JENNY COLGAN on Rejection: Old Writing, Abandoned Projects & Growth

Hello, I’m Laura Shavin, and this is The Offcuts Drawer. Welcome to The Offcuts Drawer, the show that looks inside a writer’s bottom drawer to find the bits of work they never finished, had rejected, or couldn’t quite find a home for. We bring them to life, hear the stories behind them, and learn how these random pieces of creativity paved the way to subsequent success. My guest this week is writer Jenny Colgan, author of over 40 romantic comedy, children’s, and science fiction books, since her first novel, Amanda’s Wedding, was published in 2000. In 2013, she won the Romantic Novel of the Year Award for Welcome to Rosie Hopkins’ Sweet Shop of Dreams, and then the Romantic Novelist Association Award for Comedy Novel of the Year in 2018 for The Summer Seaside Kitchen. Also writing as Jane Beaton, she created the Little School by the Sea series, described by her many fans as Mallory Towers for grownups, and for the Dr Who franchise, she’s written at least nine works under the name of JT. Colgan or Jenny T. Colgan. With her latest novels, The Bookshop on the Shore and 500 Miles from You both recently published, and Christmas at the Island Hotel coming later in the year, work ethic is clearly not an issue. Jenny Colgan, welcome to the Offcuts Drawer. 40 plus books in 20 years, that works out as two books a year. Have you got a, you must have a pretty good system worked out.

Well, I mean, some are novellas and some are for children. So they’re not all kind of full length titles. But yeah, I mean, I write two and a half thousand words a day, which if for some people seems like a lot, but if you’re a journalist or a sci-fi writer, doesn’t seem very much, about four days a week, because when my children were young, we lived in France. And in France, they don’t have school on Wednesdays. So you always take Wednesdays off. So that’s about 10,000 words a week. So, you know, you can have a first draft in about 10 weeks or so. And then a couple of months to edit and review it. So I don’t think it’s quite as, you know, it sounds like, I hate to go, you churn them out, don’t you? As if I literally just kind of, you know, I’m like that character in Little Britain that just types with a big kind of cat in her lap. How many now? Which is not the case at all. But, you know, I’m quite focused. When I wasn’t, before I had children, I would just kind of fanny about and do one book a year. And then, since I had children, of course, I was paying for every hour I wasn’t at home when someone else had to look after them.

Right.

That very much focuses the mind on how much it’s possible to get done.

Well, let’s kick off with your first off-cut. Can you tell us what it’s called, what genre it was written for and when you wrote it?

This is a poem published in the British Medical Journal called Ode to NHS Managers. And I wrote it in 1995.

I am the voice of government. As such I speak for all. This country’s people put me here. I merely heed their call. A servant of the people, I am doing all for the best as I witness the slow puncture of the NHS. As a hospital, your role is not much more than drug dispenser. You could take some business tips from being as smart as Marks and Spencer. That is, listen to your market. Try to broaden your appeal. Did you know you only interest the old and down at heel? Trendy logos are quite helpful and that tender business sells. Paying £1.59 per hour in conditions worse than hell. That was a stroke of genius and I think it’s working well. Though what’s that oozing down the wall and what’s that awful smell? And doctors were always whingers, as you very well know. All this paperwork is good for them. It keeps them on their toes. Their divorce rates and depression are nothing deeply sinister. It’s quite a bit below the norm for your average cabinet minister. As for care in the community, you’re starting now to drone. It’s the ideal smart solution for a schizoid on their own. Instead of being protected, we will send them out alone and circumnavigate the cardboard box that most of them call home. And when the country’s had enough, and when the crying’s still, and when we’ve all but given up on trying for our ill, and when the figures are cut and dried, the episodes objectified, and when the hospitals subside and everyone has neatly died, if there is left a call for who neglected national health, for who betrayed us all, then who will kindly take the blame? Who led us to this fall? Why, those who push the paper ever flowing from within. Those who must make the scalpel cuts in budget, not in skin. Those nasty suits who endlessly act cruelly, mad and viciously. The ones who most vociferously won’t play this game to win. Blame managers, don’t look at me in your last mewling lament. Well you might very well think that, but I couldn’t possibly comment.

This was written in 1995 when you were not yet a writer. So who were you when you wrote this?

I was an administrator in the NHS, it will not surprise you to know. And that was the first piece of writing I ever got paid for. They accepted it. They have a kind of spoof issue, the BMG, that they run every Christmas time where they run lots of bits and pieces. And I was just so excited. And it was 50 pounds in the early 90s. And that was a fortune. I was working in a hospital in Bedford and living in a nursing home. And that 50 pounds, just I remember putting the check in, and you’re not meant to put the check in the first time you get paid, are you? You’re meant to pin it to the wall. But I put it in and I spent it mentally about four times. And I don’t think I’ve ever been happier to make any money in my life.

Well, what inspired you to write it?

I mean, like most writers, I was always writing something. You know, it was rubbish, but I was doodling away and doing stuff.

So at that point, what, you had just finished university, is that right?

I left university in 92 and picked up my first job. That would have been in about 94. I joined the NHS graduate management training scheme, and then they had a big internal push on to, they’d always had management that was very similar to each other and very dry and had always been the same. And so they had this big push to go and look for slightly different people, different thinkers. So one of the people in my intake was Johnny Popper, Robert Popper’s brother, who now heads a think tank and who was the inspiration behind Friday Night Dinner. Right. You know, there’s somebody that now runs a massive income. It was full of interesting people who did, from all sorts of diverse backgrounds, all of whom were completely useless in the environment they put us in. They kind of said, go and find us some mavericks. And they did. And we all left within about six months. It was a catastrophe in many, many ways.

Were you doing your stand up at that point?

