The Communication Expert Series: Joanna Trollope CBE, Best Selling Author

The Communication Expert Series: Joanna Trollope CBE, Best Selling Author.
Robin Kermode talks to best selling author Joanna Trollope CBE. She’s written 22 contemporary novels, 11 historical novels and an edited collection of poetry. Four of her novels became TV series. She has been translated into over 20 languages, sold almost 9 million books and was awarded the OBE in ‘96 and the CBE last year.

Transcript

Meet Joanna Trollope

SPEAKER_00 0:01

Hello and welcome to the Art of Communication Podcast with me, Robin Kermode. For more information on my online public speaking masterclass, visit RobinKermode.com. Today on the Art of Communication Podcast Expert Series, I'm delighted to be joined by best-selling author Joanna Trollop. She'd written 22 contemporary novels, 11 historical novels, one non-fiction book, and an edited collection of poetry. Four of her novels became TV series. She's been translated into over 20 languages, has sold almost 9 million books, was awarded the OBE in 96 and the CBE last year. Joanna, thank you for coming on. It's a pleasure. Fantastic to see you. Joanna, being a writer, it always seems to me such a glamorous profession, and I'm sure most people on the street would think, I wonder how I could ever become a writer. It's almost unattainable. Did you come from an artistic creative family to get into this?

SPEAKER_02 0:57

No, it was simply the time I was born, because I was born pre-screens.

Childhood Reading Before Screens

SPEAKER_02 1:03

And so books were the only entertainment that was. So of my generation, and I was born at the end of 1943, it was quite commonplace to learn to read. You were reading fluently by the time you were five. I wasn't at all rare then.

SPEAKER_00 1:18

And what about the books you read as a child? Were there any particular books that inspired you?

SPEAKER_02 1:24

I read things my mother and my grandmother had read. The children's book market hadn't exploded yet. All the books had been given for the war effort. I remember Noel Stretfield, an enormous success. You know, she wrote ballet shoes and white boots about skating in about the mid-50s, and they were enormously successful. And Francis Hodgson Burnett and Inezbitt.

SPEAKER_00 1:54

And this moment when you said to yourself, I'm going to become a professional writer, there must have been a moment or a gradual process where you thought, I wonder if I could do this.

SPEAKER_02 2:04

No, I don't think it did. I mean it was very, very commonplace to be able to write well. You were expected to be able to write well. I don't think of my generation there was any distinction to it. I think it was just a gradual

Early Writing And Self-Image

SPEAKER_02 2:18

thing. I wrote the first novel I ever wrote when I was about fourteen, and it was about the kind of schoolgirl I wished I was instead of the one I actually was. Do you mean the kind of friends you had? Did you wish you were somebody else? I did wish I was somebody else. I wanted to be Jane Fonda then. I remember, you know, in sticky out skirts and pink and white checkingham with masses of tual petticoats underneath. And I was the height I am now. I was over five foot nine when I was twelve.

unknown 2:48

Wow.

SPEAKER_02 2:48

And short-sighted, with sticking out teeth and frizzy hair, and nobody ever looked at me. Of course they didn't. And I think the novel I wrote then, when I was about fourteen, was about being noticed by a marvellous sports jock. Because nobody did. Of course they didn't.

SPEAKER_00 3:08

And you've never published it?

SPEAKER_02 3:10

No, no, no. I would never publish it. I mean, when I'm safely dead, my grown-up children can all fall about with laughter over it and say, Dear old mum, you know, this is what she always wanted to be.

SPEAKER_00 3:22

How do you think you get better as a writer? Because I'm working with people who have to make speeches and this kind of thing, and obviously practice helps. But how do you get better as a writer?

SPEAKER_02 3:31

Less is more, and there's an enormous need

Writing Better: Honesty Over Wish Think

SPEAKER_02 3:36

to watch other people and see how they behave, and not to be afraid of being accurate about humanity. Not to be not to do the wish think. What do you mean by the wish think? Well, you just wish that people would behave in a beautiful manner. And of course they don't.

SPEAKER_00 3:56

It must be interesting as a writer when someone might say something about themselves, like, I'm this kind of person, but then you watch their behavior and they're not that kind of person.

