Sally Page, author of 'The Keeper of Stories' - Hugely successful debut writer on detailed research, the 'book club' genre, and how old work helps the future
Writer's Routine
Dan Simpson
4.9 • 599 Ratings
🗓️ 9 March 2023
⏱️ 52 minutes
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Summary
Sally Page's debut is 'The Keeper of Stories'. It's been extremely successful, tapping into book clubs across the country. It's about Janice, who is used to hearing other people's stories, until the elusive, mysterious Mrs B wants her to tell her own.
Sally has done a lot, worked in a flower shop, started a fountain pen business, and hopes that a successful debut will let her write full-time forever. We talk about how prepared she is to write in this genre for a while, and how old manuscripts have her well prepared for the future. Also, why being signed and published means she's no longer doing it alone.
You can hear why she's been surprised by the support of twitter, how she deals with crying while writing on trains, why she becomes obsessive over writing, and why she started research a year before actually writing.
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Transcript
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| 0:00.0 | Hello and welcome along to writer's routine. This week we're chatting to Sally Page. Now, |
| 0:14.6 | her debut is everywhere. If you've been in a bookshop recently, you'll have probably seen |
| 0:20.1 | the Keeper of Stories front and centre in the window. |
| 0:24.5 | We talk about why when she's writing, she's writing. Also, why she started research for this a year before she actually started the writing. |
| 0:33.5 | And now that she has found success in the book club genre, how does she feel perhaps being tied to it? |
| 0:40.5 | I was always writing in the book club fiction with the exception of one book, the first book I wrote. |
| 0:45.3 | But the other books I've written there in that book club fiction. |
| 0:48.9 | I think obviously you write more, you hope you get better. |
| 0:52.3 | So you push yourself to make the stories better. And you learn |
| 0:57.6 | certain things of, you know, pace, narrative arc, all these things. So you go back and you're |
| 1:03.7 | trying to fine tune and make your work better. So that definitely is part of the process. But in terms of are they a Sally Page |
| 1:15.6 | book, I think my books are, you know, they are about what I want to write about, which is community, |
| 1:21.7 | friendship. They will all, I mean, they don't, they don't steer away from dark subjects, |
| 1:27.2 | but I can absolutely |
| 1:28.4 | tell you they will always have a happy ending because I am the ultimate optimist. There is more |
| 1:33.2 | with Sally Page in this week's writers routine. Yes, welcome to the show. My name's Dan Simpson. This is writer's routine. Thank you so much for finding us for sharing, following, for listening, for just spending a moment of your time with us and some of the best authors around. Now, this week's episode is brought to you by Plotter. Plotter is a writing tool. It does what it says on the tin. |
| 2:01.8 | It plots. |
| 2:03.0 | It helps you plan your books the way that you think. |
| 2:06.6 | It lets you outline faster, organize smarter, |
| 2:10.6 | and it really, really gets to turbocharge your productivity. |
| 2:14.1 | Now, if you are a very visual writer, |
| 2:16.5 | if you're someone who likes to see everything you want, |
... |
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