I was. Yeah, I just started. I left the hospital and I went to work for a health think tank in London, really, just to get me to London. And that’s when I started doing a kind of open, I did a Jill Edwards comedy course and I started doing open spots. I did astoundingly few, considering how much mileage I’ve subsequently had. I just wasn’t very good. And I didn’t do it enough. And I started at the same time as Chappie, of course, Chappie Keepersandy and Jimmy Carr, Jimmy, I remember, and their work ethic, Jimmy’s work ethic, do you remember? There was not a gig he would not turn up to and just go on stage and he just, every time you saw him, he was six months better than he’d been the week before. He was so brilliant. And I just didn’t have it. Although I met, one, I met some brilliant people and learned a lot. And then two, when I wrote a novel, I didn’t write to the publishers, hi, I’m an NHS administrative assistant, would you like to read my novel? I said, hi, I’m an up and coming stand up on the comedy circuit. Would you like to read my novel? And of course, that made a huge difference, really. So from that perspective, except, let me tell you, more than one hideous kind of literary event or conference or library show that I’ve been introduced as, you know, ex stand up Jenny Colgan. And I’ve done, I did like 16 gigs and you can see come out and you see these really expectant faces, you know, there is nothing less funny than someone that you’ve been told is going to be hilarious. So I’ve had some kind of real professional stand up and I’m just standing there going yeah, not really. So but it did help.

So you went from NHS to stand up to novelist.

That was the sort of, Well, I was working in NHS and the stand up was the kind of night, night job really. And of course, you know, I’d send poems all over the place, obviously.

So was it poetry that you were mainly writing at that point then?

I think I wrote a children’s story that I sent to Bloomsbury and they went, what? They very kindly wrote back, which I think these days most people don’t. But you know, you know what it’s like in your 20s, you just have a hunger for it. You know, you’re just desperate for it. And because I grew up or I was a student in Edinburgh, which meant I’d always worked the Edinburgh Festival. So I’d worked the Go to Balloon, I worked the Pleasance, I worked the Traverse for years. So I would see these other young people when they were actors, which I wasn’t, but they were creators, they were creative people talking about creative things. And, you know, John Hannah would come in, have a drink with that girl from this life. And, you know, it would just be full of amazing stuff going on. And I just wanted to be in it. I just didn’t know how or what my met you was going to be. But with that extraordinary kind of I’m 24, you know, get out of my way.

Time for another off cut. Jenny, what’s this one?

OK, number two, this is a clip from The Scientist written in 2014, which is a passionate, it says in my note, was a passionate romance, is a passionate historical romance, because I believe in this one. Set at the birthplace of atomic warfare.

He was there. Oh, how my heart leapt, sitting at a small desk in the corner of the room in front of the blackboard. There were piles of exercise books and scraps of paper around him, and he was writing intently in one, whilst his other hand drummed repeatedly on the table. His foot tapped the floor, too. It was like he could never be still. He was a whirl of constant motion. I think that’s why he needed so much sex. It was the only thing I ever saw still him, sent to him, drag him away from that odd land he spent the rest of his life in, where everything vibrated on a quantum level, where nothing was still nor ever could be, and everything hurtled about constantly, simply in order to exist. Dick lived his entire life like that. He didn’t notice I was there until I made a small noise and moved across the threshold. Also, I wanted to shut the door behind me in case anyone passed by and saw us. I was feeling brazen, but I hadn’t completely lost my mind. His face broke into a broad smile to see me, and he put his pencil down and opened his arms. Sis, he said, and his pleasure was so obvious and unforced, I couldn’t find it in myself to ask, well, what did I even want to ask? Where had he been? I knew where he’d been. He’d been at work. Why hadn’t he stormed in my house and taken me in front of my husband? Why he hadn’t ridden up on a white horse and carried me away from all this? My feverish brain was completely fogged with lust, and I couldn’t even think straight. I put all of that nonsense out of my mind. I was here now, and he was grinning at me like someone had just given him a present. Come over here. I was just thinking about you. This was a complete lie. I had seen him. Whatever he was thinking about, you know, you and I wouldn’t understand it in a million years. In fact, whatever he was thinking about, it’s entirely possible he was the first person ever to think it. Anyway, I didn’t care about that just then. I just was so overwhelmed to see him again, and I could feel my heart pounding in my chest. Come over here and sit down on my lap, he said. Distract me from throwing confetti. Why are you throwing confetti? As I made my way over, I noticed that the ground was indeed covered in confetti. Dick shrugged. Just a math problem. Good one, too. Why was he throwing confetti? I asked the old lady on the bed. But I knew the answer before she even said it. Fallout, said Sissy. He was calculating the trajectory of nuclear fallout.

Well, you said this was a historical romance. So did you finish writing it? What’s happened to it?

I did. I did finish it. And we just, as these things happen sometimes, we just couldn’t find a home for it. It’s quite dirty. And sometimes you think, you know, just because you’re profoundly interested in a period, you think it’s going to appeal to lots of people and it doesn’t necessarily. And there also came a point where it was just like, well, you know, there’s lots of people that read my books because they’re comforting or because they’re warm. You know, but they’re not dirty. And so do we really want to mess with people in that way who might be expecting one thing and get something else? So for all sorts of reasons, we didn’t push it, but I’m very fond of it.

So basically you’re saying this is a bit more risque than the other stuff.

Oh, it is, yeah.

You didn’t want to maybe rename yourself. You’ve been Jenny T. Colgan and JT. Colgan for science fiction. Could you not create another… Well, you could, but I mean, that’s very difficult to do.

