But...How'd You Actually Get That Made? Pt. 1
A snappy new series on creatives creating, featuring Lisa Owens
I was prepared to leave 2022 with a twin sense of malaise and staggering exhaustion from nonstop illness in my house from mid-October to my own stomach flu kindly offing itself on Christmas Eve, but in the last week I’ve made a point of looking back at what has in actuality been a quietly tremendous year:
We sold our house, I pretty much single-handedly moved us into a temporary house, then back to our old house, then against truly all odds, we won the immensely fucked-up real estate lottery and I, alone, unpacked our life into this beautiful 99-year old home, all the while Tyler was tethered to a hot new TV series (the Hollywood post-production machine cares for naught if you are in the middle of a move, or if your kids are home sick for the 47th time that autumn, etc.). I somehow managed all this while also writing, auditioning, and filming full-time!
I booked 12 commercials in the last year - a pretty wild record for me. I was pinned for two roles on TV shows (and then released). I spent a lot of time in my new voiceover booth. (My voice is currently talking to you from the halogen-lit aisles of any RiteAid in the country.)
I launched my petrified body out of a plane 14,000 feet into the troposphere, tethered to a bro with an adrenaline addiction. Half a million people watched me do it.
casual portrait of me
another super casual portrait
one last very casual, very beautiful portrait
I got a surgery that allowed me, for the first time since kindergarten, to wake up and see the world in front of me. Not fuddling with the accoutrements of eyesight has freed up such a significant amount of my day and mental space. Months later, I sometimes still adjust phantom glasses up the bridge of my nose. A lifetime of muscle memory persists.
I wrote half a script, threw it all away, and I began again. I reminded myself that Madeleine Miller wrote Circe TWICE and completely threw away the first two versions before creating the one that I’d end up shoving in the hands of literally anyone I encountered for a solid year after reading.
I survived our last (??????) child’s Age Three. No. Smol. Feat.
We revived Islands Without Cars, after a 3-year Covid hiatus, and filmed an episode I’m so excited to share with the world, about such a deeply stunning and special island. I snorkeled with whale sharks!!!!!!!!!!!!
I shared so much of it with you. I’m grateful to you for being here, for reading, for sharing my writing, for subscribing. On that note, I’m so excited to introduce a new monthly (eventually, more) feature of this substack, called How’d You Actually Get That Made? We all know how to appreciate things once they’re made, but there’s such an opaque curtain dividing us from the procedures, mechanics, ideas, and magic alchemy of Yes’s from Those In Charge before we the audience get to it. I wanted to demystify the process of how books, films, television series, podcasts, and more actually go from idea to becoming part of the fabric of who we are as consumers of art and culture.
Part One: How’d You Actually Get That Made with Lisa Owens, author of Not Working (which I inhaled in 3 days, get your copy here!!!, unfortch Amazon is the only way for Americans to get a copy) and screenwriter of Days of the Bagnold Summer, an extremely charming indie film starring Earl Cave (Nick Cave’s son), Monica Dolan, and Rob Brydon. Trailer below:
I inhaled Not Working in about 3 days, which is probably a record for me, a very slow reader. It’s a novel about the seemingly impossible task of finding one’s raison d’être - an endlessly fascinating topic to me, so much so that I wrote and made a short film, Immobile Home, about it 8 years ago. I laughed aloud on nearly every page, the protagonist was so clearly and neatly drawn that I felt I was already lifelong friends with her by page one. I didn’t want it to end, I wanted to just keep hanging out with her, maddening foibles and all. I let out a heavy sigh when I finished it, fondled the cover a little while looking at it wistfully, wishing I could just begin it all over again.
KC: How did the idea for Not Working come to you?
LO: The short answer is: sheer panic and desperation. Back in the mists of time (2012), I did a creative writing MA at the University of East Anglia [DULL ED. NOTE: I was waitlisted for this exact same program in 2007!!!!!]. The final assessment was 15,000 words of fiction – it could be part of a novel, or stories, or a single longer piece. I had this dream of writing an immaculate, gleaming Claire-Keegan-esque novella. But – I think because I had this very set, idealised sense of the kind of thing I wanted to write, as opposed to the actual thing – my attempts always felt limp and flat.
