Freya Berry, author of 'The Birdcage Library' - Bestseller discusses writing hard and often, leaving space in the story, and giving yourself a year to write
Writer's Routine
Dan Simpson
4.9 • 599 Ratings
🗓️ 17 November 2023
⏱️ 40 minutes
🧾️ Download transcript
Summary
Freya Berry's debut, 'The Dictator's Wife', was a bestselling, critically acclaimed hit, and was a BBC 2 'Between the Covers' pick. She's back with 'The Birdcage Library'.
It tells the story of Emily Blackwood, a young adventuress tasked by an exotic animal hunter to track down a lost treasure hidden in a castle... it becomes a deeper, darker hunt into secrets best left untold.
We talk about the article that gave her the inspiration for the novel, also the research around Scottish Castles she called work. You can hear about why it's the themes of a story that keep her going, how much she knows about the road ahead of her as she writes it down, and why she likes to leave herself space to seize ideas.
ALSO hear why listening to the same song works, how to change things if lockdown is still affecting your work day, and how things change through the second novel.
Get 10% off Plottr at go.plottr.com/routine
Support the show at patreon.com/writersroutine
@writerspod
writersroutine.com
Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.
Transcript
Click on a timestamp to play from that location
| 0:00.0 | Hello and welcome along to a brand new episode of writers' routine. |
| 0:12.4 | This week, chatting to Freya Berry off the back of her critically acclaimed debut, The Dictator's Wife. |
| 0:18.6 | She returns with the Birdcage Library. We discuss her research, |
| 0:24.3 | not too bad, searching around Scottish castles. Also, why it's the themes that give her |
| 0:31.1 | inspiration. And you can hear how writing her second novel has changed her view of what it means to have to create for a living. |
| 0:39.7 | If you're writing for the love of it, there's a purity to that and there's a joy to that, |
| 0:43.2 | which can become more elusive when you're doing it professionally, quote, unquote. |
| 0:48.8 | So, yeah, it's just something that I've had to make my peace with. As I say, it makes me get up in the |
| 0:53.7 | mornings and just do it a bit more than it might otherwise would. |
| 0:57.4 | But you have to be careful to keep the passion of it and not sort of lose that creative magic, I think. |
| 1:04.9 | It's all on the way in a brand new episode of writers's routine. Yes, welcome along. My name's Dan Simpson. This is writer's routine where we take |
| 1:19.5 | a look through an author's working day. We pull back the curtain, see where and how they work, |
| 1:25.2 | how they set up their day and their life to give them the best chance |
| 1:28.5 | of getting words down on the page. And this week we are sponsored by Plotter, which is a writing |
| 1:35.0 | software which can give you the best chance of getting words down on the page. Plotter is a tool |
| 1:40.8 | that does what it says. It plots. It helps you plan your books the way that you think, |
| 1:45.5 | stripping everything back with timelines, outlines, notes, your details on characters and places |
| 1:51.6 | in a really simple way for you to navigate for you to switch and swap. It's like having the most |
| 1:57.5 | in-depth notebook, but always with you living in your computer. |
| 2:02.5 | It lets you track all the details of your plot at a scene level and then switch, swap, and use |
| 2:07.6 | them however you want. |
| 2:09.3 | Plotter helps you spend more time writing and less time worrying about the fuss of writing. |
... |
Please login to see the full transcript.
Disclaimer: The podcast and artwork embedded on this page are from Dan Simpson, and are the property of its owner and not affiliated with or endorsed by Tapesearch.
Generated transcripts are the property of Dan Simpson and are distributed freely under the Fair Use doctrine. Transcripts generated by Tapesearch are not guaranteed to be accurate.
Copyright © Tapesearch 2026.