SPEAKER_02 4:05

They're not that kind of person at all. And as a novelist, you've got to be unafraid about showing their deceit, the discrepancy between their conduct and their actual behavior. But there's an enormous number of writers who won't do that. They just describe humanity as they wish it was. And I'm afraid it isn't. I mean, we are all shades of grey.

SPEAKER_00 4:28

I read somewhere, Joanna, that before becoming a novelist, you were a teacher. I think standing up in front of a class of difficult teenagers can be incredibly intimidating. When you were at school, would you describe yourself as a happy pupil?

SPEAKER_02 4:42

As a very young child, about six or seven. I remember being delivered to a new school and just thinking they're never going to know how awful I feel and how anxious I feel. And so I think I've always been able to present myself as being perfectly confident, even when I'm not.

SPEAKER_00 5:03

Is that because you're aware

Teaching Teenagers And Finding Connection

SPEAKER_00 5:05

of what confidence looks like from the outside and thought you'd show that as a facade?

SPEAKER_02 5:09

No, it's more about privacy. You know, nobody's ever going to know, as it were, the real me, because that's just my business. They're just going to see this person who looks very accomplished and seems to be quite positive.

SPEAKER_00 5:26

What was your first teaching job?

SPEAKER_02 5:28

I was just pregnant with my first daughter, so it's half a century ago. And I was teaching in Farnham Grammar School, and I was the form mistress for a bunch of thirteen, fourteen-year-olds.

SPEAKER_00 5:44

Difficult age.

SPEAKER_02 5:44

Very difficult age. And actually it was okay. I mean, I had to teach them poetry, I had to teach them Englit, which they didn't want to do. So I taught them the Beatles lyrics, because they were hot stuff at the time.

SPEAKER_00 6:00

As a way of connecting with them, because all communication, of course, is about connection. It is. Personally, you seem very centered and emotionally confident. Have you always felt like that? You wanted to be this other child when you wrote the novel. When did you have a sense of I kind of know who I am?

SPEAKER_02 6:16

Oh, I don't think it's ever been the case. I've always felt very anxious and insecure inside, but I'm damned if anybody's

Anxiety, Confidence, And Public Judgment

SPEAKER_02 6:26

going to see it.

SPEAKER_00 6:27

Quite right. What about, for example, when you're on a book tour? How was your very first one? Because in a sense, you've created your novel, you're up there, and for the first time it's out there, and people are judging it, I suppose.

SPEAKER_02 6:40

Well, that's perfectly fair to judge something that you post publicly. I'm always amazed why people are wounded by how they're treated. I mean, what do they expect? The very first book tour I did was with a novel called The Rector's Wife, which was my fourth novel, but it was the one that was number one for nearly a year. But I did the promotion for that, I did the book tour for that, with, among others, Antonia Fraser, who was enormously practised because when she was only 21, Mary Queen of Scots was a bestseller both sides of the Atlantic.

SPEAKER_00 7:21

When she was only 21?

SPEAKER_02 7:23

When she was only 21, and she's terrifically

Rhythm, Longhand, And The Inner Movie

SPEAKER_02 7:26

poised and funny and all of that. I just did what she did.

SPEAKER_00 7:32

I'm sure all of us in our various professions, certainly me as an actor, learnt more from working with other good actors on stage than from drama college itself. Every writer seems to have a rhythm, a particular rhythm. A rhythm's something I'm always fascinated by. How important is rhythm to you?

SPEAKER_02 7:49

Extraordinarily important. Because I write longhand, as you know, and I write on the right hand side of the page, and I go back over the previous scribbly pages, you know, in order to think myself back down into the book. And I just know when a sentence is wrong, you know, when it hasn't got proper balance to it.

SPEAKER_00 8:11

When you're editing and you go back, do you read it out loud?

SPEAKER_02 8:16

No, I don't read it out loud. When I'm writing, it's as if I was seeing and hearing a movie in my head. So I'm writing exactly what I'm hearing and seeing. Interestingly, this business of rhythm, I remember talking to you remember the actor, Alan Howard.

SPEAKER_01 8:35

Of course, yes.

