Tag Archives: Clare Swatman

SUNDAY SCENE: CLARE SWATMAN ON HER FAVOURITE SCENE FROM BEFORE WE GROW OLD

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It’s so hard to pick a favourite scene from any book, so for this, I’m plumping for the very first scene in my latest book, Before We Grow Old – partly because I like it and partly so I don’t give anything else away! In this opening scene, Fran and Will bump into each other by chance in a busy London cafe – and the last time they’d seen each other had been 25 years before, when they’d been teenagers in love. Here’s the moment they meet:

The next few seconds were a scramble of wiping the table and floor, and apologising and stammering. Which is why it took me so long to actually look at the man who’d accidentally bumped into me in this busy café. I noticed his mop of expensively cut blonde hair first, peppered with streaks of grey and tousled into subtle spikes. Then I noticed his smile: the friendly mouth and glistening white teeth, followed by his sparkling blue eyes, which lit up as he looked at me.
‘Oh…’ I stammered, and almost fell into my seat, my mouth open like a goldfish.
‘Fran?’
‘Will.’ I stared at him for a moment too long.  ‘I – do you want to sit down? I think it’s dry now.’ I looked at him again and indicated the seat opposite me as my stomach rolled over. ‘If you have time, of course.’

I enjoyed imagining what it might feel like to suddenly be confronted by someone who you’d not only loved so deeply, so obsessively, but who had hurt you so badly when they’d upped and left that it had affected you for the rest of your life. It’s not necessarily something that you would think about every day, but the way something like that makes you feel definitely has an impact on the way you see things, and the way you react to people. There’s always a before and an after to any kind of heart-breaking moment, and I really wanted to get it right.

I enjoyed imagining how awkward Will and Fran might both have felt after Will bumped into her, and left hot chocolate dripping all over the floor; the realisation that they knew each other, that they’d loved each other once. I wanted to capture how Fran might have felt such a conflicting range of emotions, from excitement to shock to anger to embarrassment, all within the space of just a few seconds. And although I wanted them both to feel awkward at first, I also wanted to let them have a conversation, to talk to each other – and they do just that, even if they end up skirting round what they really want to say. Here’s where I think it sums it up best:

I blew across the top of my hot chocolate, watching as the cool air skimmed across the foamy surface. Okay, so he’d decided not to talk about the past. That was fine with me. More than fine, in fact. That was good. It was too early to be raking over old ground. Besides, what would be the point?

And yet my hands still gripped my mug so tightly that my knuckles turned white, as the words I wanted to ask him hung in the air between us, unsaid.

I hope this makes it clear that there are lots of things that are unsaid between them – and that this is the launchpad for the rest of the story!

 

www.clareswatmanauthor.com

 

 

BUSINESS OF BOOKS: FIRST, LAST, EVERYTHING – WRITER CLARE SWATMAN

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Clare Swatman spent almost 20 years working in women’s weekly magazines. Her debut novel Before You Go was published last year, and her second, The Mother’s Secret, is published by Pan Macmillan on 22 February. She’s currently writing her third novel.

What was the first writing advice you were ever given?

‘Write about what you know’ is the advice most people give, and I was no exception. But for me it really did ring true, especially the first time round. When I started writing Before You Go it was with the idea that I just wanted to write something. I wanted to be able to say I’d given it a go, and never regret not having tried; I had no expectation that anyone would ever read it, or want to read it, so I was really writing it for myself, with the hope that some day, something might come of it – but it might not. And so, while concentrating on the plot and developing the characters, I found it really helpful to write about places I was familiar with; Newcastle, where I went to university, Crouch End, where I used to live, Doncaster, where my best friend lives. It meant there was one less thing to worry about getting right, and I could concentrate on the story in hand. I also used my experience of writing true life stories to develop the characters and the situations they find themselves in. Years of interviewing people about the things that have happened to them has given me a good insight into how people respond to happiness, heartache and difficulties – and it’s not always how you’d expect!

What was the most recent writing advice you were given?

There’s no magic bestseller formula (if there were we’d all be making millions of pounds!) – all you can do is write the best book you can. That’s it. And if you try and write to be a bestseller you’re more than likely going to set yourself up for disappointment. It’s a tough one to swallow, because of course as a writer you dream of selling lots of books and of everyone loving what you’ve spent years writing, but it’s easier to expect smaller things, and be pleased by them, otherwise you’d live in a perpetual state of disappointment and anxiety! So now I try to remember how pleased I am to be published and keep trying to write the best stories I can.

What Is the piece of advice you’d most like to pass on?

Don’t compare yourself to others. This has been a big hurdle to overcome, and I have to admit I’m still working on it! I love my social media, and think it has great value in my life. But there are times when I think it can work against you, and the publication of a new book can often be one of those times. I’ve found it always feels, rightly or wrongly, as though every other book being released, read or even written is mentioned all the time on Twitter, Facebook, Instagram – except mine! It also feels as though everyone else is selling hundreds of thousands of copies and getting huge success within days of publication. Of course this probably isn’t true, but as with everything, social media takes the shiny parts of people’s lives and magnifies them. So comparing your own life and career to the life and career of someone else portrayed online is not only pointless but can be damaging. So I’ve had to learn to stop – and I would definitely give this piece of advice to anyone starting out in writing or any other career. Just do you own thing, enjoy it, and stop worrying about everyone else!