You know, there’s a million books published every 10 seconds. And when publishers go to quite a lot of trouble to kind of build up a brand, it’s very difficult to start from scratch and say, you should read this person you’ve never heard of and that you can’t Google and it doesn’t really exist. We can’t tell you why. You know, it’s a big undertaking and I already have a very big job. So I would like one day to see it come out in some form or another. And it’s funny because both my agents in the UK and the US, both of them really loved it. But it’s just one of, it’s niche for it. Very niche. If you’re really massively into physics, yeah, exactly, kind of math porn, you know, it’s quite a small crossover diagram. But that’s alright. I’m proud of it and I’m proud I wrote it.

So it’s a full novel sitting in your drawer.

A full novel sitting in my drawer. Yeah, so it’s a kind of, you know, it’s a woman that was at the Manhattan Project in the war. She’s very old and so she’s interviewed by a contemporary woman who’s having all sorts of problems with kind of Tinder dating and kind of how the transactional nature of contemporary sexual politics compared to the extraordinary kind of power, I think, of the forbidden. I think John Fowles and the French Lieutenant’s woman, he always says, was sex sexier then? He obviously thinks that it was, you know, and that I find that interesting too.

Now, I read in an interview where you said you reckoned your big break came when you wrote Meet Me at the Cupcake Café and you credit not the romance element but the baking element for your success. Is that right?

It was certainly one of these serendipitous things that happened, which is I wrote that book just the year the first bake-off started. And the first bake-off wasn’t a massive thing. But then, of course, books are published a year after they’ve written. So it came out the following year and then the second season hit and everything kind of went a bit kind of cake-orientated bananas. It was lovely. It just gave people, a lot of people who may not have read me or who may have thought, oh, that’s, you know, she writes for young people or it’s not really for me. It opened up a much broader, wider market. So I have a massive debt and fondness for bake-off, purely by coincidence.

And are you a big baker yourself? I know there’s lots of recipes in your books. Are they genuine?

Yeah, well, I mean, at the time I was living in France. And so I had to learn to cook because you have to cook in France. You can’t buy ready meals or anything. Plus I had three kids under four, so, you know, I wasn’t going anywhere. But in France, you don’t really bake. It seemed like a really curious thing to do, because why would you? You’re not going to be better than the patisserie. And the patisserie is only like 90 metres away. So, you know, people would come around and I’d offer them a piece of cake. And, of course, French women being French women, they just go, no, merci. They don’t do what I’m supposed to do. They just go, oh, I shouldn’t. Oh, it’s so naughty. Oh, a tiny bit. You know, that. Nonsense. French women just go, well, no, I’m not going to eat cake. It’s the middle of the afternoon. What’s the matter, you crazy? So, you know, I was at a kind of slightly odd anyway in France, and then I started baking. But I think it’s comforting, and it is not difficult. You know, a nine year old can do it if you follow instructions, and I like that about it. My mother was a great cook and a baker, so I have happy memories of, you know, licking her old, you know, the spoons to her cakes. And so it’s that feeling that I was going for. You’re not going to become a master baker through reading my books. But hopefully you’ll share, you know, a little bit of the satisfaction that you get from doing it.

Right. Let’s have your next off-cut, Jenny. Tell us about this one.

This is from The Bunnies of Bromwood, a book, an entire book that I wrote when I was 10. So this would be 19, well, about 1980, 1981.

This is great, said Bath Bunny. Now I want everyone to do a length of the pool backstroke. But this isn’t a swimming lesson, complained Paris Bunny. Oh no, said Bath Bunny. Hurry up about it. Suddenly there was a scream.

Help! Help! Save me!

It was Currant Bunny, who in seeing some nice lily pads had gone over to get one, but the water was far out of her depth, and as she could not swim very well, she could only cry for help. At once Bath Bunny began to swim quickly towards her. Grabbing her, he began to get back to shore. Oh, you heavy lump! He spluttered to Currant Bunny, who had fainted. After what seemed like a year to Bath Bunny, he finally reached shallow water. He dragged poor Curranty out and began giving her the kiss of life. Oh, the poor little bunny, murmured Paris Bunny. No, I don’t want any soppy nonsense, said Cream Bunny rather sharply. She’ll be all right, so that’s an end of it. Look, she’s got a small piece of paper in her hand, said Bath Bunny. Oh, it’s probably a bit of rubbish some human has chucked in, snapped Creamy Bunny. Gosh! suddenly exclaimed Bath Bunny. Look, everyone, come and see this. Oh, what is it? asked Paris Bunny. The paper in her hand, it is a treasure map. What? said everybody. A treasure map! shouted Bath Bunny.

So there you go. What did you think of that?

Actually, my father came across it a couple of months back. It’s a whole book. There’s like about 120 pages of it, all written out in varying handwriting that I worked on for, you know, quite a lot of time. And he said, oh, I’m going to send it over. It’ll be hilarious. I was like, I know. There was a bit that I did not send you where one of the rabbits has a baby as written by a nine year old who had no idea how anybody had babies.

Oh, I’d love to have seen that.

I know. I just couldn’t. It just made me cringe so much. I tell you why, because my parents used to get drunk at dinner parties and weed it out to their friends. It was very naughty of them. But I think, you know, of course, in retrospect, they were very proud that this ridiculous child had written an entire book.

And so they should be. They were spectacular. All the different characters in there. I have to say, when I was typing that out, copying it from your handwriting, I was laughing so much at the various phrases. I thought it was lovely. It really did make me laugh. I suppose you are actually a children’s author now, so you do know your stuff. But to someone who’s not a children’s author, I thought, oh, could there be something else?

It would be funny if the only thing that was actually worth revisiting was the thing I’d written when I was nine. But yes, no, I had no idea my dad still had it because he’s moved a few times. And it was, yeah, really odd to feel, even just to feel the weight of it. Again, I was getting, my daughter’s ten and I’m going to maybe hand over to her.

