Joanne Lockwood: Foreign.
Joanne Lockwood: Welcome to Inclusion Bites, your sanctuary
Joanne Lockwood: for bold conversations that spark change. I'm Joanne Lockwood,
Joanne Lockwood: your guide on this journey of exploration into the heart of
Joanne Lockwood: inclusion, belonging and societal transformation.
Joanne Lockwood: Ever wondered what it truly takes to create a world? Remember, everyone
Joanne Lockwood: not only belongs, but thrives. You're not alone.
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Joanne Lockwood: the status quo and share stories that resonate
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Joanne Lockwood: So adjust your earbuds and settle in. It's time to
Joanne Lockwood: ignite the spark of inclusion with Inclusion Bites.
Joanne Lockwood: And today is episode 172
Joanne Lockwood: with the title Telling Untold Stories.
Joanne Lockwood: And I have the absolute honour and privilege to welcome Tracy Stewart.
Joanne Lockwood: Tracy is a book coach, editor and founder of
Joanne Lockwood: Freshly Press, who is dedicated to amplifying untold
Joanne Lockwood: stories and advocating for diverse voices in publishing.
Joanne Lockwood: When I asked Tracy to describe her superpower, she said it is
Joanne Lockwood: championing unheard voices and guiding storytellers to share
Joanne Lockwood: their truth. Hello, Tracy. Welcome to the show.
Tracy Stewart: Thanks for having me. Delighted to have the opportunity to chat with you in
Tracy Stewart: a bit more detail than we normally have the opportunity to do on LinkedIn.
Joanne Lockwood: Yes. Yeah, I think we bumped into each other probably four or five months ago,
Joanne Lockwood: didn't we? And we've been talking about
Joanne Lockwood: a book. I've got a budding book. I've got podcast poetry, so.
Tracy Stewart: Looking forward to seeing that come to life.
Joanne Lockwood: Yeah, well, you will be featured probably in volume two, so. Yeah, I'm looking
Joanne Lockwood: forward to that as well. So whereabouts in the country are you right now?
Tracy Stewart: Well, I'm actually in France because although I'm British, I live in France.
Tracy Stewart: Yeah. Live in Normandy.
Joanne Lockwood: Wow. Still got the same daylight out the window, so I would have
Joanne Lockwood: never known, so.
Tracy Stewart: No, I know.
Joanne Lockwood: I think you're probably the first guest in the 172 episodes that has
Joanne Lockwood: actually been based in France. Wow.
Tracy Stewart: There you go. Always upload somewhere.
Joanne Lockwood: Yeah. So, Tracy, one of the reasons we started talking originally
Joanne Lockwood: was, you know, we talk about this, guiding storytellers to
Joanne Lockwood: tell their truth. And I think for the first moment we had a conversation, you
Joanne Lockwood: talked about the publishing industry as a whole, the lack of diversity that's
Joanne Lockwood: there, and the usual suspects. Get in if you like.
Joanne Lockwood: Yeah.
Joanne Lockwood: So how. What. What started this? What ignited your passion to help
Joanne Lockwood: untold authors, if you like untold people, tell their stories.
Joanne Lockwood: I guess about 10 years ago I, which is
Joanne Lockwood: when I moved over to France, I'd stopped working, doing my old job in
Joanne Lockwood: the city. That was a very traditional career. And I had the
Joanne Lockwood: opportunity to go and work with a small publishing house, independent
Joanne Lockwood: publishing house, remotely supporting authors. From
Joanne Lockwood: that I ended up building a business which I started with two other
Joanne Lockwood: women. And we were really wanting to
Joanne Lockwood: focus on giving authors who never usually had the
Joanne Lockwood: opportunity to get their books in front of large audiences
Joanne Lockwood: to be able to get publishing opportunities or to promote their
Joanne Lockwood: books better, differently, all of those things. And it really
Joanne Lockwood: stemmed from the fact that the books we were looking at and publishing
Joanne Lockwood: originally were, were all largely you know, traditional, middle
Joanne Lockwood: class, white, you know, not, not terribly
Joanne Lockwood: reflective of society and certainly not telling stories that
Joanne Lockwood: we were experiencing in everyday life and needed to be told,
Joanne Lockwood: needed to be amplified. So that was really the cause was, was looking
Joanne Lockwood: at, you know, I've been a book buyer all my life, but looking at it
Joanne Lockwood: from the other perspective made me realise just how many stories
Joanne Lockwood: effectively don't make the cut with publishers because they're often
Joanne Lockwood: not brave enough to take on stories that are different. I
Joanne Lockwood: presume there's also the imposter syndrome of many people would
Joanne Lockwood: have me an author. No, really, no one's going to
Joanne Lockwood: be interested in what I have to say. So you must find that the
Joanne Lockwood: barrier there is one, getting someone to actually have their story
Joanne Lockwood: and want to do something with it and secondly, getting someone who's prepared.
Joanne Lockwood: Prepared to publish that.
Tracy Stewart: Yeah. And there are several steps in between and after.
Tracy Stewart: Very often imposter syndrome is a huge barrier. People
Tracy Stewart: wanting to write, they want to, they know they've got a good story, they want
Tracy Stewart: to be able to get it out into the world, but they, you know, they
Tracy Stewart: go through that. Who am I to tell my story? Or they might start to
Tracy Stewart: write it and then not know where to go with it. Because all
Tracy Stewart: books have a certain flow, we might not realise it, but
Tracy Stewart: as humans we like to have stories told in certain,
Tracy Stewart: you know, in certain flows, in certain ways, you know, to reach peaks and
Tracy Stewart: troughs at different times. And so when, when you're an inexperienced
Tracy Stewart: writer, when you're trying to get your story down, it's very difficult to know
Tracy Stewart: what that pathway is initially. But equally
Tracy Stewart: then being able to have the confidence to approach
Tracy Stewart: agents or to approach publishers. How do you go about doing
Tracy Stewart: that? How do you learn how to do that? I mean, there were lots of
Tracy Stewart: free resources on the Internet, but Sometimes they offer conflicting advice.