On the eve of a deadline, I was scrolling through my notes app in despair – I’d been keeping observations, ideas, scraps of dialogue there for years. I copied them into a word document, hoping that one of the notes might spark something, but as I looked at them I realised that together they added up to someone. I could see this character, in some ways lost and hopeless, but also sharp and critical and slightly at odds with the world, so I started to play around with the fragments. What came through was a sort of tragicomic set up: someone who had a grand ambition (to find her purpose), but absolutely no idea how to go about it. The fragmentary form seemed to fit with her predicament: struggling to focus but also over-attending to things that most people, with jobs and responsibilities, wouldn’t have time to worry about.
KC: When the idea came to you, did you listen to it? Did you sit down and write it immediately? How long was the process of writing this book?
LO: Before I left my publishing job to do an MA I’d been quite preoccupied by the idea of purpose and how anyone is supposed to know what they’re ‘meant’ to do. It all felt very high stakes in one way, and yet so many people I knew (including me) seemed to stumble into jobs after university through some combination of convenience, luck and necessity. It hadn’t occurred to me that this was something worth writing about: it didn’t seem literary enough, I suppose, because felt like a very contemporary, mundane concern. But once I’d started, it seemed to come quite easily, and I sent what I’d written to a couple of writer friends who told me to keep going, and because I had this deadline, I did keep going until I had 15,000 words. At that point, I sent it to my friend Jane who is a literary agent asking whether in her professional opinion she thought it was worth pursing to novel-length, or if I should quietly forget about it. She not only told me to keep going, but also that she would like to work with me, which gave me the confidence and support to get to a full draft.
KC: What did your process of writing this book LOOK LIKE - are you an "authoritarian" writer (set number of hours or pages a day, every day) or a "me" type of writer (write from bed only after having purchased something online and then read through every email and open tab and then it's almost sundown and there's no longer much time to write)?
LO: I am VERY much a “you” writer (possibly you could glean this from some of the procrastination scenes in the book). But I try (and fail) not to feel bad about it! I made an upsettingly underappreciated joke on Twitter a few months ago: ‘all novels are workplace novels’ – I think the grind / difficulty / strategies / doubts / flashes of inspiration that make up the writing process are baked into the work itself. So much writing is about writing even when it isn’t – the writing is both the workplace and the product. So there was a funny parallel while writing this book between my life and the narrator Claire’s – like her, I knew what I wanted to achieve (writing a novel), and like her I didn’t really know how I was going to get there. If leaning quite heavily into that uncertainty and lack of discipline in the name of artistic integrity was what it took, so be it.
Practically speaking, I wrote the book in 18 months. I had quit my publishing job to do the MA, and once I had the novel underway, decided, with my partner’s emotional (& crucially financial) support, to finish a draft before looking for another job. I wrote a lot of the book in the British Library, a very august institution full of serious academics, and I often felt ridiculous sitting next to e.g., Talmudic scholars deep in ancient texts while I wrote, or more often, didn’t write my weird little book. I can’t work to targets and often found I would end a week with fewer words than I started with. But since I edit relentlessly as I go, once I had finished the first draft, it was really like the 80,000th draft, because I had been over and over it so many times in order to be able to proceed.
KC: Was trying to figure out what the hell to do with your life a personal journey for you or just your character? Did you always know you wanted to be a writer?
LO: I wanted to be a writer since I was very small, but as a teenager and young adult the actual reality of it happening grew quite remote. Although my parents were always very encouraging, I didn’t know many (any?) people who’d pursued creative careers and I didn’t really know what that path looked like. When I graduated from university I had an English degree that I somehow needed to make a living from, so I got into publishing. Looking back, it was always a displacement activity for writing. I suppose that’s one (of many!) areas where the character and I diverge: she really has no idea and a crushing sense of despair about it; whereas I always knew what I ultimately wanted to do.
