Speaker 1: Hello there, it's Ruby Jones and I'm back to introduce
Speaker 1: another episode of Read This, Schwartz Media's weekly books podcast,
Speaker 1: hosted by editor of the Monthly Michael Williams. It features
Speaker 1: conversations with some of the most talented writers from Australia
Speaker 1: and around the world. In this episode, we're going to
Speaker 1: hear from Melbourne based writer Sean Wilson, who's discussing his
Speaker 1: second novel You Must Remember This. As always, I'm joined
Speaker 1: by Michael to tell me a bit more about the episode. Hi, Michael,
Speaker 1: Ruby Jones. Hello, So Michael, I thought we could maybe
Speaker 1: begin our conversation with a discussion about unreliable narrators, because
Speaker 1: that is really key to Sean Wilson's new book, isn't it.
Speaker 2: Yeah, that's absolutely right, Ruby. It is on balance a
Speaker 2: bit harsh to refer to the main character of Sean
Speaker 2: Wilson's new book as an unreliable narrator. She doesn't know
Speaker 2: she's unreliable. She's someone whose connection with her own life,
Speaker 2: with her own memories, is fractured, and so her story
Speaker 2: is one of someone who's disconnected. But when we read
Speaker 2: a book, it's a relationship of trust with the voice
Speaker 2: that we're hearing from with the story we're being told.
Speaker 2: You know, we're conditioned as kids to believe what we're
Speaker 2: being told in the stories. Here's the good, he, here's
Speaker 2: the bad. He, Here's what's going on. And I think
Speaker 2: there's something thrilling as a reader that first moment you
Speaker 2: come up against the thing where there's a world, where
Speaker 2: there's a set of meanings, where there's a reality that
Speaker 2: might be beyond your narrator. They might be lying to you,
Speaker 2: they might not know what's going on. But the great
Speaker 2: literature presents heroes that are complicated, presents characters whose worldview
Speaker 2: isn't the totality of the story that they're telling. And
Speaker 2: I love that. And Sean Wilson's book is a worthy
Speaker 2: inclusion in that pantheon.
Speaker 1: Right, And it's dementia that the narrator of you must
Speaker 1: remember this is dealing with. So how does that play
Speaker 1: out in the structure of the book and what is
Speaker 1: the ultimate impact.
Speaker 2: Yeah, it's such a fascinating kind of creative, artistic storytelling challenge.
Speaker 2: And if you think about like great depictions of dementia
Speaker 2: that you've either read or seen, I mean to me,
Speaker 2: I think about there was that film a couple of
Speaker 2: years ago with Olivia Coleman and Anthony Hopkins called The
Speaker 2: Father and that was great. There was another one with
Speaker 2: Nonie Hazlehurst called June Again that I encourage people to
Speaker 2: dig out. Both of those did this trick where central
Speaker 2: characters were suddenly recast in the middle of the film,
Speaker 2: They'll be having a conversation and suddenly a different actor
Speaker 2: would be the one setting across from our dementia suffering protagonist.
Speaker 2: As a viewer, it immediately took you out of it.
Speaker 2: It immediately gave your sense of what that character was
Speaker 2: going through. Who is this person who says that they're
Speaker 2: my son but has a face I've never seen before.
Speaker 2: It's kind of heartbreaking. And Sean Wilson's book does a
Speaker 2: kind of literary version of that, because at the heart
Speaker 2: of it is this really really clever Conceit begins with
Speaker 2: chapter ten and then follows it with chapter seven, then
Speaker 2: chapter eleven, and it jumps around like that. It's a
Speaker 2: completely fractured, fragmented narrative. The experience of the dementia sufferer
Speaker 2: so often is one about a nonlineargs where memory and
Speaker 2: reality bang up against each other and they're trying to
Speaker 2: make sense of this kind of fragmented world, and Sean
Speaker 2: Wilson captures that beautifully with his central character, Grace. It's
Speaker 2: a heartbreaking book and one that I thought was really
Speaker 2: pretty fabulous.