Tracy Stewart: So there are lots of different
Tracy Stewart: barriers really for people being able to get in and often
Tracy Stewart: for people with disabilities, for example, which is
Tracy Stewart: something I'm really passionate about, they actually don't
Tracy Stewart: have proper access to be able to use
Tracy Stewart: computers in the same way as you or I may be able to do it.
Tracy Stewart: People may have issues with blindness, with colours, with
Tracy Stewart: dyslexia, people may have issues of not being able to use their hands
Tracy Stewart: easily to type or write. And all of those things present barriers
Tracy Stewart: as well. So there are difficulties and challenges to be faced,
Tracy Stewart: not just in the idea of writing or having the
Tracy Stewart: confidence to write, but also in the physicality of getting
Tracy Stewart: something written as well.
Joanne Lockwood: It's also a cost barrier, isn't it? Because it's to
Joanne Lockwood: do it properly. I don't know what properly means, but
Joanne Lockwood: there's sub editing, editing, design, marketing,
Joanne Lockwood: all those various aspects aren't free
Joanne Lockwood: because people have to earn a living doing this. So that can also be a
Joanne Lockwood: barrier to people maybe with non traditional backgrounds, maybe don't have the financial
Joanne Lockwood: resources or wealth to embark on this process.
Tracy Stewart: Yeah, absolutely. Whilst now you can
Tracy Stewart: much more easily publish, self publish, using, you
Tracy Stewart: know, the usual suspects at Amazon off the digital,
Tracy Stewart: there are lots of different platforms now and ways in which you can self publish.
Tracy Stewart: If you self publish something that hasn't had the right attention
Tracy Stewart: beforehand, as you rightly point out, you know, the editing process,
Tracy Stewart: the COVID the fact that the layout is done correctly, all of those
Tracy Stewart: things, then actually when you present that to market, although
Tracy Stewart: it costs you nothing to put it onto Amazon,
Tracy Stewart: you're actually providing a product that is not fit for
Tracy Stewart: purpose, it's not fit for market and in some ways isn't respectful of
Tracy Stewart: the reader, the buying public. So yeah, the cost is
Tracy Stewart: definitely an issue as well because everybody in the chain,
Tracy Stewart: and I'll call it a chain because it is, everybody in that chain has to
Tracy Stewart: earn a living somehow. And ultimately the writer wants to
Tracy Stewart: earn an income, if not a living from the books that
Tracy Stewart: they're writing. You know, there's, there's, you know, if you take, there's
Tracy Stewart: one, one big gold coin and that act, that gold coin has to be
Tracy Stewart: split in so many different ways before ultimately, as a
Tracy Stewart: published author, you can get the royalties in the end. So it's not an
Tracy Stewart: easy process to navigate.
Joanne Lockwood: I also, I'm just thinking about my own
Joanne Lockwood: authorial, authorial, if that's a word, ambitions. I'm kind of a
Joanne Lockwood: pragmatist because I know many people who've published books or even I
Joanne Lockwood: Know people who publish tens of books and some of them have achieved what we
Joanne Lockwood: call bestselling author, genuine Sunday Times. Someone who is
Joanne Lockwood: incredibly a bestselling author rather than a screenshot of an
Joanne Lockwood: Amazon page on day three after their launch. It's not easy to
Joanne Lockwood: become celebrated authority.
Tracy Stewart: It's not, it's not at all. And for various reasons, you know, there's a
Tracy Stewart: huge number of books now in the market. It's, it's quite a saturated
Tracy Stewart: space. While self publishing has given an opportunity
Tracy Stewart: for many people to get their work out,
Tracy Stewart: it means that there is so many more options for
Tracy Stewart: buyers in terms of what they, they can read. And if you don't have a
Tracy Stewart: big marketing budget or if you, you don't have the opportunity to
Tracy Stewart: be picked up by national newspaper or, you know, a
Tracy Stewart: Richard Book club or whatever it may be,
Tracy Stewart: actually getting recognition is incredibly difficult.
Tracy Stewart: Incredibly difficult. I think a lot of it comes
Tracy Stewart: back down to why you're wanting to write. Some people
Tracy Stewart: genuinely just want to write to get their story out there, to share their
Tracy Stewart: experience. It's about knowing who your target
Tracy Stewart: audience really is. Because you can't be everything to everybody. And really
Tracy Stewart: finding your niche and finding people who are going to be
Tracy Stewart: genuinely interested in your story is an important aspect.
Tracy Stewart: Because if you can nurture, you know, a community
Tracy Stewart: of people who are wanting to hear your
Tracy Stewart: story and who are able then to talk to others about your story,
Tracy Stewart: you know, that helps the process. It definitely
Tracy Stewart: isn't easy. And we've all done it, haven't we? We've all bought books on, you
Tracy Stewart: know, Waterstones, Amazon looked at something. Do we go back and review
Tracy Stewart: it very often not. Because, you know, inherently we're often quite
Tracy Stewart: lazy about doing things like that. And one thing that readers really
Tracy Stewart: can do to support authors is to review a book they've written. Because
Tracy Stewart: unfortunately, the algorithm on social media on,
Tracy Stewart: on all the big platforms, big publishing platforms, they only work
Tracy Stewart: on the basis of somebody having a review
Tracy Stewart: or having a, you know, a rating against their book.