So did you have a lot of projects like that? Is this a one-off work or do you have several oeuvres by the young Jenny?

There was just a lot of stuff. I remember my primary school, which was quite small, they used to hang, they don’t do this kind of thing anymore, but the pieces of work they considered to be good, they would hang outside in the corridors. And I was everywhere. There was one I’d written about a mining disaster. So everybody else was kind of writing about a lovely horse and I was writing about people dying in a mining disaster. So I do, like people that knew me then, the two things I’ll say is, oh, you know, you were always like in the papers and for writing something stupid, or we never knew what the top of your head looked like because it was always underneath a gigantic book.

So your family, do you come from a family of readers and writers?

I certainly come from a family. Well, both my parents were teachers and both my parents came from very poor backgrounds. My mother in particular, my grandfather, my mother’s father did not learn to read until he was, my mother taught him, I think, when she was an adult. So she was your archetypal working class, pushy, pushy mum, you know? Right. We can’t really afford it, but I found a guy that will teach you how to play the piano for, in return for an apple pie, you know, and that’s the guy. We’re going to the library and she took me to the library every single week. So I was first in my family to go to university, that kind of thing. So that kind of full support, but very pushy and quite snobby. And of course, that generation of working class mothers of whom, you know, a lot of us are massive beneficiaries. But then, of course, we all turned like proper bourgeois. We were really snobby. My mother’s fondness for prawn cocktail, you know, I was such a snob. I was absolutely a pub. Basically, they built us into what they desperately wanted. And then, you know, then they found us absolutely insufferable.

Right, let’s have another offcut now. What’s this one?

This is from around 2012. And it was an idea for a television series for very young children, for CBeebies, featuring Dr Puppet, which is, you can Google it, it’s a thing, Dr Puppet versions of the characters of Dr Who, specifically Matt Smith and little Amelia Pond.

It was early on a Saturday morning in Amelia Pond’s garden. And Amelia was pestering a frosty caterpillar.

Oi, no poking, he needs time.

Be a butterfly, caterpillar. Oh, he’s gone. Are you a butterfly yet?

He’s gone because of all the poking.

Maybe it’s helping butterfly?

This is the duck thing all over again.

Can I see a proper caterpillar?

There’s a lot of tentacles. I mean a lot.

Let’s go. Bye, aunt.

Sound effects of footsteps.

Tentacles, tentacles.

Oh, good, you brought the custard.

We hear the TARDIS wheeze and then the opening credit music, the children’s version of the Dr Who theme.

I’m the doctor.

And I’m Amelia Pond.

And we travel in the TARDIS to have adventures on the planet of… Amelia’s garden!

Exterior Amelia’s garden. Everything on the planet is oversized, lush and green. The doctor and Amelia are smaller than blades of grass. The doctor is standing there on his own in front of the TARDIS.

Amelia?

A huge caterpillar waddles into view, looking perturbed. Amelia is sliding down something which looks slippery and fun, but turns out to be… The caterpillar speaks.

Would you mind terribly getting off my larvae?

Well, that’s quite an intriguing idea. And when you sent it to me, it had some very cute illustrations for this. You mentioned Dr Puppet. Who’s Dr Puppet?

It’s a woman in America. She’s an animator. And on the side, she makes these unbelievably crafted versions of Dr Who. And these perfect puppet versions. You really should Google it. It’s just Dr Puppet, one word. They’re beautiful. And she makes these little stop-motion animations. But of course, it takes her forever because she’s doing it effectively in her own time. And she’s not working with the BBC. She’s just doing it as a project. And so I was like, well, I write for Dr Who. You make these amazing things. And Matt, at the time, was the doctor who’s a wonderful doctor with children. Not all the doctors work terribly well with children. Peter Capaldi is a brilliant doctor, but he’s terrifying to children. And so we got together and we had these animations and we took them along. And it was one of these things where it was instantly. So, you know, for tiny children, instead of going to a different planet, you look at a different animal every week, but you have the same relationship and the same lovely adventures. And also the other thing is before us, children never went in the TARDIS and now they do. It used to be the rule that children weren’t allowed to travel in the TARDIS, but now they are. So it was one of these things that everything about it was charming and Matt was leaving and everything was in flux and it was such a huge, it’s expensive. So even to make five or six minute films in stop motion is so expensive. So, you know, and this is why I’m quite glad I write novels really, because when you write a novel, you write it, we make some changes and then it appears in the shops, you know, if you’re trying to make TV, it relies on who’s available, what you can do, your costumes, your sets, all the rest of it. If you’re trying to make animation, it’s even more difficult. So I realise I’m in a very easy creative genre because it’s just me and a typewriter, but it is quite dispiriting. I mean, I’ve had, you know, dozens of novels published. We’ve sold screenwrites to most of them, and I’ve never had a single thing made, you know, just because it’s very, very difficult to do that. So, you know, it was always a long shot, but I could see it just be in that very classic BBC style. I’ve been something so lovely.

Sorry to interrupt, but if you’re enjoying the show, please do subscribe to The Offcuts Drawer, give us a five-star rating, leave a review, tell your friends about it. All that stuff’s really important for a brand new podcast like this. And visit offcutstraw.com for more details about the writers and actors and to find out about future live shows. Thanks for your support. Now back to the interview. Now, Dr Who is a big part of your writing life. When I looked on Wikipedia, you’ve either written five or nine Dr Who books. Probably both those numbers are incorrect. How many have you written for Dr Who?

Oh, goodness. Two novels about five or six novellas, two full-length audio dramas for David Tennant and Catherine Tate, and one for the very amazing Alex Kingston.

Although I find audio drama very difficult. Why?

