen and a Bond movie. His accent, his family background, the subjects of class that fascinate him - all of these have sometimes led to people accusing him of being a snob and perhaps assuming that everything has come easy to him. And yet. In the late 90s, despairing of an acting career that wasn't going so well at that point, Julian wrote a novel called Snobs, a book that looks at the flailing British aristocracy of the late 20th century through the eyes of a sort of outsider. He sent it out - and no one wanted it. In fact, some people said some pretty mean things, Several years later, after the success of Gosford Park, a publisher took it on and it became a bestseller, as did Julian's two later novels. Just as I was talking about last week with the writer and editor, Phoebe Morgan, sometimes it really is a matter of getting a book on the right desk at the right time. Believe it or not Julian Fellowes found rejection as hard as the next person, although he is, I think, an optimist at heart. We talk about that, Downton Abbey, his upcoming show The Gilded Age, about how people have always told him every project of his was unlikely to work out and about the difference between putting something in the bin and putting it in a drawer. Here's Julian.You can find Julian's books, and those by all my guests, at my online bookshop here: https://uk.bookshop.org/shop/francescasteele Our GDPR privacy policy was updated on August 8, 2022. Visit acast.com/privacy for more information.

My guest this week is Phoebe Morgan, the author of four books and Editorial Director at HarperCollins. Phoebe's first book, The Doll House, was published just five years after she left university, and quickly became a Kindle bestseller. Her books since then have been published in several languages and this year, she got her first US deal for The Wild Girls, a pacy thriller about friendship souring in Botswana (great for you summer holiday!).Phoebe has written about how it felt to finally get that US deal in her blog, which is full of really honest and useful information about writing and publishing. You can find that here: https://phoebemorganauthor.comWe talk about how editors choose books to publish, how she handles rejection as both a writer and editor and how goal posts for success are always changing. You can find Phoebe's books, along with those of my other guests, at https://uk.bookshop.org/shop/francescasteele Our GDPR privacy policy was updated on August 8, 2022. Visit acast.com/privacy for more information.

My guest this week is Harry Parker, a writer and artist who had a very interesting route to becoming an author. Harry is an army veteran who lost his legs following an IED explosion while on tour in Afghanistan. Several years later and back in the UK, Harry wrote a novel, Anatomy of a Solider, which tells the story of Sergeant Tom Barnes, who also loses his legs in an explosion, through the perspectives of 45 inanimate objects: a gun, a bag of fertiliser, a prosthetic leg, a grieving mother's handbag and so on. It's an extraordinary book, disorienting and incredibly moving, and in 2016 when it was published, Harry was featured as one of The Observer's new faces of fiction. the book got rave reviews and won the Waverton Good Read Award the following year. Overall, a pretty incredible experience for a debut novelist. But his second book did not go so well. It didn't sell and Harry, who is clearly an extremely resilient guy, is nonetheless very candid here about how personal that rejection felt, and how hard it has been to get over. It's a great reminder, I think, that writing success is not linear, even for established authors. You have to be prepared for bumps in the road and allow yourself time to accommodate them. Thank you so much to Harry for being so open about it all.You can find Anatomy of a Soldier and books by my other guests at my online bookstore: https://uk.bookshop.org/shop/francescasteeleYou can also find me on Twitter - @francescasteele. Do come along and let me know what you think of the podcast and the authors' experiences. Our GDPR privacy policy was updated on August 8, 2022. Visit acast.com/privacy for more information.

My guest this week is Katherine Heiny, who I'm happy to report is as funny in person and she is on the page. When I first approached Katherine for this podcast she told me that she had 9 million insecurities but rejection wasn't one of them, and I thought, ok, maybe she's not right for Write-Off. But then she kept writing back over the next couple of days adding caveats and comments and it became clear that in fact she did have things to say about rejection but perhaps not things that we all usually think of. In a way that makes a lot of sense. Katherine had her first published short story - How To Give the Wrong Impression, about a woman secretly in love with her flatmate, published in The New Yorker when she was 25 and had recently finished a writing masters at Columbia. She's since written a short story collection that is one my favourites ever, Single Carefree Mellow, and two novels, Standard Deviation, a tender, hilarious book about marriage and parenting that Kate Atkinson called "a marvel", and her latest recently released novel, Early Morning Riser, which is also so incredibly funny, wise and warm. Katherine is very good at finding the comedy in everyday life. But there were two decades between that precocious New Yorker success and the publication of Single Carefree Mellow - Katherine was in her forties with she became a debut author under her own name - and they were not always easy years. Katherine and I talked about how she writes jokes, writing YA under a pseudonym in her twenties, what it felt like to take years off from writing to raise her children and the meanest knock backs she's ever had.Just a reminder that you can find and buy books by all my guests here: https://uk.bookshop.org/shop/francescasteeleYou can find me on Twitter here: @francescasteele Our GDPR privacy policy was updated on August 8, 2022. Visit acast.com/privacy for more information.

Andy Weir is best known for his novel The Martian, a very clever and funny book about an astronaut stranded on Mars, which was made into a (2015) Ridley Scott film starring Matt Damon. Andy had two failed novels behind him before he self-published The Martian and even when it became an e-book bestseller didn't think to find an agent because earlier attempts had left him feeling like he wasn't good enough. (An agent an traditional publisher later approached him.) We talk about Andy's struggle with rejection and about his new (third published) book, Project Hail Mary, which is also a very funny and inventive space mission story. Many thanks to Scott Elliott for his editing advice (and sorry for the tinny audio in this one, Scott!) and thanks also to Robin Stannard for my lovely logo. You can find and buy books by all my guests at https://uk.bookshop.org/shop/francescasteeleFind me on Twitter: @francescasteele #writeoff Our GDPR privacy policy was updated on August 8, 2022. Visit acast.com/privacy for more information.

Anna Hope has written three very successful novels, the last of which, Expectation, was published to much fanfare in 2019 and which has been optioned for film. But before that Anna experienced plenty of rejection as an actor, and then when she turned to writing her first novel failed to sell. Anna was such a joy to speak to and she felt like the perfect first guest for Write-Off, talking openly and honestly about quite how difficult that experience was and how she got through it to become the hugely successful novelist she is today. Anna's novels are Wake, The Ballroom and Expectation and you can find them in all good bookshops as well as my own online bookstore link: https://uk.bookshop.org/shop/francescasteelMany thanks to Scott Elliott for his invaluable podcast advice, and to Robin Stannard for my lovely Write-Off logo. Find me on Twitter @francescasteele #writeoff. Our GDPR privacy policy was updated on August 8, 2022. Visit acast.com/privacy for more information.

Welcome to Write-Off with Francesca Steele, a podcast about writing rejection in all its forms, from self-doubt to books not selling, and how people get through it. I'm a writer and journalist based in London with some personal experience of this after my own first book failed to sell. Guests include Anna Hope, Andy Weir, Katherine Heiny, Michele Roberts, Julian Fellowes, Ann Napolitano, Phoebe Morgan, Harry Parker, Alex Wheatle and Douglas Stuart. I hope you find them as inspiring as I do. Our GDPR privacy policy was updated on August 8, 2022. Visit acast.com/privacy for more information.