Tracy Stewart: So one of the things I always try and encourage anyone who reads a book
Tracy Stewart: to do is actually go in and take the trouble to enjoy it and review
Tracy Stewart: it.
Joanne Lockwood: And as you're thinking now, I'm thinking because my publishing
Joanne Lockwood: ambition is kind of very vocational, very around what I do, what I talk
Joanne Lockwood: about. So it's more a business
Joanne Lockwood: outcome or associated with business. But there's
Joanne Lockwood: also, I guess there's people who are having their voice heard, who
Joanne Lockwood: are novelists, who are science fiction writers, who are maybe even
Joanne Lockwood: comic writers or whatever.
Tracy Stewart: It May be, yeah. And this is one of the things that
Tracy Stewart: is a huge challenge for the industry, but a huge
Tracy Stewart: frustration for writers is that particularly those with
Tracy Stewart: disabilities are probably the ones that are left
Tracy Stewart: behind in the culture of publishers and agents trying
Tracy Stewart: to bring wider representation and diversity in
Tracy Stewart: publishing. Lgbtq, the
Tracy Stewart: writers of colour, they have tended to have more
Tracy Stewart: opportunity. They still don't have enough, but they had more
Tracy Stewart: opportunity than writers who have disabilities. One
Tracy Stewart: of the clients I've worked with have seen several years. She
Tracy Stewart: has been writing fiction and poetry practically
Tracy Stewart: all her life. You know, she's received awards for it. She's
Tracy Stewart: won a Hemingway prize and was included in
Tracy Stewart: the Hemingway anthology. And yet her
Tracy Stewart: novels, because they include disabled
Tracy Stewart: protagonists, are not being picked up. But you're getting lots of
Tracy Stewart: comments back about the quote, quality of the writing,
Tracy Stewart: how wonderful and interesting the storylines are.
Tracy Stewart: But we have yet to find a publisher
Tracy Stewart: brave enough to take on a story with a disabled character
Tracy Stewart: as the principal character in the book. And
Tracy Stewart: it is a challenge, a real challenge for
Tracy Stewart: many writers and across all different types of
Tracy Stewart: disability and all different types of,
Tracy Stewart: you know, challenges that people face. The industry largely,
Tracy Stewart: and there's been quite a lot of research done into this in the last few
Tracy Stewart: years, the industry largely is speaking to and publishing
Tracy Stewart: for, you know, a white middle class audience.
Tracy Stewart: And the industry is making decisions about
Tracy Stewart: what it sees as being commercial and it
Tracy Stewart: doesn't feel yet when it's not brave enough
Tracy Stewart: in very many instances to try something a bit different. And
Tracy Stewart: then we've been through this process with writers of colour, with
Tracy Stewart: writers of LGBTQ literature.
Tracy Stewart: It took so long to start to get those stories out there
Tracy Stewart: and there's still a long way to go for sure.
Joanne Lockwood: So we talked about, I asked you earlier about the costs and you talked
Joanne Lockwood: about the big gold coin and everyone's got to try and earn a living out
Joanne Lockwood: of this. No one's doing it for free. So when you're about here is publishers
Joanne Lockwood: are reluctant to take the risk is where they would maybe
Joanne Lockwood: take, assume some of that cost, financial cost of the editing process, the
Joanne Lockwood: publishing process and take that burden off of the author
Joanne Lockwood: rather than expect them to have to fund all that themselves and take the risk.
Joanne Lockwood: It's a bit like venture capitalists. We know that many female founders, many
Joanne Lockwood: people with disabilities, aren't getting the investment for venture capital
Joanne Lockwood: Raft and the publisher to be our venture capital
Joanne Lockwood: investing in our book. And that's what you're saying the challenges people
Joanne Lockwood: perceive there to be a market isn't that strikes me as there's a bit of
Joanne Lockwood: chicken and egg. There is no market, therefore we can't. But
Joanne Lockwood: because we can't, there is no market. And it's kind of, we need to break
Joanne Lockwood: through that.
Tracy Stewart: And that's a really good analogy about the publishers being the venture
Tracy Stewart: capitalists for authors, for sure. And the thing is,
Tracy Stewart: I genuinely believe that there is a market, you know, that people,
Tracy Stewart: if you look, if you, if you read in newspapers, in
Tracy Stewart: magazines or if you look at what people are watching on tv,
Tracy Stewart: people are really interested in stories
Tracy Stewart: that bring a different perspective to life, that
Tracy Stewart: something that is different from our own lived experience.
Tracy Stewart: And they want to know these stories, they're interested
Tracy Stewart: in these stories. But unless there
Tracy Stewart: is some way in which a publisher
Tracy Stewart: sees that they've almost got a ready made audience,
Tracy Stewart: they're very unwilling to take on books that
Tracy Stewart: are different. I mean they're even unwilling, if you look
Tracy Stewart: at it in this perspective, they're unwilling to take books which are
Tracy Stewart: very, very well written crime novels for example, that are
Tracy Stewart: in a, you know, written by a normal
Tracy Stewart: person like me, you know, who comes along, just, you know, has a good idea
Tracy Stewart: for a story, writes a story and sends it off. They,
Tracy Stewart: they get so many of those types of
Tracy Stewart: solicitations. They, they don't, you know, they take on a very, very
Tracy Stewart: small percentage. And so often, you know, we go off and we self
Tracy Stewart: publish. But there's a, even for books where there's a market, there
Tracy Stewart: is not enough capacity or courage within
Tracy Stewart: publishing houses now to take on someone who doesn't
Tracy Stewart: have an established following. Very rare.