SPEAKER_02 8:36

Well, I remember going to see him in Coriolanus when I was up at Oxford, and I went to a matinee in Stratford, and it was so mesmerizing, I just stayed on to see the evening performance. And he was quite, quite extraordinary. But I do remember him saying to me, it is amazing how much power the audience has. You know, the fact that when you walk out on the stage for the first time, you have no idea in a

Audience Power And Adapting In The Room

SPEAKER_02 9:05

way whether the audience is going to be enormously receptive and helpful, or it's going to just say to you, Come on, make me laugh, or horrify me, or something of that kind. And I think the same is true both of writing and of public speaking. You've got to gauge your audience, you've got to have that kind of empathy for other people. Each book tour is different, and each bookshop event is different. Sometimes I've got an enormous haul there, but they are totally resistant. They are just waiting for me to entertain them.

SPEAKER_00 9:41

Do you have tricks to wake them up or engage them?

SPEAKER_02 9:43

No, I don't think I really have tricks. I would certainly alter my tone of voice. I remember doing an event once with Simon Callow, and Simon Callow had written a book on Orson Wells, and his audience was crammed to the gunnels. And I was going on after him, and you know, there were kind of a hundred people there in an enormous theatre. And I said to him later, I imagine you sold masses of books, and he said, Not a single one. They'd all come to be entertained.

SPEAKER_00 10:18

So they loved him, but they weren't necessarily gonna buy the book.

SPEAKER_02 10:23

And interpret, but he they didn't want to read about Orson Wells.

SPEAKER_00 10:26

When you're on a book tour and you're in a bookshop and you have your audience there, and whether it's fifty or a couple of hundred or whatever, and they're hard work, are there particular stories

Softening A Tough Crowd

SPEAKER_00 10:36

that you think this one always works? I can pull this out of my back pocket, as it were.

SPEAKER_02 10:40

There are various stories I tell them to soften them up. You kind of get them on your side. But I think it's more a question of instinct and just to give them time to settle down. I will often read them a bit out of the new book, you know, because they need time just to listen. And it makes an enormous difference, I found, with bookshop events, whether they have alcohol or not. You know, if they've had a glass of wine, they're a putty in your hands compared to a cup of tea. Yes, exactly.

SPEAKER_00 11:12

The trap, I think, with an audience who we perceive as being hard work or they're not really engaging is that we try too hard. And certainly when I was younger, I know one thing I used to do was to try too hard to try to wake them up. As a young actor, you try to wake the audience up. And actually, counterintuitively, I think letting them come to you is a good thing. And of course, your audience could well be nervous in their own.

SPEAKER_02 11:31

Well they will be. You've just got to give everybody time, yourself as well as the audience. And you've got to feel your way towards it. So I don't think there are any real tricks. It's just to kind of wait and let them bed down and all of that.

SPEAKER_00 11:46

At a book tour or whatever, you could see your audience and you can react to them. You can't see your reader. So when you're editing it, who are you writing for?

SPEAKER_02 11:55

I am writing for a particular person. I have no idea what they are. I've no idea of their sex or age or anything. They

Writing To One Reader And Modern Themes

SPEAKER_02 12:05

are simply I am writing it for somebody else. It's a form of communication to write. As if you're telling one person this story. Yes, I'm just saying this is a very modern situation. It might be women and work, or it might be late life remarriage, or whatever it is, and all the complications that that brings with it. I just really want to get the conversation going. I just want them to start talking about it. I remember there was a very famous or she's she is very famous gay television presenter, and she had got a very, very conventional family, and when she wanted to marry her partner, she gave them a copy of a village affair and said, I want you all to read that tonight, and then in the morning we'll talk about the issues. Wow. I mean, I would say this is now twenty years ago, and it would be very different now. There's really no need for it now, I'm glad to say. It's a difficult thing still.

SPEAKER_00 13:09

We've looked at how you write, in a sense. What about before you start writing? What is your starting point?

SPEAKER_02 13:16

It's the theme. It's like taking the zeitgeist

Titles That Say What They Mean

SPEAKER_02 13:20

out of the atmosphere for the moment. What people are concerned about, but are really not talking about because it's rather uncomfortable.

SPEAKER_00 13:30

So you start with the theme, and having got to your theme and you start to write it, how important is a title? When does a title come?

SPEAKER_02 13:37

Well, I'm rather a fan of 19th century titles. They say what the novel's about.