Speaker 1: Coming up. In just a moment, Sean Wilson pulls back
Speaker 1: the curtain on dementia.
Speaker 2: Did I read somewhere that you must remember this had
Speaker 2: one iteration where it was written for performance rather than
Speaker 2: for the page.
Speaker 3: Yeah, so we're going back over a decade now. I
Speaker 3: originally wrote it for this stage, and it got a
Speaker 3: bit of attention from some theater companies, didn't ultimately make
Speaker 3: it on stage. And not long after I'd written it
Speaker 3: and was talking to theater companies, I saw The Father,
Speaker 3: the play on stage because it was a play before
Speaker 3: the film, and quickly realized that my play was a
Speaker 3: little bit too close to that play and it was
Speaker 3: unlikely I was ever going to get it on main stage,
Speaker 3: so put it away. And then at a certain point
Speaker 3: I just thought, you know, let's have a go out
Speaker 3: rewriting it as a novel. And so a lot of
Speaker 3: the elements in the stage version aren't relatable to the novel.
Speaker 3: In the stage version, Grace is on stage the whole time.
Speaker 3: There's no blackout. People are coming in and out from
Speaker 3: President Pass and so there's probably a little bit more
Speaker 3: bleed in the President and Past in the stage version
Speaker 3: in order to get across that message in a different way.
Speaker 3: But some of the elements, some of the scenes remain
Speaker 3: and I've just sort of rewritten them for the page instead.
Speaker 2: It really surprised me, partly because the book is so
Speaker 2: accomplished on what I think of as particularly literary terms
Speaker 2: rather than theatrical terms. You know that the fragmentary nature
Speaker 2: of Grace's relationship with her reality and her past means
Speaker 2: that you have to have a very defthand with metaphor,
Speaker 2: with how to we express something that she might not
Speaker 2: be able to express, and that relationship between kind of
Speaker 2: knowing and not knowing that seems particularly well suited to
Speaker 2: the novel.
Speaker 3: Yeah, and the fact that you can get into Grace's
Speaker 3: head and to a certain extent, show the confusion that
Speaker 3: you wouldn't be able to get across on the stage.
Speaker 3: As you know, the constraints on the stage is just
Speaker 3: dialogue and some scene description and bit of action. You
Speaker 3: haven't got anything else, And so you can only tell
Speaker 3: that story through the interactions that are happening on stage,
Speaker 3: so it opens up a lot more possibility to do
Speaker 3: it as a novel. I think it was in some
Speaker 3: senses an easier process writing as a novel compared to
Speaker 3: as a play. But as you said, it gives you
Speaker 3: a bit more opportunity to explore the condition itself through metaphor.
Speaker 2: So a story that you first tried to tell ten
Speaker 2: years ago, men couldn't they go of and came back
Speaker 2: to in a different form? Was it your grandmother drove
Speaker 2: you to know that you wanted to tell this story.
Speaker 3: Yeah, and I felt like I had a responsibility as
Speaker 3: a writer but also as a grandson to try to
Speaker 3: understand her experience. So at a certain point in her
Speaker 3: life with dementia, I could tell that she was starting
Speaker 3: to live between president and past. So she would be
Speaker 3: interacting with us in the present, sometimes knowing who he was,
Speaker 3: sometimes not. But she would talk about her parents, who
Speaker 3: are long dead on the other side of the world
Speaker 3: as if they were about to visit. And she'd talk
Speaker 3: about her age care worker in the same moment as
Speaker 3: if that person was her best friend. And so it's
Speaker 3: very difficult once a person reaches that point of cognitive decline,
Speaker 3: they can't tell you what it's like, and so I
Speaker 3: suppose it lends itself to a story to exploring through
Speaker 3: fiction what that experience might be like.
Speaker 2: Was she your mom's mum or your dad's dad's mom
Speaker 2: A Were you close?