Tracy Stewart: So as an author, particularly as an author
Tracy Stewart: with a form of disability or from an
Tracy Stewart: underrepresented part of the community,
Tracy Stewart: they've also got to work on building their audience
Tracy Stewart: before they even get to the stage of presenting their work
Tracy Stewart: to an agent or publisher. Because they want
Tracy Stewart: agents, publishers, they all want some form
Tracy Stewart: of, you know, partial guarantee if you like, that there are
Tracy Stewart: people out there already wanting to buy this book. And that's a
Tracy Stewart: difficulty, that's a challenge.
Joanne Lockwood: Yeah, I've, I've spoken to, I suppose you would call them
Joanne Lockwood: book coaches, which not, not too dissimilar to yourself. And I've been
Joanne Lockwood: quoted between 10 and 20,000 for
Joanne Lockwood: depending on how light touch, you know, guided
Joanne Lockwood: toward, you know, how much I want them involved in the process. And
Joanne Lockwood: that's just to get the book to a publisher, not actually do the publishing and
Joanne Lockwood: then do the marketing and the branding and all that kind of stuff. So it's
Joanne Lockwood: probably, I don't know, I'm just guessing off the top of my head. Let's pick
Joanne Lockwood: a number. 30,000 pound to get from A to B.
Joanne Lockwood: And it each book doesn't make that much money, does it? There's not a huge
Joanne Lockwood: amount of money in books.
Tracy Stewart: No, there's not. You know, there isn't. There really isn't a huge amount of money
Tracy Stewart: in books. There are ways in which you can earn a living,
Tracy Stewart: but it's very rare that it's purely from the books you've
Tracy Stewart: written. You know, you tend to have as a writer, you often have a sort
Tracy Stewart: of portfolio career. So you'll do some commercial writing. You might be
Tracy Stewart: journalists part, you know, you might also be content writing
Tracy Stewart: or copywriting in those types of
Tracy Stewart: situations. So it's very rare that someone earns solely from
Tracy Stewart: the books that they've written. It can happen, you know, if a series
Tracy Stewart: gets auctioned and gets put to market through Netflix or
Tracy Stewart: Apple TV or something like that. But purely from writing a
Tracy Stewart: book. No, it's a challenge. And this is where
Tracy Stewart: one of the things that I always look to do with freshly press was find
Tracy Stewart: a way to be affordable. Because nobody I
Tracy Stewart: know, you know, has 30 grand sitting in their back pocket to use
Tracy Stewart: that, you know, picked out the air sum to to even get a book
Tracy Stewart: ready to go to an agent or publisher.
Tracy Stewart: It's just not practical. Yeah. And there are other ways that, that you
Tracy Stewart: can support people to help them write. Memberships, there are
Tracy Stewart: writing hours or writing groups. There are lots of different
Tracy Stewart: ways in which you can help. But ultimately to package a book,
Tracy Stewart: to get it to market, whether that's to self publish or to
Tracy Stewart: put it to an agent or an independent publisher,
Tracy Stewart: there is a certain amount of polishing that has to be done at the end
Tracy Stewart: to make it viable. And publishers also are,
Tracy Stewart: they don't have the wherewithal that they used to have to do a lot of
Tracy Stewart: the editing. You know, the big publishing houses, if you're one of their
Tracy Stewart: bigger authors, then they'll have an editor and you know, it'll
Tracy Stewart: look something like we all thought the traditional model of
Tracy Stewart: publishing does and should look like. But there are an
Tracy Stewart: awful lot of people who, even if they publish with Penguin
Tracy Stewart: Random House, you know, they have that little logo on the side of their
Tracy Stewart: book. But what they don't have is a huge lot of support
Tracy Stewart: around that book, particularly once it's published, because
Tracy Stewart: marketing budgets are really small.
Joanne Lockwood: Yeah, it's the best route to self publish
Joanne Lockwood: and then hope that gives you a kind of a cv.
Joanne Lockwood: If you like to go to a publishing house with is it better to do
Joanne Lockwood: one yourself. Or is it better to say let's not come out early,
Joanne Lockwood: let's go straight for publishing house because if I come out badly
Joanne Lockwood: then I'm going to be judged on that first piece of work. What's the guidance?
Tracy Stewart: I really wish there was a right answer, but honestly there
Tracy Stewart: isn't one size or one route that fits all because
Tracy Stewart: authors have lots of different needs. I mean, some of the authors I work with,
Tracy Stewart: you know, are from a neurodivergent background.
Tracy Stewart: And so the prospect of actually self publishing and
Tracy Stewart: having to deal with inquiries, with
Tracy Stewart: arranging all the interviews, with reaching out to
Tracy Stewart: podcasters or book reviewers, you know, it's just not something that
Tracy Stewart: they're able to do. It's an incredibly stressful,
Tracy Stewart: potentially stressful situation for them to find themselves in and they don't want
Tracy Stewart: to be connected necessarily contacted directly by people.