SPEAKER_00 13:43

Yes.

SPEAKER_02 13:43

And after all, if you think of most 19th century novels, George Eliot or The Real Trollope or Thackeray, you know, that's what they are about. And I think I've got to a point of being able to say, well, nobody dares againsay me now. When I say to the publishers, the novel is going to be called this.

SPEAKER_00 14:02

Nobody's about nobody's about to be you, you've got to have a lot of people.

SPEAKER_02 14:05

But they've tried in the past. Yes, they have tried. But it doesn't work. I mean, The Rector's Wife was about what it's like to be a rector's wife. Well, it kind of does what it says on the table. Exactly. The trouble with a lot of literary fiction is that you look at the title and you just think, A, how do I remember that? And B, what's it got to do with what's in between the covers?

SPEAKER_00 14:26

And it's got to be easier to market a book.

Handwriting, Concision, And Trusting Readers

SPEAKER_00 14:28

Yes. The Rector's Wife, we know what that is all about.

SPEAKER_02 14:30

It's got to be punchy. The most successful book I ever wrote was called Marrying the Mistress, and then there was a Spanish lover because they'd got the word mistress and lover in the title.

SPEAKER_00 14:42

You talked about writing longhand.

SPEAKER_02 14:44

Do you write with a with a pencil or I write with, you know, any old pen, maybe even a pen I've nicked from the last hotel I've stayed in. Doesn't matter. Not fussy.

SPEAKER_00 14:55

Does handwriting make you write in a more considered way or a slower way or human way?

SPEAKER_02 15:01

I think it makes you write in a quite concise way. But that is partly the readers too. The readers, because they have bought so many books, they've given me an extraordinary confidence. I was rereading something that is going to be a television series, something I'd written quite early, and I thought there's really no need to explain everything to everyone all the time. If I was writing the same book now, it would be half the length. There was no need to explain and and these long, long passages of description. Why did I do it? And I suppose it was just anxiety. But the readers have taught me that no, we get it. And of course they get it. Never, never underestimate the intelligence of your audience.

SPEAKER_00 15:50

I'm always struck by great comedians who almost half give a punchline and allow the audience to fill in the rest. It's very flattering

Voice, Taste, And Personal Preference

SPEAKER_00 15:58

to the audience because the audience want to feel one step ahead.

SPEAKER_02 16:00

They do.

SPEAKER_00 16:01

I'm fascinated by voices. Thinking of your family, do you think you sound like your mother?

SPEAKER_02 16:07

I probably do. Well, certainly my accent, but there's nothing I can do about it. Yes, I'm always rather horrified when I find myself sounding like her, because I sort of think I've moved on.

SPEAKER_00 16:17

Well, I think we all do. As a writer, did you wake up one morning and say, I think I've found my voice?

SPEAKER_02 16:24

No, it happened very gradually and I think quite early, the voice, the finding of the voice. Because the voice is incredibly important if you think about it. You go on reading a book because of the voice. I mean, if I'm watching something on stage, I don't take my eyes off somebody of the stature of Michael Gamin. And I think the same is true of writing. There are some voices of writers that you absolutely can't bear. You know, there's a lot that are anathema to you as a reader. But other people might love them. Exactly. I think it's very, very personal, all of it. And it

Zeitgeist Without Chasing Trends

SPEAKER_02 17:03

sort of should be.

SPEAKER_00 17:04

What is the time lag between writing a book and the book coming out?

SPEAKER_02 17:09

I suppose it's about a year.

SPEAKER_00 17:13

So if you want to be zeitgeist, does that mean you have to be ahead of the curve?

SPEAKER_02 17:17

Well, the zeitgeists don't really change that much. I mean, I'm not going to write about the modern pandemic. It's a kind of aberration from real life rather than being real life. But obviously, I will make a nod to it, because people's behaviour and reaction to it is conditioned by it. You can see at the moment there's a tremendous vogue for thrillers because they have a conclusion to them, and also for fantasy. Well, I personally can't read fantasy because I can only read about real life.

SPEAKER_00 17:50

I like novels about essentially good people who are just trying to get on with their lives. I don't think novels have to be about confused, difficult, tortured souls. I mean, they exist, of course,

Characters, Empathy, And Letting Go

SPEAKER_00 18:00

but I don't think every character has to be like I don't think that.