Speaker 3: Yeah? Yeah, really close. She's quite a remarkable person in
Speaker 3: a quiet way. She grew up poor in Manchester, lived
Speaker 3: through the Blitz, the family, got on a ship three
Speaker 3: months across to the other side of the world in
Speaker 3: the fifties and sort of raised her family over here
Speaker 3: without any assistance. You know, someone requires a lot of
Speaker 3: fortitude to do something like that, and it's it is
Speaker 3: tragic that at the end of her life she gets
Speaker 3: to a point where she loses all of those memories,
Speaker 3: all of the parts that made her her And it's
Speaker 3: very difficult to watch a person go through that. But
Speaker 3: then it's very difficult to see yourself disappearing in their
Speaker 3: eyes at the same time, which I suppose is one
Speaker 3: reason why there are so few accounts of dementia in fiction,
Speaker 3: because it's a difficult thing, if you have experience with it,
Speaker 3: to see yourself, to watch yourself disappear and to see
Speaker 3: your love on going through that.
Speaker 2: How like for your family, the management of the dementia
Speaker 2: and the kind of slow motion loss of this important figure.
Speaker 2: How did that play out for you guys? Was it
Speaker 2: something you talked about freely? Was it something you know?
Speaker 2: My family definitely, Gallows humor is almost the only way
Speaker 2: of coping with any of that stuff. But I'm curious.
Speaker 2: One of the things I love so much in this
Speaker 2: book is Grace's daughter, Liz, and how that plays out.
Speaker 2: And I'm curious for you and your family.
Speaker 3: Yeah, I think I just dialed up in Liz some
Speaker 3: of the reactions that we all had. And so Liz
Speaker 3: has some moments of frustration with Grace, and she has
Speaker 3: some moments of compassion and acceptance, and I think the
Speaker 3: intensity of those is just dialed up. It's probably a
Speaker 3: little bit less in our experience, but there was very
Speaker 3: much I witnessed in myself and other people. There's moments
Speaker 3: where you want to try and tether them to the present,
Speaker 3: and you almost want to fight against the condition. And
Speaker 3: in those moments, sometimes when you do that, it can
Speaker 3: create some distract for the person because you're trying to
Speaker 3: correct them constantly and they are aware in a vague
Speaker 3: kind of sense in some cases of shame and embarrassment
Speaker 3: about what they're saying and the fact that they're not remembering.
Speaker 3: And so I think another path that you can take,
Speaker 3: a more compassionate path where you just sort of go
Speaker 3: along with things a lot of the time, where you
Speaker 3: just even though they might be saying something completely wrong,
Speaker 3: you just go along with the thread and you continue,
Speaker 3: and you can kind of calmly and slowly try to
Speaker 3: bring some of their memories out, but if it doesn't happen,
Speaker 3: then you just sort of let it go gently. And
Speaker 3: I think that that in the relationship between Liz and
Speaker 3: Grace in the book, when the point that it gets to,
Speaker 3: I think is a point where Liz's started to come
Speaker 3: to terms with that. And what you mentioned about Gallow's humor,
Speaker 3: I think I tried to get across in the book
Speaker 3: that there is a tragedy going on, but I didn't
Speaker 3: want to make it a tragedy pile on. There are
Speaker 3: moments ofvity as well, just as there are own life.
Speaker 3: Sometimes you reach for dark humor and you can bring
Speaker 3: some parts of your own life into the situation and
Speaker 3: try and make it a little bit fun I think
Speaker 3: that's important.
Speaker 2: Yeah, absolutely. But the other part of that I think,
Speaker 2: which I think you do so well, is and I
Speaker 2: should say here, you're very clear in the acknowledgments in
Speaker 2: the book that Grace isn't your grandma. Her experiences have
Speaker 2: her echoes of that and are drawn from that. But
Speaker 2: she's a different human being. But you don't let yourself
Speaker 2: lose track of Grace the human being. She's not completely
Speaker 2: subsumed by her confusion or by her situation. That part
Speaker 2: of why the book works is that it is the
Speaker 2: story of a woman who has lived a life and
Speaker 2: dealt with disappointments and delights and all manner of things.