Tracy Stewart: So for them an agent is often,
Tracy Stewart: you know, a much more appropriate route and a route that gives them
Tracy Stewart: a lot less stress. But it costs more to
Tracy Stewart: go down that route and it takes longer. I mean the thing with self publishing
Tracy Stewart: is it's super fast as you can literally get your book
Tracy Stewart: up and within, within a week you, you, you're rolling. Some
Tracy Stewart: authors do get picked up from self publishing
Tracy Stewart: because one of the things that some of the bigger publishing houses and other agents
Tracy Stewart: do now is that they're looking to see what's coming up, what's selling in
Tracy Stewart: the self published charts and then they're approaching,
Tracy Stewart: they're approaching authors from that direction, which is something that would
Tracy Stewart: never have happened a few years back. So
Tracy Stewart: I think there are positives, absolutely there are positives from going down
Tracy Stewart: the self publishing route and there are some authors that have never done
Tracy Stewart: anything but self published and are multi million
Tracy Stewart: sellers. But what they've done is they've been very smart and very
Tracy Stewart: savvy about the way that they've self published. So
Tracy Stewart: there isn't a right or a wrong route. I'm a firm believer
Tracy Stewart: that you choose the route that is right for the
Tracy Stewart: author because not authors operate and
Tracy Stewart: have the same skill sets. I've got some wonderful
Tracy Stewart: authors that I work with who are well aged,
Tracy Stewart: I think we'll say, and they're vintage, vintage
Tracy Stewart: skills. They're vintage, absolutely. And they write
Tracy Stewart: cracking books. But their skills in dealing with all the minutiae
Tracy Stewart: of self publishing and you know, marketing side of things,
Tracy Stewart: that's not their bag. They just want to write. So for them
Tracy Stewart: going down a straight self publishing route would, would be a challenge if they
Tracy Stewart: didn't have someone to Support them along that line. So it's
Tracy Stewart: multi layered. It's multi layered. And also a
Tracy Stewart: lot of the things, you know, using. Using platforms to
Tracy Stewart: self publish is often not accessible to
Tracy Stewart: writers with disabilities because the
Tracy Stewart: logistics themselves, you know, lining everything up
Tracy Stewart: and making sure that the book is uploaded in the right way and then it
Tracy Stewart: goes off and you have all these different boxes to tick. You know,
Tracy Stewart: somebody with visual impairments is not going to be able to manage
Tracy Stewart: that. And someone who finds it difficult to work keyboard or
Tracy Stewart: hold a pen finds that very difficult as well.
Joanne Lockwood: Yeah, you're talking about. It's really hard as a. As a
Joanne Lockwood: minority person, if you come from a minority background, to get published. You
Joanne Lockwood: mentioned specifically people with disability. We are seeing good
Joanne Lockwood: representation of black queer authors because they have their own
Joanne Lockwood: communities. I guess it resonates with. As you're talking about that, I was thinking
Joanne Lockwood: about just looking at everyday television, BBC, Netflix, whatever it is,
Joanne Lockwood: and you see many black led TV
Joanne Lockwood: series, documentaries, films, whatever it may be. Again, queer stuff.
Joanne Lockwood: As you're talking, I'm thinking. I'm just trying to think where the series
Joanne Lockwood: is centred around a person with a disability, such as a wheelchair
Joanne Lockwood: user, such as an amputee or whatever it may be. There's sort of
Joanne Lockwood: representation in programmes like Silent
Joanne Lockwood: Witness with Liz Clark. Yeah, Liz Clark. And
Joanne Lockwood: the newer series we're going back in Time, show My Age. Ironside
Joanne Lockwood: was a detective who was a wheelchair user. But we
Joanne Lockwood: don't see strong TV representation, which
Joanne Lockwood: presumably that helps. What's the opposite of fuel? Extinguish
Joanne Lockwood: demand. Because we're not seeing those lived experiences being. I hate the word
Joanne Lockwood: normalised, but becoming everyday every day.
Joanne Lockwood: Visual associations.
Tracy Stewart: We shouldn't. We shouldn't see these books or these TV
Tracy Stewart: series or films as being something special. They should
Tracy Stewart: be just part and parcel of
Tracy Stewart: everyone's experience, because they are. It's a
Tracy Stewart: conversation and I think. Was the guest you had last
Tracy Stewart: week Charlie. Charlie Hunt, Charlie Hart.
Tracy Stewart: Yeah, yeah. And she was talking about the fact that, you know, having
Tracy Stewart: labels, you know, being ADHD or being
Tracy Stewart: autistic and having high functioning, there are all the different
Tracy Stewart: variables of that, you know, make it often
Tracy Stewart: so that people are being pigeonholed rather than being
Tracy Stewart: made, you know, to just be accepted for who and what
Tracy Stewart: they are, you know, members of civilization, human
Tracy Stewart: race and society. And it's a similar
Tracy Stewart: situation with all
Tracy Stewart: underrepresented communities. They're often
Tracy Stewart: seen as token or they have
Tracy Stewart: a strong role and they have
Tracy Stewart: strong lines, they have a strong presence, but they are
Tracy Stewart: somehow depicted and seen as
Tracy Stewart: being you know, not the norm and
Tracy Stewart: you know, they are the norm, they're normal. In the same way I'm as normal.
Tracy Stewart: There is, there shouldn't be a distinction between
Tracy Stewart: the type of character driven stories that we see,
Tracy Stewart: read and listen to.
Joanne Lockwood: There's also a. I perceive there to be a
Joanne Lockwood: hierarchy of privilege again even within
Joanne Lockwood: many communities. I mean, just, I was thinking about disability, the disabled community,
Joanne Lockwood: for example. There's. We see a lot of representation in the media
Joanne Lockwood: of Paralympians. People have been in Invictus Games and
Joanne Lockwood: again, there's a privilege there. If you've suffered a life
Joanne Lockwood: changing injury due to warfare, whatever that may be,
Joanne Lockwood: then your lived experience about the recovery from that.
Joanne Lockwood: There's a lot more money in supporting you around prosthetics,
Joanne Lockwood: rehabilitation, giving you a voice than there is for someone who was maybe
Joanne Lockwood: born, born without a limb or born with a
Joanne Lockwood: cerebral palsy or whatever that may be, that they will no longer
Joanne Lockwood: have access to that amplification and privilege and funding. So again, we do
Joanne Lockwood: see a lot of representation, especially around Paralympics, Victor's
Joanne Lockwood: Games, celebrity appearances on telly. There's a real disconnect between
Joanne Lockwood: their acquired disability at that point in life and
Joanne Lockwood: someone who has maybe been born with their
Joanne Lockwood: disability. And yeah, the differential experience. And
Joanne Lockwood: I guess I want to see real lived experience
Joanne Lockwood: told through their eyes, their lens, their perception, not
Joanne Lockwood: a, I don't know, a sort of sanitised version. I want to see the rawness.