Well, it’s very difficult. Why are the plays in Radio 4 terrible? It’s very hard. What’s that, Doctor? Well, it’s a cathedral. You can’t see it, but it’s quite complicated to build a world. Actually, I’ll tell you a very quick funny thing which you can edit out if it’s not interesting. When I was working with Big Finish or the audio drama production company, and every year they’ll do a big Doctor range of David Tennant or whoever it is. This three styles of Doctor Who story, there’s a contemporary Doctor Who story set on Earth on the present day. There’s a historical Doctor Who story set in the past that British people would understand. There’s a completely alien Doctor Who story set on a brand new alien planet, a completely different world. Those are the three types of stories that Doctor Who makes. They do three every year, one of which is contemporary home, one of which is historical, one of which is alien. Every bloody time I would be last to get it, I’d go, contemporary, please, okay, historical. And every bloody time, I got alien bloody planet. And it’s so, so you had to start from nothing. You had to start from, here’s a complete, here’s a new planet. Here’s the laws of nature of this planet. Is it underwater? Do they walk upside down? You know, you have to figure out everything. And everyone else is just running around going, oh, this is hilarious. It’s like a fake ghost. And I was like, okay, well, this is, you know, you have to make up the names for the planets and everybody’s name. And anyway, it’s, yeah, it’s really difficult. I mean, it was amazing, just like you have actors now, you know, anything you would write, David Tennant and Catherine Tate are going to make 150,000 times better. But I still didn’t feel that I was, it wasn’t, I wasn’t proud of it.

You weren’t proud of the audio drama, you mean?

No, I’m really proud of the novels. Some of the Dr Who stories I’ve written. If you are a Dr Who fan, you’ll know what picnic at Asgard means. And I wrote that, and I’m so, so, so pleased and proud of it. So I’m really proud of the novels that I’ve written. But I find the audio dramas just, just a little cringy. And just thinking, oh, this isn’t, it’s not quite what I do.

Are they very prescriptive when you write for a franchise like Dr Who? Did they say you can have this, you can’t have that? There are certain laws you have to follow?

But you, I mean, your job then is to push and push and push at what you can and can’t do. The first one I ever did is called Dark Horizons set in Viking times. And at one point, he, it’s Matt Smith again, and he jumps into the water to rescue a child and he kicks off his shoes and trousers. The doctor never removes his trousers. That’s the law. Yes, no, no trouser removal. It is, but that in its own way makes it a lot of fun. And sometimes you get to push things into what becomes canon for the show. You know that this becomes a part of what Doctor Who is. And that’s very exciting. Sometimes it’s just really annoying. I wrote a thing for Alex Kingston, who’s a River Song. And I wrote her in a sonic trowel. And then Steven Moffat wrote the Christmas edition, which has Peter Capaldi and Alex in it again. And it’s literally got the doctor going, what’s that? She goes, it’s my sonic trowel. And he goes, that’s rubbish. And all these Dr Who people are going, oh, so sorry, Steven thinks your sonic trowel is rubbish.

So close and yet so far. What a shame.

Well, I’m still in there. Steven’s a very good friend of mine. But it’s, do you know what? If you’re a real fan of something like I am of Dr Who, it’s so exciting. It’s such fun. Every time you write the Tardis of Warps, that’s the official stage direction is V-W-O-R-P-S. Every time you write the Tardis of Warps, that’s a pretty cool thing to do.

Let’s move on to your next off-cut now. Tell us about this one.

This is from Up on the Rift Tops, which is a middle school book. Let us say that’s about seven to nine year old readers, which I wrote involving my children in 2011. And it has now become the MacGuffin in the Bookshop series. And I will explain that to you after this.

I need to tell Mummy, said Wallace, looking round. And a policeman. The pigeon drew himself up to his full height, 14 centimetres, and said sternly, and what do you think your mother would say if you told her? But I could bring her up here and show her, said Wallace. And police could come in helicopters and get her. The pigeon shook his head. They’d never find the queen of the nathers. They can’t see that way. The rooftop world is only visible to those who already know. Look closer. The pigeon drew him round the four corners of the roof, pointing out distant figures. On a row of old brick houses, a chimney sweep popped gently from one to another. On a bright, shiny glass building, Wallace could make out suddenly a window cleaner, lightly stepping over complicated structures that seemed carved of ice. A young girl, her high-heeled shoes in her hands and carrying a champagne bottle was dodging chimney pots at lightning speed. And far away, across the river, Wallace could just make out white-suited doctors scrambling over the top of the great grey hospital. Our roads are not for everyone, said Robert. Your mother would not see them. The police have never seen them, although they have tried very hard. Most grown-ups belong to the world of the street. They keep their heads down, staring at the pavement, or prodding at those… those… things. They’re telephones, said Wallace. He knew grown-ups did that all the time. It made him really annoyed. Yes, said Robert. You know what happens when they do that all day? Wallace shook his head. They stop looking up. They lose all capacity for wonder. They lose their sense of the roof of the world. And sometimes they kick pigeons.

So, the word MacGuffin. If my memory of Buffy the Vampire Slayer DVD extras is correct, I think I know what that is. But can you explain it anyway?

It’s the thing around which the plot hinges. And it doesn’t really matter what it is. So in Indiana Jones, it’s the Holy Grail, I guess. And it’s in Citizen Kane, it’s Rosebud, it’s the Sledge. It’s whatever the thing is. The thing is that people want, but it’s not necessarily important in itself. So yeah, it’s the thing that the characters have to go through to obtain, but what it is isn’t as important as what happens to the characters while they’re finding it.

So presumably it’s the book that is featured in the Bookshop series, is that right?