Speaker 3: Yeah. I wanted her to have a strength, and that
Speaker 3: was important to me in the book because my grandmother
Speaker 3: was strong. Although as you said, she's not the same
Speaker 3: person as Grace in terms of who she was, the
Speaker 3: way she behaved and her experiences and the rest is fictional.
Speaker 3: But she had a strength to her character as well.
Speaker 3: And I didn't want Grace to sort of be a
Speaker 3: very passive and meek individual in this book. I wanted
Speaker 3: her to be fighting against the condition in the early
Speaker 3: parts of the book and trying to hold onto her
Speaker 3: identity as much as possible, because I think that that's
Speaker 3: the natural way that she would react in that situation.
Speaker 2: What struck me when I was reading this was that
Speaker 2: it's one thing to write about a difficult experience, but
Speaker 2: it's a complete other thing to find a way to
Speaker 2: embody it, to demonstrate genuine empathy for what your character
Speaker 2: is going through. And I think you do that really powerfully,
Speaker 2: and you must remember this.
Speaker 3: I think that's the most one of the most difficult
Speaker 3: things about trying to portray a protagonist with dementia is
Speaker 3: that they are going through cognitive declient. So you have
Speaker 3: to if you're going to have close third person or
Speaker 3: even first person. I'm not quite sure how you would
Speaker 3: do first person. I think that would be a little
Speaker 3: bit too difficult towards the end of the chronology, but
Speaker 3: even close to the person, you've got to show that progression.
Speaker 3: And as they progress, there's a lot of opportunities for
Speaker 3: you as a reader to become confused, and so I
Speaker 3: think trying to get that balance between readers are a
Speaker 3: little bit confused but a little unsettled and able to
Speaker 3: sit in that in that mode, but then you still
Speaker 3: get across that kind of dislocation that the character has,
Speaker 3: so it's a bit of a balancing act.
Speaker 2: That decision to make form agree with subject matter is
Speaker 2: one of the great payoffs of this book and one
Speaker 2: of the one of the really moving things. I'm curious
Speaker 2: about the kind of reader you are. Are you a
Speaker 2: fan of structural play or do you like a good, straight,
Speaker 2: clear narrative.
Speaker 3: I think I like both, and I think you could
Speaker 3: call it a party trick essentially to create a fragmented
Speaker 3: narrative in this way and to, like you said, make
Speaker 3: the form match the nature of the character. I think
Speaker 3: in this instance you kind of have to do it
Speaker 3: that way unless you're going to tell it from the
Speaker 3: point of view of another character looking in, like Alice
Speaker 3: Monroez the bear came over the mountain, where it's the
Speaker 3: spouse looking in at the person with dementia. So I
Speaker 3: don't think I had much of a choice in this case.
Speaker 3: But I think in terms of my reading, I like
Speaker 3: it both ways. I think what I'm looking for primarily
Speaker 3: when i'm reading something is a good story and good writing,
Speaker 3: and if you can tick those boxes for me, I
Speaker 3: don't really mind about the rest of it. And I
Speaker 3: mean in terms of a good story, that you can
Speaker 3: take me on a journey from A to B of
Speaker 3: character growth and relationship change, but then also that there's
Speaker 3: some art involved in the expression, that there's some beauty
Speaker 3: on the page. And if I can get both of
Speaker 3: those things, I really don't mind what else you do.
Speaker 2: That question about telling a story and the structure of
Speaker 2: a story and our expectations around the convention. So much
Speaker 2: of that is tied up with analogy, with cause and effect,
Speaker 2: with actions and consequences, and your decision, or as you
Speaker 2: put it, the kind of inevitable fact that this story
Speaker 2: had to be told in a fractured way kind of
Speaker 2: robs you of that at first glance. Yeah, Instead, it's
Speaker 2: almost akin to a collection of interconnected short stories about
Speaker 2: a life where the threads and the echoes and resonance
Speaker 2: has become clear as you go along, but you don't
Speaker 2: necessarily get that path to satisfaction or joy or redemption.