Lisa Owens
KC: The voice in this book strikes me as deeply personal, it really reads like a friend, or it felt like reading myself? I understood her so quickly, laughed at her so easily. I know the format and style has had your novel oft-compared to Bridget Jones's Diary (a comedic masterpiece imo, whose cinematic sequels and general motif of body shaming have tarnished its reputation a bit over a time). How did you feel about that literary comparison? Were you a Bridget Jones fan?
LO: Firstly, thank you for those very kind words! Re: Bridget Jones, I read & loved the original book as a teenager. Being compared to a phenomenon like that felt: ridiculous, unearned, unexpected and very flattering. It situated my book in a far more mainstream place than I had envisaged – I believed I was writing a strange little entity that would probably never see the light of day. I didn’t have Bridget Jones consciously in mind when I was writing – my most obvious formal influence was Mary Robison’s Why Did I Ever, which is (like BJ) a comedic masterpiece, though a very bleak and unsettling one. Halfway through writing I also read and loved Jenny Offill’s Dept. Of Speculation which similarly uses a fragmentary structure, and I felt profoundly dispirited by how good it was (but then grimly inspired and determined to see out my own effort to the bitter end).
KC: You wrote the book. In its entirety? And then you submitted it to agents? Or? How did this, your DEBUT NOVEL, get published, please. Spare no detail.
LO: Back in the mists of time (late 2014), having missed countless deadlines, I finally delivered a finished draft to Jane. In early 2015, she submitted it to publishers, and ultimately it went to auction, which meant I got to meet a number of editors and publishing teams to talk, preposterously, about my book. That couple of weeks remains one of the most surreal and incredible in my life: it felt like emerging from dark cave after a years of hibernation and being welcomed by a beaming crowd of well-wishers. I signed with Picador, and my editor was the wonderful Francesca Main (who now has her own imprint Phoenix Books at Orion). They scheduled publication for the following spring (April 2016), so the next few months were spent doing edits etc.
KC: Feel free to wince at this question: are you working on another book? (I ask only selfishly: I want more.)
LO: Haha, how to answer this… I am working towards working on another book. Lately, I’ve been writing short fiction – the Irish lit mag The Stinging Fly published a couple of my stories, [ED. NOTE: This one is a must-read!] which I was really happy about. I am painfully aware of how long it has been since my book came out – I was in a feature about debut authors for a newspaper in 2016, and more or less all my peers from that feature have published at least one if not three or four more books since then. But I am also resigned to the fact that things take as long as they take (and I am a slow donkey (with young kids)). But it is very much my hope/intention to write another book.
KC: Has your publisher indicated interest in another novel from you? How does that work - is it easier to publish for a second time?
LO: When this book was initially submitted, there was the option to sell it on a 2-book basis, so I would have been under contract for Not Working and then whatever my next novel would be. But I was (rightly it turns out, cf. slow donkey, small children) absolutely terrified of being under contract for something non-existent, so I said I would only sell the finished book on its own. Contractually, I think the publisher gets first look at whatever the next book is, but probably it will be so long ‘til I have another one that publishing industry will have imploded. I don’t know if it’s easier to publish a second book – in some ways not, because you’ve already shot your shot (is that a phrase?) – the cachet/potential of the debut author is significant. On the other hand, a second time author has hopefully at least some visibility in the industry which obviously helps.
KC: Did you go on a book tour? What was that experience like? Were you eventually tired of giving interviews about your book or did you love it?
LO: Picador organised a tour of the North East of England with another debut author, Hannah Kohler who wrote a great book called The Outside Lands. It was so clever of them to pair two rookies together; it made it very relaxed and enjoyable, and they also accommodated my partner and (then 4 month old) daughter in the plans. I felt so supported and well-looked after. I also did a mini tour in Dublin – I have a lot of family there who came out in force.
