Joanna Cannon, author of 'A Tidy Ending' - Sunday Times Bestseller discusses very early mornings, writing on the move and why myths hold you back

Writer's Routine

Dan Simpson

Arts, Books, Hobbies, Leisure

4.9 • 599 Ratings

🗓️ 28 April 2022

⏱️ 49 minutes

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Summary

Joanna Cannon's debut novel, 'The Trouble with Goats and Sheep' was an instant hit and became a Sunday Times Bestseller. She wrote it in very early mornings and in her lunch break, working in her car in an NHS car park, in between shifts as a Doctor.

Becoming a writer is the third act of a busy life, Joanna left school at fifteen, worked as a barmaid, kennel maid and pizza delivery girl before qualifying as a Doctor in her forties. Now, she's a full-time author.

Her new book, 'A Tidy Ending', about Linda, Strange Terry and Rebecca who used to live in the house before them. It's a character driven story, and Joanna loves learning about these characters as she goes. Jo knows the last line of a story when she starts and very little else.

We talk about her ludicrously early starts, why she hands in an almost perfect draft, why theme is the most important thing, and how procrastinating is sometimes more important than actual writing.

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Transcript

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0:00.0	Hello, welcome along to a brand new episode of writers' routine this week chatting to Joanna Cannon.
0:15.3	Her new book is a tidy ending. It's a character-driven story, all about Linda, Strange Terry, and Rebecca,
0:23.7	who used to live in the house before them. We talk about why Joe likes to move when things
0:29.3	start to move, also why procrastination is sometimes more important than the words you actually
0:35.3	get down that day, and why you should never let the
0:39.0	myths you tell yourself hold you back. We allow things to hold us back. We allow this internal
0:45.4	narrator that we have to hold us back. You know, you might be sitting there and thinking,
0:49.3	oh, it's all right for her. I'll never get published. I don't know anybody in London, which is
0:53.6	nonsense. There's this myth that you have to know people in London. I'd been to London twice in my whole life before I wrote goats and sheep. And I knew no one in London. Absolutely no one. It just bewildered me the whole place. So that was a myth. And then you think, oh, I'm too old, which is nonsense.
1:13.3	I mean, I qualified as a doctor in my 40s.
1:15.6	I wrote my debut novel in my 40s.
1:16.7	You are not too old.
1:19.6	There are some amazing young authors out there.
1:22.8	But equally, somebody with more life experience,
1:26.8	who's seen things and heard things and done things,
1:29.1	they can drink from that well.
1:31.5	It's a really inspirational one this week.
1:35.5	Loads of help for you on the way with Joanna Cannon in Writers' Routine.
2:03.5	Yes, welcome along to the show. My name's Dan. Thank you for being there. This is writer's routine. The show that is just so simple. We take a look through an author's working day. We ask them questions to unpack how they work, when they work, where they work, and why they work,
2:11.3	sometimes, how they take ideas and expand those little nuggets of a story idea and how they flesh them out into it, into a novel that gets published. This week, it's a, as I said,
2:16.8	a very inspirational chat with a Sunday
2:19.1	Times bestseller, Joanna Cannon. She got some huge success early on in her writing career
	...

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