Yes, well, the summer of 2012, the Olympic summer, I was stuck in London, because my husband was at sea, with the children, and I started writing it. And it wasn’t a particularly nice summer. And I liked where we were in London, was right in the centre of town. I liked the idea that you can try and make your way over St Paul’s and right across London without putting a foot on the ground, if that was possible, only using the rooftops. And if you put a foot on the ground, then you’re stuffed. So, you know, and to make it out to Galleon Street, which I think is where they’re going, I really liked the idea. And I just put the kids in it to have them in it. And my agent at the time was just like, it’s a very difficult market, which it is, it’s a very old fashioned idea. So I don’t know what we’re going to do with it. And it’s like, okay, that’s fine. However, then when I wrote the first of the bookshop novels, which in America was called The Bookshop on the Corner, they need a priceless first edition to raise money. That’s what they need. And she stumbles upon it. And I thought, well, I’m not, I’m going to have it as this. And so she stumbles upon this amazing, flawless edition of Up on the Rooftops. And I described the cover and she’s like, oh, that amazing classic from my childhood of the children, whose feet can’t touch the ground. And someone else would come in and go, oh, do you remember the Queen of the Nethers? And they’d kind of bond over it. And that was the MacGuffin, you see. And I love the idea of having this idea of this classic book without actually having to write it or to make it that good. And then that book did extraordinarily well in Germany. And then there’s a second one called The Bookshop on the Shore, which is out now, in which it also features. Anyway, there is someone who’s written a book called Up on the Rooftops, which has no connection to it at all, that people keep ordering. And if you go and look on the Amazon page, it’s just people going, what? This is… People are expecting. And I think, I really hope this is going to come to a point where I will actually just have to write it. But there’s no way it can possibly be as good as I’ve built it up to be in the books that reference it. So anyway, if you’re reading my books and thinking, got up on the rooftop sounds great. I agree with you. However, it’s not written and that thing on Amazon, that’s not it.

So how much of it did you write?

No, a couple of it. I’ve found three chapters. I’ve had it plotted. I kind of, in my head, I really like Neil Gaiman’s Never Where, you know, where London is literally what it is. And I just really, and that set under London, and I like this as a kind of equivalent over London, so there would be a scene in the Whispering Gallery at St Paul’s and how they’d have to cross the bridges on the top and, you know, get through Canary Wharf and the pigeons would help them and the Tower of London and, you know, it just, it just felt like it still feels like fun to me or a little bit like the Snow Queen, you know, and they have to catch Delphine, who’s my youngest, who then and now is mischievous and not ever in the mood to be caught. So it was, yeah, it’s nice. Of course, I like reading it. I often write children in my books, partly because I like writing them and I think a lot of people are very bad at writing them and they write very sophisticated, wisecracking children. My pet peeve is children in books and films who are interested in the emotional lives of adults. It’s endless. It’s like, oh, how are you feeling about that? It’s like, kids, literally, you’re just a food dispensing robot there. If a kid is worried about your emotional state of mind, it’s a terrible judgment on your parenting. You know, it’s like throwing yourself downstairs in front of your kids. Don’t do it. So I’m always trying to write very accurate children. And quite often, when they were younger, I would just take the age that they were at and write it in. And it’s actually a really weirdly lovely thing to have now is a record of my children at the ages that they were. You know, it’s particularly three, four, five, because you think you’re going to remember it, but you really don’t. So I like writing children. I like their moral certainty about things.

Well time for another Offcut. Jenny, what’s this one?

This is a clip from White Maasai, oh, jinks. A musical I was collaborating on in 2013 about a true story of a Swiss German woman who married a Maasai warrior.

Exterior Africa, crush, hot, extraordinary amounts of noise and smells. Surrounded by local people, Corinne, young and fresh looking, and Marco are crowded on a dangerously lurching boat.

This is awful.

What are you talking about? It’s wonderful. It’s our holiday. Enjoy it.

But it smells.

Of life.

Of toilets.

Do you hate humans, Marco? Collectively yes. Individually.

I like.

He moves in to embrace her. But as he does so, trips over someone shopping, causing an upset, a lot of flapping and an enormous hubbub. He flounders around, making more mess and upset. An elderly man starts shouting at him as several women eye him crossly. There is a song. But Corinne isn’t looking. She is staring at a man at the very far end of the boat, like a tinger, who is ignoring all of this, instead staring out to sea. He is beautiful and dressed in full warrior clothing. Finally, he glances round to see the hubbub. Marco has slipped on some chicken crap and bursts out laughing. Everything freezes as Corinne gazes at him and he catches her eye. The song changes to something softer and less rousing. I was lost. Interior, nightfall, landing from the boat. Everyone disperses, leaving Marco and Corinne alone. Marco is nervously clutching his bum back. We’re lost. Corinne looks around, listening to the crickets. Smell the night air. Smells of burnt things, nasty burnt things. I thought there was supposed to be a bus here.

Come on, this is Africa, not Switzerland.

Yeah, I see that.

From far off comes a gentle calling noise.

So what was the plan behind this? It was quite a departure.

Well, I have a good friend called Toby Goff, who is a kind of impresario. He puts on world music events is what he does. He travels the world. He puts on a huge Cuban show. He puts on shows from Africa. He puts on shows from Brazil. And he came to Cannes. We were there and we went for breakfast. He said, look, I’ve got the rights to this book. And, you know, I’m thinking of doing something with African music. Would you be interested in writing the book for it? The words that the music fits into. And he gave me the book. And it was a huge, huge bestseller in Switzerland and Germany. I mean, the huge book. And it is about a Swiss, white Swiss German woman who goes on holiday to Africa, goes on one of these tourist events. And one of the guys who dresses up to entertain tourists, she falls in love with him and they get married and she moves to his village and eventually nearly dies in childbirth and comes back. So I was kind of, it’s interesting. It has a lot to say about a lot of different things. But you know what, it just kind of petered out. We could get the music. Toby was in Cuba. You know, all sorts of things happened. I don’t know if it was the right thing to do. It was a few years ago, let me tell you. It seems very odd now, even the title. But hey-ho. I mean, the thing is, you must know this. If somebody says, why don’t you try this? Then you obviously, yes. And then you figure it out later. Theoretically, yes.