Speaker 3: I think that there is a three line in the story,
Speaker 3: and maybe it takes a little while to get to it,
Speaker 3: but the three line really is the relationship change throughout
Speaker 3: the story, and you get the flashbacks which contribute to
Speaker 3: the relationship change in the present, and that's really what
Speaker 3: I was trying to go for. I was thinking a
Speaker 3: lot about Philip Larkin's anti natalist poem This Be the
Speaker 3: Verse when I was writing this, and not that I'm
Speaker 3: an anti natalist because my wife and I have a
Speaker 3: three month old son, but the last stanza, there's a
Speaker 3: couple of lines in their man hands on misery to
Speaker 3: man it deepens like a coastal shelf. And I was
Speaker 3: thinking about how if we're not careful, and if our
Speaker 3: parents aren't careful, we can pick up some of the
Speaker 3: traits from them, and they picked up from their parents,
Speaker 3: and we can embody those and we can bring those
Speaker 3: into our relationships with our children. And some of those
Speaker 3: traits may not be ideal, and some of the behaviors
Speaker 3: they lead to may not be ideal. And what would
Speaker 3: it take to go against the current in changing your behavior?
Speaker 3: And if at the same time, as my main character,
Speaker 3: Grace is in this story, she's reliving some of the past.
Speaker 3: She's living simultaneously between this past key moments with her
Speaker 3: relationship with her mother and then living in the present
Speaker 3: and sort of slipping in and out of those timelines.
Speaker 3: She's sort of experiencing those traits that she's picked up
Speaker 3: with her mother as she's in a sense with the
Speaker 3: ticking clock of dementia in the present, trying to change
Speaker 3: before it's too late, and trying to change your relationship
Speaker 3: with her daughter. So I think that's what I was
Speaker 3: trying to get at. That's the through line through the story.
Speaker 3: Even though the chronology, as you said, is really fragmented
Speaker 3: because she's slipping in and out of president past, there
Speaker 3: is a through line, and that's that change that happens
Speaker 3: in her relationship with her daughter.
Speaker 2: Yeah. I take your point about that through line, But
Speaker 2: I think part of what's so fascinating and effective about
Speaker 2: the way you approach it in this book is the
Speaker 2: impossibility of either forgiveness or repair when it comes to
Speaker 2: a broken relationship like the one between Grace and her mother.
Speaker 2: The ways in which the kind of residual, lifelong traumas
Speaker 2: of that unreconcilable after a certain point, and those questions
Speaker 2: about how we do right by the people we love
Speaker 2: and how we make things right when they're broken seem
Speaker 2: to me to be almost as important to this book
Speaker 2: as questions of memory.
Speaker 3: Yeah, I think that I'm dealing with two things, both
Speaker 3: Grace is changing because of the condition, and so really
Speaker 3: all we are instincts and memories, and if our memories
Speaker 3: are starting to break down, some of those stories that
Speaker 3: we have about ourselves that lead to kind of a
Speaker 3: cohesive self, who we were, who we are, and who
Speaker 3: we hope to be, she's starting to lose those. So
Speaker 3: she's changing through the condition as she's going along. But
Speaker 3: I think she's trying to change at the same time,
Speaker 3: sort of against the current of her change through the dementia,
Speaker 3: to change your relationship with her daughter, And she does
Speaker 3: that through the recollections she's having about her past, about
Speaker 3: her relationship with her mother. And although the relationship with
Speaker 3: her mother is fixed, that's change that's done. It does
Speaker 3: by reliving them, does inform her relationship in the present.
Speaker 2: When we're returned, Seawan discusses how his relationship with reading
Speaker 2: and writing has changed since becoming a published author. Right back,
Speaker 2: even though you must remember, this is the first book
Speaker 2: I've read by Sean Wilson. I first heard his name
Speaker 2: back in twenty twenty two. His debut novel came out.
Speaker 2: It was called Gemini Falls, and several people thrust it
Speaker 2: upon me and told me I should read it, and
Speaker 2: I just never got around to it. But looking at
Speaker 2: it now, in light of having read his second book,
Speaker 2: it strikes me how much of a departure he's made.