SPEAKER_02 18:03

And also some people expect a novel to tell them how to live their lives.

SPEAKER_00 18:18

Is one of those more fun to write?

SPEAKER_02 18:19

No, because confident characters are usually unconfident somewhere. So I might like to describe their lack of confidence masked by the outward confidence. I don't think anybody is particularly good fun to write. I mean, when I'm starting a novel, I don't know the people terribly well. By the time I get to the end of the novel, I'm absolutely sick of these people. And I'm one of those writers who am thankful to hand all these characters, because who I've been living with them intensely for a couple of years. I mean I'm thankful to hand them over to the reader. You know, there are some writers who cannot bear to let the fruit of their loins go off to an unforgiving public. If you loved your characters, you might want to bring them back. No, I never want to do that. Now I've lived with them very, very um intensely for a period of time, and I don't want to have anything more to do with them ever, because there are so many people. There might be a type, for example, you know, a rather bombastic man.

Observation, Patchwork People, And Parties

SPEAKER_00 19:25

So if you were to write a character like that, would you base it on a mixture of people you've met? Yes.

SPEAKER_02 19:30

And they're always real, and all the characteristics are real, all their gestures are real, all their habits of thought are real, but it is a kind of patchwork. They're always from real life. It's always observation.

SPEAKER_00 19:47

So would that make you a very good body language expert? For example, if you were at a drinks party, would you be able to spot what's going on below the surface?

SPEAKER_02 19:55

I'd always rather be the person with the notebook up against a wall. watching a party than I would like to be at the heart of a party. I just want to watch other people. I'm perfectly happy in an airport departure lounge, or at least I was in the old days. Yes. I'd be there for hours just watching people. They're quite anxious often in the departure lounge. There isn't the relief and the joy of an arrival's lounge. You know they've got a flight ahead,

Universal Feelings Across Cultures

SPEAKER_02 20:25

an encounter, it might be a business meeting.

SPEAKER_00 20:28

Do you find that your books do well in certain countries?

SPEAKER_02 20:31

Not really. I mean I've got upstairs I've got various little Japanese copies which start at the bottom right of the back page. But I think a broken heart is a broken heart if it happens in Tunbridge Wells or Tokyo or even Toronto. You know, there are some aspects of the human condition that just happen to everyone. And my aim is really to make them feel that it is the first time in the history of the world that anyone has lost their job, got pregnant, whatever it is. Because a cliche is only a cliche if it's happening in someone else's life. If it's happening in your own, it's the first time in the history of the world that this has happened. And that has to be respected.

SPEAKER_00 21:15

When you finish

Always Having A Novel On The Go

SPEAKER_00 21:17

a novel, how soon before you start writing the next one?

SPEAKER_02 21:20

I need to have a novel on the go. I just need to know it's there in the background. So I need to be thinking about the next one or in the middle of the next one or having written the next one or something of that kind.

Speaking Notes, Starts, And Self-Deprecation

SPEAKER_00 21:33

If you had to make a speech at your old school for example, if you're given notice and you have time to prepare, how do you prepare?

SPEAKER_02 21:41

Well nowadays I would write myself notes on a postcard of what I wanted to say and I would simply talk extemporore. And if it was say a speech day lady I would take no notice of the parents and the staff there and I would talk simply to the pupils.

SPEAKER_00 22:00

How important to you is the start of a talk?

SPEAKER_02 22:03

Well I think it's quite important because you've got to get everyone relaxed really. If they're relaxed they'll be on your side so there are a few stock jokes that I'd start with not really so much actual jokes as just humorous slightly self-deprecating things to get them to realise that this is a human being.

SPEAKER_00 22:27

And I think for children as well it's very easy for them to see adults and think you're just confident you've done

Writing Well Doesn’t Mean Speaking Well

SPEAKER_00 22:33

all this I can't because I'm young and I don't have the experience or the confidence and I think a bit of self-deprecation can really help them hugely I think so. You must think if I could just inspire one person, one pupil.

SPEAKER_02 22:44

That's all you want. We're back to really doing something your heart's in even if that's throwing pots on a Welsh hillside go and do it if that's what you want to do.