It doesn’t.

You still gave it a shot. I always think the worst thing is to not, or to choose not to try anything is also a choice, I always think.

It’s just an interesting combination. A musical, considering your main experiences, pros with a little bit of audio drama, a musical mixed with a subject matter that is quite sensitive.

It’s a choice, yes. I mean, I love musicals and I always, I wrote a libretto for an opera.

Oh, did you?

Yeah, I did. For Pimlico, not for Pimlico Opera. For, oh, I forgot the name of the opera company. Anyway, I did.

Did it get performed?

It did. And I thought this is going to be easy because I like writing rhymes, as you know. This is going to be easy. This is going to be fun. I’m going to be Stephen Fry and write Me and My Girl and, you know, make a fortune or Ben Elton or something. And that this is going to be brilliant because I love musicals. Anyway, it wasn’t brilliant. It’s terrible. It’s really hard. You know, lots of things don’t rhyme with anything. And I ended up moon spooning and tuning it much more than I had hoped.

Nothing goes obviously with Maasai, does it?

Oh, God, I didn’t even get that far. Oh, God.

Oh, can you imagine how awful it would be? Now I can’t even begin to think what you’d rhyme Maasai with.

Oh, he’s a cool guy. I don’t know. It’s terrible. Everything about it was terrible. So no, it didn’t go. And that’s all right. Another thing that is not my destiny is to write a massive, really dodgy musical. Actually, somebody’s turned, you know, the class novels that I’ve written about boarding school. That’s a musical.

Is it? Uh-huh.

I have not plucked up the courage to see it, despite being offered tickets on several occasions. Neither have I played the CD, which has been sent to me, but it does exist as a musical form. Fantastic. I know. I just can’t. I can’t listen to my own audiobooks, right? I just get too embarrassed. But do you know what I’d really love is I’d quite like to sell, quite often people sell their rights to Bollywood firms. And they will make any story that you sell into a musical, and that will become a musical. And I’ve witnessed much joy from people getting their books adapted over there. So fingers crossed.

OK, time for your final off cut. Tell us about this one, please.

This is from a thrill, really is a pitch for a thriller called The Coup, written in 20. Yeah, it was recent because it’s political. So 2018, I think.

22 Princes Street, Edinburgh is notable for a large coffee shop and an extraordinarily clear view of Edinburgh Castle right across the street, for which it is more than worth the price of a large latte, particularly on a clear windy spring day where the sky is a bright pale blue and tiny clouds scud across it, only adding to the perfection of the site. Above it were a suite of rooms with a surprisingly strong security system on the stairs, more than you would think would be needed to deter a lost coffee drinker. Behind the door, though, and the two large men standing on either side of it, was a suite of classic Georgian rooms, panelled with chandeliers and shutters on the windows currently thrown open. A figure stood near the vast marble fireplace, currently filled with a floral bouquet of lilies and pale violet thistles. He was not tall, but stood as if he were. His dark hair was thinning and cut short. He wore a pair of thin-framed glasses on a small featured face. Surprisingly, lush-lashed brown eyes peered curiously through the lenses. He was currently being dressed. On his feet were a pair of shiny black brogues laced around heavy cream wool socks with flashes either side. A short silver-haired man was fussing with a lace cravat worn over a black waistcoat with solid silver diamond-shaped buttons. A jacket fringed with briquette and the same silver buttons on the sleeves was being brushed down at the back. The pure white shirt had lacy cuffs that hung down below the black sleeves of the jacket. Beneath it was an immaculate kilt. The tartan was a fine white base, laced with red and more white on the black background, striking, almost garish. A dress tartan, something to be looked at. The dresser placed a black velvet cap with a large pluming pheasant feather sticking out of the top of it. The effect could have been ridiculous, but the atmosphere in the room was reverential. By the window dust motes bounced in the sunny air. It was a perfect day, although that meant more people out and about. But even so, everything was in place. The man sighed with happiness and moved over to the opposite wall from the fireplace and regarded himself. Bah oui, he said, pleased. Ça marche, non?

So this is called the coup as in C-O-U-P, not C-O-O. So tell us about the coup.

Oh, it was just such a fun idea. It was really kind of post-Brexit. And there is a guy, there’s a Belgian guy who for years has been marching around saying he can prove his bloodline back to the Stewart’s, therefore he’s the rightful king of Scotland. And he’s not allowed in Edinburgh Castle, which is true. He officially is not allowed in Edinburgh Castle, partly because he’s a nuisance. But I love the idea that in a state of kind of extraordinary confusion politically, that he would take over Scotland in a world where London, Westminster couldn’t give a rat’s ass, which I think they really don’t about Scotland, where you’d have the First Minister kind of being given everything she wanted, but in a way she really didn’t want, you know, and kind of as soon as it’s happening, loads of Scots, especially if the weather was nice, going, yeah, all right, we’ll give this guy. It was so funny and violent and dramatic and taking, you know, having a siege on the whole of Edinburgh Castle. And I was chatting to my friend, Hugo Rifkin, the brilliant political writer. I just, it was such a big dramatic idea and we pitched it to a few places and no one would touch it with a barge pole. It was very sticky. And actually it was my favourite rejection note that we’ve ever had, I think, was from someone at the BBC saying, we can’t risk taking this project on in case it actually happens. The likelihood of something equally stupid happening in Scottish politics could not be ruled out. So it was, it’s written there as prose, but the idea was that it would be a movie, that it would be a kind of assault on the castle, a declaration of sovereignty from when London didn’t care. But oh yeah, I know it was. It was going to be a thriller. They were going to take the castle by force. They were going to declare himself king and then he would become extraordinarily popular. London wouldn’t care, the First Minister would have to make a decision about what to do about the whole thing. So it was a kind of big daft silly.