Joanne Lockwood: You know, there's a storyline on
Joanne Lockwood: EastEnders which I saw the other night, which mirrors the strip
Joanne Lockwood: search of a young black girl. And this is about a young Asian
Joanne Lockwood: girl being strip searched by the police. And I
Joanne Lockwood: want to hear those stories in the mainstream media to say this isn't good enough,
Joanne Lockwood: it happened in real life, now let's dramatise it and let's bake
Joanne Lockwood: that into history so it never happens again. And I want to hear the injustices
Joanne Lockwood: of my friends or wheelchair users struggling with their
Joanne Lockwood: day to day life and having that told to story.
Tracy Stewart: Yeah. And yeah, you're absolutely right about the fact that
Tracy Stewart: people who have been born with
Tracy Stewart: conditions, and often multiple conditions
Tracy Stewart: or you know, have multiple conditions develop later in their
Tracy Stewart: life, they struggle to get heard
Tracy Stewart: in, in every sense of the word. So not even just
Tracy Stewart: through writing, but you know, through access to work,
Tracy Stewart: through the ability to have the appropriate care
Tracy Stewart: to enable them to work. Writers I've worked with
Tracy Stewart: struggle to receive an appropriate level of
Tracy Stewart: support to do not just the basic things. I mean, I
Tracy Stewart: think there are many, many stories and experiences that people
Tracy Stewart: have Shared about the fact that, you know, they find it incredibly difficult to
Tracy Stewart: find a Tube station access or to have somebody
Tracy Stewart: support them with driving, getting them from A to B to
Tracy Stewart: just to be able to work. There are very often people who.
Tracy Stewart: And authors who require support and help
Tracy Stewart: to help them to write. And that is
Tracy Stewart: seen as a luxury. You know, it doesn't even come
Tracy Stewart: close to being something that is considered to be important.
Tracy Stewart: And yet if you're a writer, to not have access to. To
Tracy Stewart: either the right software to enable you to
Tracy Stewart: properly dictate, for example, or to have
Tracy Stewart: the appropriate access to screens that enable
Tracy Stewart: you to see a screen clearly and be
Tracy Stewart: able to navigate that screen, really, so have the right physical equipment for,
Tracy Stewart: be that headsets or the right type of mouse or keyboard to
Tracy Stewart: use. For writers, it is incredibly,
Tracy Stewart: incredibly hard to have those types of
Tracy Stewart: things seen as being necessary to work.
Tracy Stewart: So very often you've got authors and writers who
Tracy Stewart: have extraordinary storytelling skills and
Tracy Stewart: can provide wonderful articles and contributions
Tracy Stewart: to news publications, to magazines, to anthologies, the.
Tracy Stewart: To also write their own memoir or novel. They
Tracy Stewart: just are not heard and they're not seen as
Tracy Stewart: being somebody who has a need. And, you know,
Tracy Stewart: when you're a writer, you're very often driven. Writing is the
Tracy Stewart: thing that supports your mental health. Writing is the thing
Tracy Stewart: that, you know is what you are here to do. And doing it in all
Tracy Stewart: its forms is important. But it's virtually impossible
Tracy Stewart: for many writers who have disabilities particularly,
Tracy Stewart: to even get started on that ladder.
Tracy Stewart: So it's creating barriers for access to work, for
Tracy Stewart: being able to access markets and be able to write
Tracy Stewart: their books and talk to agents and talk to publishers,
Tracy Stewart: have speaking engagement, because there's a whole raft of things that
Tracy Stewart: just. You don't enable them to be on that stage and
Tracy Stewart: be in that world.
Joanne Lockwood: Is that because people don't take
Joanne Lockwood: being an author as a serious career option?
Joanne Lockwood: It's. It's almost like a hobby, a bolt on. It's not. It's like
Joanne Lockwood: people say, I want to leave school, I want to become an actor. It's like,
Joanne Lockwood: can't you get a real job? You know, I want to. I want to be
Joanne Lockwood: a sports person. Can't you get a real job? You got to. You got to
Joanne Lockwood: work on that first. So people aren't vet fe.
Joanne Lockwood: There's not enough people earning a living being purely an author. You said it earlier.
Joanne Lockwood: It's a bolt on.
Tracy Stewart: Yeah.
Joanne Lockwood: So getting support and getting funding for it as a
Joanne Lockwood: hobby must be hard because it's. I guess it's a hobby until
Joanne Lockwood: it becomes a Profession, I. It's a hobby until you actually make some money out
Joanne Lockwood: of it.
Tracy Stewart: Or you can, because you can't make money as a
Tracy Stewart: writer in all of its forms. You know, book writing, copywriting,
Tracy Stewart: writing articles, being a journalist. If you don't have access to
Tracy Stewart: the right tools, you cannot make money. And
Tracy Stewart: if they're saying you've got to make money before they'll give you access, then
Tracy Stewart: you're absolutely between a rock and a hard place. I mean, there are some
Tracy Stewart: organisations which do provide support, but
Tracy Stewart: often the forms and the processes
Tracy Stewart: that authors have to go through to even get somebody to look at their
Tracy Stewart: case are, you know, they're making it not possible to even
Tracy Stewart: get to that stage. It is a
Tracy Stewart: hugely frustrating situation for
Tracy Stewart: many people to find themselves in. Hugely,
Tracy Stewart: hugely difficult.