SPEAKER_00 22:54

The fact that you write well and you're known for writing well is there any pressure then to speak well in front of an audience?

SPEAKER_02 23:02

I don't think so no because lots of people who write well can't read or speak at all. You know writing is the thing they do. I remember JG Farrell wrote in a windowless room with his back to whatever light there was under a single light bulb on a black cloth table because he couldn't bear human interaction. And I think that's perfectly true of all kinds of people you know the fact that you can write a marvellous novel doesn't mean that you are any good at anything else.

SPEAKER_00 23:35

I remember seeing

Fame, Forgiveness, And Audience Warmth

SPEAKER_00 23:36

a very famous film writer very very good writer give a speech and he turned up and read the speech it was so beautifully written. And he didn't look up at the audience but that worked because he was a writer he wasn't saying I'm a speaker.

SPEAKER_02 23:49

That was quite forgiving of you though really because a lot of the audience might have felt that they'd been shortchanged.

SPEAKER_00 23:56

I think he was so well loved that he could have got away with anything it's a bit like you know famous actors or comedians if they walk on stage there's a huge amount of love for them before they even start. You don't have to do very much.

SPEAKER_02 24:07

Well you have to remember this you know when you do a single event that the hundred people or five hundred people want to see you.

SPEAKER_00 24:15

And they're not

Independence, Money, And Choice

SPEAKER_00 24:16

coming there to judge they're actually saying oh I want to go and meet this person. If you hadn't become a writer could you have stayed being a teacher or might you have done something else?

SPEAKER_02 24:24

I don't know if I could have stayed being a teacher. I was very irritated by all the regulations that go with being a teacher. I mean I couldn't bear having to do break duty and all of that. I really wanted to be in the classroom and getting to know the girls really I wouldn't have been very good at marking exam papers and all of that.

SPEAKER_00 24:45

Could you have been anything else artistically like a painter or no and certainly nothing to do with music.

SPEAKER_02 24:50

No it would have been creative and determined artistic in some way because I very much value my independence the fact that I've earned this house that I will leave a certain amount of money for my children. I'm very proud about that. I think that gives me a great satisfaction I think my independence has mattered to me more than almost anything.

Discipline, Projects, And Restlessness

SPEAKER_02 25:18

I'm not interested in being enormously wealthy because I think that is as constraining as anything. I'm interested in having enough money for dignity and to be able to make choices that's all it is about choice isn't it if you have some money you have some choice.

SPEAKER_00 25:36

I remember as actors they said if you have no money in the bank you have to take every job that comes along if you have a little bit of money you can choose do you think well I don't have to take that job I think that's really what it comes down to.

SPEAKER_02 25:49

That's my life work you know my raison d'être whatever it is.

SPEAKER_00 25:54

What about the the discipline of writing? Because you could get to the point where you say do you know what I've written 33 novels and I'm I think I've I'm I know I've done pretty well now I could just go and lie on a beach in in a betha or no I I'd be bored stiff.

SPEAKER_02 26:08

I need to be doing things all the time. But that may be generational too you know as well in that I find it really quite difficult

Advice To A Ten-Year-Old Self

SPEAKER_02 26:18

to sit down in the day until, you know, seven o'clock.

SPEAKER_00 26:22

So you're someone who likes to have a project?

SPEAKER_02 26:24

I do like to have a project.

SPEAKER_00 26:26

Even if the project is a novel that you're thinking about that's ongoing in a sense very much so yeah we've talked about prize giving ceremonies at school and this kind of thing. What advice would you give your own ten year old self?

SPEAKER_02 26:41

I think I'd emphasize the independence again because I wasn't really independent until my late forties early 50s when I had sort of done with everything and you know abandoned being married where I suddenly found my feet and found my voice and found everything and I could cope. And I think I'd say why did you have to wait so long?

SPEAKER_00 27:08

Why couldn't you do it much, much earlier and that might be being born when I was I'm not quite sure but I think I'd just say what kept you well Joanna thank you very much it's been wonderful having you on the podcast today and it's very very kind of you to come on thank you so much. It's a great pleasure I've loved it for more information on my online public speaking masterclass visit robinkermo.com