That sounds like a brilliant idea. I don’t understand why they wouldn’t go for that. I mean, maybe you could change names and maybe not make him Belgian, make him Swiss or Italian or something.

Well, quite, yes. Any of that you could do. I know. Well, of course, at the time, the idea of having, they shot the last Avengers film in Edinburgh and the last Fast and Furious film in Edinburgh and both times it was a complete nutter habit for everybody that lives there. But, you know, it’s huge, it’s epic. You need crowds, you need people storming the city, you need people up on the battlements.

Oh, there’s CGI for that sort of thing, surely, by now.

Oh, see, Lauren, now you’re perking me. Now I want to do it again. And also, you know, I have no, I write little books about baking, you know, I have no, you know, I’m not coming into this with any chops at all. I had to accidentally, like, bump into James Cameron on a plane. Oh, that’s a terrible, you know, strategy for a career. But yeah, no, I still, I still think it was, it was just the way everybody reacted when you said, well, it’s about a king declaring Scottish independence by taking over Edinburgh Castle. And people just cringe. My agent just had her hands over her eyes. Please don’t talk to me about this.

Really, that’s so interesting. I’m so, I am very surprised. I wonder if you tried to resubmit it now.

I wonder if the reaction will be the same. Interesting. I’m tired just thinking about it.

Right, well, I mentioned at the beginning that you’ve just had two novels come out. Obviously, one of them very much just. The Bookshop on the Shore and 500 Miles from You and Christmas at the Island Hotel is coming later in the year. So presumably it’s time for a holiday now. Would you have more plans of writing projects starting now?

Well, I’ll have a book coming out this time next year, which means I’ll need to finish it by October or so. So I am writing about the lockdown, and I think we’ll need to see, because people have quite good memories of being in things like the war or living under Stalin. People tend to remember good bits about bad experiences. And I will be interested to see next year if people are quite nostalgic about the beautiful sunny days and about being at home and the birdsong and so on, and forget all the horrible stuff that was going on. And I write about isolated communities anyway. So I’m writing about an isolated community that has to decide how to behave under lockdown, essentially.

But they can’t meet each other, surely? Or can they?

Well, if you’re running a bakery, you’re a central worker. So there’s that. But also, there might be, for example, two people stranded on the island that can’t get home who are a balcony apart. I like it. I like that a lot. I think there’s potential in that. So what I’m going to do is I’m writing it. And then if it turns out next year that people really don’t, they’re just fed up of it. They just want to get back to their normal lives and really don’t want to read about it at all. Well, then, I mean, a novel is just about how people behave in a crisis situation. That’s all a novel is. So I lift out the lockdown crisis and we’ll make it a flood. We’ll do something else with it, I think. But I think the fundamentals of how isolated communities or how small communities work under crisis. So I think I’m going to focus on that and see how it goes.

Well, final question. Having listened to all of the clips of your different bits of writing over the years, is there anything you’ve noticed or anything you’re surprised by?

I think I’m slightly surprised that my tastes are broader or my interests are broader. I think this probably says a bit about the commercial world, not just of fiction, but of anything really, which is that once you hit on something people like, then there is quite a lot of pressure internationally to keep doing it. And, you know, so Ian Rankin will write Rebus novels or Stephen King will always write monster novels, you know. And that’s interesting to me that I do, you know, obviously have quite a lot of different ideas, but kind of plough quite a narrow furrow. But on the other hand, I have quite, I feel quite a kind of responsibility is a weird word, but yeah, sentiment towards my readers, you know, particularly who just say no. When I get my holiday, me and my daughter, we buy a book between us and we take it and I read it and then she reads it and that’s what we do. And it’s always nice that, but also I do feel that for me to go, well, I know you like to read books about islands, but no, shut up and sit down. You’re going to read this book about a coup. You know, it feels a bit that I wouldn’t want to do that. Does that make sense? Yes, yes. So there’s a sense that I, you know, sometimes it feels that my career runs on quite a narrow track, even though my interests are very Catholic. But actually, I wouldn’t necessarily want it any other way. I’m not prepared to go and sit through those gruesome meetings of which you must have been in thousands, of pitching and pitching to a very disinterested 24-year-old. Rather than doing something that I already know makes people happy. So it’s nice to have these side projects. And actually, it was nice to look at them again and go, you know what, I think the scientist was great. But it wasn’t, we weren’t in a position to say, hey, everyone shut up. I know you like this story, but we’re going to give you this, you know. And also, I like my job. I like doing what I do. So I wouldn’t want to throw away what I have for something which may or may not work.

So it’s a little journey to remind you of what is also in your brain.

Yes.

I can’t express it any more articulately than you and you’re the writer.

You have done it perfectly, except the poetry, I don’t think I’ll write any more of that. Or the racist music, I’ll probably stay away from that.

Oh, that’s… no way. Well, Jenny Colgan, it’s been absolutely lovely to talk to you and thank you for sharing the contents of your Offcuts Drawer with us.

Thanks, Laura.

The Offcuts Drawer was devised and presented by me, Laura Shavin, with thanks to this week’s special guest, Jenny Colgan. The Offcuts were performed by Rachel Atkins, Beth Chalmers, Toby Longworth, Leah Marks, Nigel Pilkington and Keith Wickham, and the music was by me. For more details about the show, visit offcutsdrawer.com and please do subscribe, rate and review us. Thanks for listening.