Joanne Lockwood: We originally started talking months back and around my own
Joanne Lockwood: book, the podcast Poetry, and unashamedly
Joanne Lockwood: are leading with the fact that it's helped or wholly developed
Joanne Lockwood: by AI. So I'm taking the podcast that you're listening to now,
Joanne Lockwood: feeding it through some AI technology with my own scripts and my own
Joanne Lockwood: customization to create poetry from that episode and
Joanne Lockwood: help me generate some of the other parts of the book, the notes
Joanne Lockwood: around the episode and everything else. With
Joanne Lockwood: AI becoming ubiquitous, becoming everyday
Joanne Lockwood: on people's phones in their pocket. Once you have something in your pocket on your
Joanne Lockwood: phone, it, it becomes the norm. Our kids today are going through
Joanne Lockwood: school with AI, and I've been at conferences over the last
Joanne Lockwood: few weeks and there's a real emphasis now on how business can
Joanne Lockwood: leverage AI. It's going from horse and cart to the petrol vehicle,
Joanne Lockwood: from log tables to slide rules to calculators. We're in that kind of
Joanne Lockwood: quantum acceleration now. This is going to change
Joanne Lockwood: the world of copywriting. Marketing people are now
Joanne Lockwood: competing with technology. So how can
Joanne Lockwood: the writing industry, wherever aspect, author, copywriter,
Joanne Lockwood: sub editor, editor, how can you embrace the reality of
Joanne Lockwood: the future?
Tracy Stewart: It's again, one of those questions where there's so many facets to the
Tracy Stewart: answer. It can be incredibly helpful. It can make
Tracy Stewart: things happen faster, it can produce ideas, it can help you
Tracy Stewart: structure a piece in a more, you know, more logical
Tracy Stewart: manner. There are lots of different ways in which AI can support
Tracy Stewart: doing your job better, but one of the things that I think pretty much
Tracy Stewart: is universal is that you still need a human
Tracy Stewart: to actually review and put humanity
Tracy Stewart: back into the work. So you know to what extent you do it. If you
Tracy Stewart: put something in and you, you, you put one of the prompts in that says,
Tracy Stewart: you know, please write me a piece that I can send through to an
Tracy Stewart: editor as for a submission for a newspaper article on X, Y, Z,
Tracy Stewart: it'll come back with something that it doesn't have
Tracy Stewart: soul, you know, because ultimately they're, they're,
Tracy Stewart: they're processing words, they're processing algorithms, they're
Tracy Stewart: processing, you know, information. But
Tracy Stewart: there is no sense to it, there's no real emotion
Tracy Stewart: behind it. And you can tell by the rhythm of the sentences
Tracy Stewart: that, you know, it's absolutely written to follow rules,
Tracy Stewart: it's not written to follow natural speech patterns and things like that. I
Tracy Stewart: genuinely do not think that AI
Tracy Stewart: certainly in the short to medium term can replace a lot of the work we
Tracy Stewart: do. But the challenge is that there are organisations
Tracy Stewart: like Meta currently who are using
Tracy Stewart: published work that has copyright in the front
Tracy Stewart: of the book to feed into their AI
Tracy Stewart: systems and train AI to become more
Tracy Stewart: human. Because it's picking up patterns of speech that are
Tracy Stewart: an essential part to any novel, for example, that's
Tracy Stewart: written. And this is one of the things that we're facing at the moment in
Tracy Stewart: the Society of Authors and the Good Law Project are all looking at
Tracy Stewart: ways in which you can do that. Because all of these books have been published
Tracy Stewart: with the copyright completely held
Tracy Stewart: in the appropriate words and format and still
Tracy Stewart: these are being fed into AI to train AI. So,
Tracy Stewart: you know, there are certain things that I use AI for to
Tracy Stewart: help me in my day to day work, but I
Tracy Stewart: absolutely cannot stand behind a system that supports
Tracy Stewart: effectively ceiling work that others have done to train AI
Tracy Stewart: to do that. So I may or may
Tracy Stewart: not have answered your question that you, you fundamentally asked. But I think
Tracy Stewart: that there are, there are lots of different aspects to it and actually, you
Tracy Stewart: know, there are things that AI can help
Tracy Stewart: disabled authors do.
Tracy Stewart: Dictation is a form of AI, you know, and
Tracy Stewart: that's something that's incredibly enabling. You
Tracy Stewart: know, that doesn't give systems the right to tape work
Tracy Stewart: and it doesn't give us the right to present
Tracy Stewart: AI fully. AI generated work as something that
Tracy Stewart: is, you know, is not. You know, you're very open
Tracy Stewart: with the web that you're talking about with your book, that you
Tracy Stewart: have used AI to, to help you generate and
Tracy Stewart: explore themes from the episodes. And, you know, you've
Tracy Stewart: been 100% open about that. But there are
Tracy Stewart: unfortunately people who are also producing work which is
Tracy Stewart: 100% AI generated and has had next to no input from a
Tracy Stewart: human. And they're not necessarily being badged as being things
Tracy Stewart: that are AI generated and so they can be
Tracy Stewart: produced in two hours, whereas writing a book
Tracy Stewart: can take months and Months, if not years and years. So
Tracy Stewart: it's creating imbalance as well in terms of the ability
Tracy Stewart: for people to produce work and content.