Speaker 2: His Debut's a genre novel, for one thing, it's said
Speaker 2: in the Great Depression, and it's probably best understood as
Speaker 2: Australian rural noir, a kind of plot driven murder mystery
Speaker 2: that's revealing a darker story about Australian society's evolution or
Speaker 2: lack thereof. I'm always fascinated by writers that can transition
Speaker 2: between genres, so I wanted to know more. I'm curious
Speaker 2: about the your second book, and your first book is
Speaker 2: a genre novel, like it is a novel that actually
Speaker 2: does very much kind of follow the beats of convention
Speaker 2: in order to tell the story it wants to tell.
Speaker 2: Did this feel like a completely different set of muscles
Speaker 2: you're flexing?
Speaker 3: No, the Gemini Falls felt like more of a departure,
Speaker 3: and I was trying to achieve something very specific with that.
Speaker 3: This feels more like it's in my wheelhouse. And I
Speaker 3: actually wrote the manuscript for you must remember this before
Speaker 3: Gemini Falls, all right, And so in a sense, this
Speaker 3: is my first book, although that's gone through some editing
Speaker 3: and rewriting. Gemini Falls. I wanted to tell a particular
Speaker 3: story about financial crisis and housing displacement in an unregulated
Speaker 3: market economy and what that does to people in the
Speaker 3: community and who sort of helps and who raises a fist,
Speaker 3: And because I think there are some parallels between now
Speaker 3: and the Great Depression in that sense, I said, it
Speaker 3: is a historical novel in the Great Depression. And after
Speaker 3: that I decided, how how am I going to tell
Speaker 3: this story keep people engaged in this topic. I decided
Speaker 3: to have a crime in order to turn the heat
Speaker 3: up on the community and explore those themes, And so
Speaker 3: just naturally it sort of went into a genre that
Speaker 3: I'd had no experience with.
Speaker 2: So when you say it didn't come naturally or you
Speaker 2: didn't know that genre, did you find yourself reading a
Speaker 2: lot of historical crime fiction in order to feel like
Speaker 2: you could fit the conventions, or did you kind of
Speaker 2: avoid it and happily go in naive.
Speaker 3: I probably should have read more. I read a little bit,
Speaker 3: but I think my guiding light for that story was
Speaker 3: to kill a mockingbird, in the sense that to kill
Speaker 3: a Mockingbird could be a crime novel or a courtroom
Speaker 3: drama if you were reductive in that sense, But really
Speaker 3: it's about racism in the South and the depression States
Speaker 3: rights gender roles. So I felt like I had enough
Speaker 3: with that story to guide me, and then from then
Speaker 3: on it was really just about I think what's important
Speaker 3: in stories, and what we always go back to is
Speaker 3: the relationship change that happens in the novel. So although
Speaker 3: I wanted to explore those themes and that was important
Speaker 3: to me, it is not enough just to have a
Speaker 3: story about financial crisis and housing displacement and all of
Speaker 3: those issues that I wanted to explore. You've got to
Speaker 3: have the relationships are changing, and so the main character
Speaker 3: and the way he relates with his father and his sister,
Speaker 3: those are really the important parts of the story, and
Speaker 3: that's what keeps us coming back to stories.
Speaker 2: So what did writing in a mode that was if
Speaker 2: you'll forgive this way of putting it a little bit
Speaker 2: reverse engineered, what did that teach you about the writing
Speaker 2: that you want to do next? Having done something that
Speaker 2: from the sounds of things flows out organically because of
Speaker 2: the personal elements of the story and because the structure
Speaker 2: presented itself once he worked out what the project was.
Speaker 2: What do you know now two books under your belt,
Speaker 2: what does number three book like?
Speaker 3: I think I would like to try something new for
Speaker 3: their third book, and maybe not the third book, or
Speaker 3: maybe the fourth book if I get that far better.
Speaker 3: I think it's a shame when people write the same
Speaker 3: book over and over again. From an artistic sense, I
Speaker 3: can understand from a financial point of view if a
Speaker 3: book is a successfuy.