Re: giving interviews – I never got tired of it. Initially I was worried about the promotion aspect, because I’m not a good public speaker, prone to nerves, and when I worked in publishing I felt woefully under-skilled at pitching, which is a pretty integral part of an editor’s job. But because this was my book, I realised I couldn’t really get anything wrong which made it feel much more natural and enjoyable.
KC: You also wrote a marvelously touching, beautifully-rendered feature film Days of the Bagnold Summer when you had a toddler, right? Please tell me everything about writing this movie and how it came to be made.
LO: Ah! Thank you for these kind words too. So: my husband Simon is an actor/producer/director and back in the mists of time (2015), he had just made a short film and was looking for ideas for his first directorial feature. We had both read and loved Days of the Bagnold Summer, the beautiful graphic novel written by Joff Winterhart (I strongly encourage your subscribers to seek it out). Because I had just sold my book, I was feeling unusually confident and assertive, and suggested to Simon that he should make an adaptation of that book, and that I should adapt it, and he agreed. The script development was funded by a non-profit called Creative England. My daughter was very small at the time, only a few months old, and it was a challenge, but Simon and my family were able to help with childcare (and she had some nursery hours too) which allowed me time to write. I loved working on the script: the book is very slim and spare, and deliberately very low-key (it’s about two introverts forced to spend time together). So the challenge was how to make it feel cinematic while also retaining the spirit and essence of the book.
KC: Were you involved in finding financing for the film? How did you find the director? How involved were you once your script was finished?
LO: I found the director by playing the very long game of dating and then marrying him. High risk, high reward. I wasn’t involved in finance for the film – that was helmed by our producer Matt Wilkinson of Stigma Films. As you will know, it’s an extremely precarious business, liable to collapse at any point, but Matt pulled it off. Once the script was finished I was still involved – for example to do re-writes if something needed to be set somewhere else for logistical / budget reasons, and we did some re-shoots which I had to turn around quite quickly. In addition to being able to pitch myself for the project over the dinner table, this is another way in which living with the director is helpful if you are a screenwriter: quick and direct comms.
KC: Were you on set when they were filming?
LO: By the time they started shooting, I’d had my son, who was about 6 months old. We all went to set on the first day of the shoot, which was in a library. We had thought our toddler might want to be an extra but she ended up in Simon’s arms while he directed the scene, and I ended up outside with my son in the sling because he was a baby who didn’t respect the rules. So… that was also the last time I was on set, but it was special for us all to be able to be there together if only for that one day.
KC: How has motherhood affected your writing life?
LO: I find both things (writing and motherhood) completely immersive and consuming, and I am sadly not a gifted multitasker. Sometimes I yearn for a more traditional job with contracted hours, an office etc because the parameters and expectations would be so much clearer (not least to me).
Instead I often feel very conflicted about ploughing time and energy into something speculative – spending time holed up away from my family on a project that might not come off. As much as I know that’s a necessary part of this job, and indeed that any job is a conflict when you have kids, it does mean constantly reckoning with guilt which is something I have a lot of experience of, but not much success in overcoming (former Catholic).
But I love my work and get great satisfaction from it, and hopefully am modelling to my children how important that is – and I recognise I’m extraordinarily privileged to be able to do it. Both my children are at school now too, which helps, not just from a time point of view, but also with the guilt (i.e., they are legally required to be there).
KC: What do you think is the most important factor in getting something from idea to out in the world for all of us to enjoy?
LO: This might be unhelpfully vague, but I’ve learned that when something is working, even very early on, I have a feeling – a kind of excitement, or energy I guess – that it’s impossible to force. Maybe this is what people mean by ‘flow’. Even when I don’t know what it’s going to be or where it’s going (i.e, every single time), recognising that it is something is the crucial bit. Unfortunately you then have to get on with the graft of actually doing the thing, and you’ll doubt it many times along the way, but as long as that initial conviction is there, I think it is present in the writing / whatever the project is, and that will carry you through, and importantly, be obvious to whoever you are trying to persuade to help you put it out in the world.
Follow Lisa Owens on Instagram here or on Twitter here.
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