Show Notes
The very funny and frank Bella Mackie is with me today. We met in August to talk about the writing of her three bestselling books: the nonfiction hit Jog On: How Running Saved My Life, and the witty murder novels How to Kill Your Family and What a Way to Go – a new genre that we dub 'sarcastic crime'. Bella opens up about accepting defeat on a failed manuscript, learning her craft on the job, and battling with structure. And we discuss all of that while her dog Barney wanders around us at her kitchen table.
Browse and buy Bella's books here: https://uk.bookshop.org/shop/in-writing
Read Bella's newsletter on privilege and honesty, 'Do influencers owe you transparency?': https://bellamackie.substack.com/p/manifesting-luck
Pre-order my book In Writing: Conversations on Inspiration, Perspiration and Creative Desperation: https://uk.bookshop.org/a/5954/9781803510637
This season of In Writing is sponsored by Curtis Brown Creative – the renowned writing school run by the literary and talent agency. Use code INWRITING20 for £20 off your first online writing course. Eligible courses can be found here: https://www.curtisbrowncreative.co.uk
See me and Anna Metcalfe at Stratford Literary Festival on 26 October: https://www.stratfordliteraryfestival.co.uk/events/hattie-crisell-and-anna-metcalfe
More from In Writing with Hattie Crisell
For this final episode of the sixth season of In Writing, I sat down with Jesse Armstrong, creator of Succession, and writer/co-writer of numerous other brilliant shows and movies including Peep Show, Fresh Meat, The Thick of It, In The Loop and Four Lions. At his London office he told me about some of his projects that didn't work out (and why); the importance of tone, and how you know when you've got it right; the Succession rewrites that drove Brian Cox mad; the experiences of working with Armando Iannucci, Sam Bain and Chris Morris, and lots more.
Fresh from judging the Booker Prize, novelist Sara Collins joins us this week. Her debut The Confessions of Frannie Langton won the First Novel prize in the 2019 Costa Book Awards, and having adapted it into a TV series, she's now working on her second book. In this episode, she talks about the careful rhythms of her writing routine; the value of plotting (even in literary fiction); and her perspective on the publishing industry, having spent the first 17 years of her career as a corporate lawyer.
This week I'm talking to Tom Crewe, author of 2023's The New Life, contributing editor of the London Review of Books and winner of the Sunday Times Young Writer of the Year Award. I visited Tom in September at his London office, which is really more of a nest of books, and we talked about the strange emotional journey of publication; the wrangling of structure; the role of sex scenes and much more.
This week I'm in the London home of artist and writer Posy Simmonds. From the 1970s onwards, Posy had a regular comic strip in The Guardian, where she wrote Mrs Weber's Diary and later serialised the graphic novel Tamara Drewe. She went on to publish two more graphic novels, Gemma Bovery and Cassandra Darke. Earlier this year, she had a major exhibition at the Pompidou Centre in Paris, and became the first British artist to win the Grand Prix at France’s Angoulême International Comics Festival.
Nathan Silver, director and co-writer of Between the Temples (and many other movies) joins me from New York today to talk about his 'scriptment' approach to screenwriting, in which scripts read more like novellas. Nathan and I have a great chat about how he collaborates with cast and uses improvisation to tell a story; how comedy helps him to 'Trojan horse' experimental work to audiences; and his thoughts on letting an audience feel a little bit lost.