Speaker 2: I think Philip Roth said every writer just writes the
Speaker 2: same book again and again, hoping as they hone in
Speaker 2: that eventually they get it right.
Speaker 3: I've seen that happen, sure, But I've also seen you know,
Speaker 3: Margaret at would write a speculative fiction and then go
Speaker 3: to historical fiction. And although it's the same kind of
Speaker 3: themes that she might be exploring, she's using very different muscles,
Speaker 3: as you mentioned in terms of structuring. I mean, it
Speaker 3: would be a shame if the Beatles just made Love
Speaker 3: Me Do over and over again. You never get to
Speaker 3: Dear Prudence or Octopus's Garden, so in.
Speaker 2: That there's a choice to crescendo with Octopus's Garden. I
Speaker 2: was with you all the way through dear prudence and
Speaker 2: then you just had to be silly.
Speaker 3: And maybe I'll g have my own octopus's garden moment.
Speaker 2: You never know. I don't doubt your capacity to do it.
Speaker 2: I'm curious because there is a deliberateness to the way
Speaker 2: you talk about your writing, like there was a sense
Speaker 2: of purpose and a sense of kind of internally imposed
Speaker 2: discipline on how you want to approach it. Did you
Speaker 2: do you always know you wanted to write? Was this
Speaker 2: something that you worked your way towards.
Speaker 3: Yeah, I've wanted to write for a long time. I
Speaker 3: think when I was younger, in terms of where I
Speaker 3: grew up, there weren't any examples of writers around me
Speaker 3: growing up in the suburbs. So it took me a
Speaker 3: long time to get to the point where I thought
Speaker 3: I had enough to say in order and sort of
Speaker 3: fit in that mold. But I think it took me
Speaker 3: a little while to work up to it. But I
Speaker 3: guess I've had a long time to think about it
Speaker 3: and be deliberate in that sense.
Speaker 2: What kind of reader are you and how has that
Speaker 2: changed since you've been writing your own books.
Speaker 3: I'm definitely more forgiving reader, I think, and this is
Speaker 3: why I don't slag off other people's books because I
Speaker 3: understand how hard it is to write a book now
Speaker 3: after writing too, and I understand how hard it is
Speaker 3: to hold onto the vision through the editing and publishing
Speaker 3: process as well, so I have more understanding, I think,
Speaker 3: for writers, if I feel that something's not working, then
Speaker 3: I can sort of think back to some challenges that
Speaker 3: I've had, So it's definitely made me more forgiving in
Speaker 3: that sense, but I still am looking for those moments
Speaker 3: where I feel that they're in so much control that
Speaker 3: I can switch off join in the fun. I think
Speaker 3: one of the problems when you take on a craft,
Speaker 3: and I think it's probably the same way for musicians
Speaker 3: as well. If you're a drama, you're probably just listening
Speaker 3: to the drumming in any particular song and understanding how
Speaker 3: it works in the mechanics of it, and you find
Speaker 3: it hard to lose yourself in the song. In the
Speaker 3: same sense, I do find it hard to lose myself
Speaker 3: in fiction, and the only times that I really do
Speaker 3: where I really start to fall into the spell and
Speaker 3: have that kind of hallucinatory experience that we all do
Speaker 3: in the best times when we're reading is when I
Speaker 3: feel like the writer is really in control. And I've
Speaker 3: had a few of those moments lately, and it's been
Speaker 3: a pleasure when I'm able to sort of switch off
Speaker 3: my analytical part of the writer reading and just be
Speaker 3: a reader. That's a real joy.
Speaker 2: Thank you so much for joining Asta.
Speaker 3: Thank you, it's been a pleasure. Appreciate it.
Speaker 2: Sean Wilson's new novel, You Must Remember This is available
Speaker 2: at all Good bookstores now.
Speaker 1: Thank you so much for listening to another special episode
Speaker 1: of Read This. As always, if you want to dive
Speaker 1: further into Read This, you can search for it wherever
Speaker 1: you listen to podcasts. There are more than seventy episodes
Speaker 1: in the archive for you to enjoy. See you next week.