Joanne Lockwood: Yeah, I use AI a fair bit in some of my
Joanne Lockwood: writing. It's good for a wireframe, it's good for sort
Joanne Lockwood: of key bullets and headings. It's got
Joanne Lockwood: me, helped me and coached me into structuring, because I write
Joanne Lockwood: a lot of articles into HR type magazines, so it helps me structure those
Joanne Lockwood: sometimes. You know, most of these magazines have their own editorial
Joanne Lockwood: guidelines. They want it to have key takeaways, they want it to have
Joanne Lockwood: pick out key quotes which they can highlight in the article. Sometimes you write, you
Joanne Lockwood: get the article and then say, can you just generate me three punchy takeaways from
Joanne Lockwood: this at the bottom?
Tracy Stewart: Yeah.
Joanne Lockwood: And can you pick out a couple of quotes in it, or can you highlight
Joanne Lockwood: discreetly certain words and certain paragraphs to give it emphasis? And it'll go
Joanne Lockwood: boom and give you a few bolds, a few italics here and there. So sometimes
Joanne Lockwood: it's really great to sort of augment your creativity.
Tracy Stewart: Exactly. But it's not there to replace creativity.
Tracy Stewart: And fundamentally it can't. Because when, as a human, when we read something as
Tracy Stewart: AI generated, you know, by and large, you
Tracy Stewart: know, because it's not following those rhythms of speech or
Tracy Stewart: it's got, you know, it's too correct in the way
Tracy Stewart: that it's written. And then we see that we can't necessarily always
Tracy Stewart: name what we're feeling, but it's a sensation because it's something
Tracy Stewart: that is so embedded in human culture. Storytelling has
Tracy Stewart: a rhythm. Storytelling has a soul. Storytelling
Tracy Stewart: has a way of touching us when we read
Tracy Stewart: it. And we don't know the why and how of all of that,
Tracy Stewart: but what we do is sense it.
Joanne Lockwood: It's interesting. I picked up on the word you said there, soul. And
Joanne Lockwood: I've used that word before around AI. And, you know, you
Joanne Lockwood: think about some famous Android TV characters, you
Joanne Lockwood: know, Commander Data, people like that, that they, they lacked
Joanne Lockwood: humanity, they lacked humour, they lacked a soul. And that
Joanne Lockwood: was what, in Star Trek, Data always wanted. He wanted to be able to laugh.
Joanne Lockwood: You wanted to better understand a joke or find the irony of something
Joanne Lockwood: rather than an algorithm telling him that it was funny.
Joanne Lockwood: So, yeah, and I, I, I'm the same that I've done a lot of judging
Joanne Lockwood: on award ceremonies and, and categories and things.
Joanne Lockwood: And the last couple years, I've noticed that you read it and go, there's
Joanne Lockwood: no soul in this. There's no, there's no umph. There's no humanity. It's just
Joanne Lockwood: facts or. Or information that's been put out there, I think.
Joanne Lockwood: Where's that? The umph.
Tracy Stewart: This is where. When, you know, when we've got so many
Tracy Stewart: underrepresented communities and voices that are
Tracy Stewart: missing from bookshelves, in bookshops and libraries and from online
Tracy Stewart: platforms, there is a
Tracy Stewart: void that needs filling to enrich life,
Tracy Stewart: to enrich our experience of how others have
Tracy Stewart: experience life. These. These stories, they.
Tracy Stewart: They touch. They really do touch you. You
Tracy Stewart: know, I use the word soul a lot because I genuinely believe, you know, that
Tracy Stewart: we. We are. When we're reading something, we are looking for connection.
Tracy Stewart: And that connection doesn't have to be something that
Tracy Stewart: we know we can be touched and connected with something we had no
Tracy Stewart: idea about, no experience. Experience of. And that's the power
Tracy Stewart: for me, that's the power of being able to get more of these untold
Tracy Stewart: stories out into the world, is to enrich all of our
Tracy Stewart: lives.
Joanne Lockwood: Yeah. And I was talking to you earlier about my
Joanne Lockwood: father's eulogy, which I delivered at his funeral a few weeks ago,
Joanne Lockwood: and I took his eulogy and blended it with a poem by a
Joanne Lockwood: famous poet who often is quoted in
Joanne Lockwood: eulogies, Mary Elizabeth Fry. I took his eulogy and asked
Joanne Lockwood: AI to blend it with his poem, and it came up with something really beautiful,
Joanne Lockwood: completely relevant to my father. But a lot of that, if you read it, I
Joanne Lockwood: don't upsell my own ability here, but
Joanne Lockwood: delivering it, something that's written by AI,
Joanne Lockwood: you can put that emphasis, you can put the soul into the words
Joanne Lockwood: through the way you deliver, the pace, the tone, the modality of what you're
Joanne Lockwood: doing. Whereas if it's written on paper, author words
Joanne Lockwood: are going to work harder when they're written than when they're told, haven't they?
Tracy Stewart: Yeah, very much so. Very much so. And this is where I think, particularly
Tracy Stewart: with fiction, you know, being able
Tracy Stewart: to read fiction that's written by a person of colour
Tracy Stewart: or by someone in the LGBTQ community
Tracy Stewart: or by someone with a disability. There is no one
Tracy Stewart: that has a better authority to write that in a
Tracy Stewart: manner that is relatable and
Tracy Stewart: encourages that curiosity to know more than
Tracy Stewart: someone whose lived experience that is, having someone
Tracy Stewart: who is not gay write a gay
Tracy Stewart: character will not deliver the same result. I mean, you can use
Tracy Stewart: sensibility readers, and this applies to all of the
Tracy Stewart: underrepresented communities. You can use sensibility
Tracy Stewart: readers, sensitivity readers, but at the end of the day,
Tracy Stewart: there's a nuance when we write. There's a cadence,
Tracy Stewart: there's a turn. Of phrase, call it what you will, but
Tracy Stewart: unless you've lived that experience, you can actually not
Tracy Stewart: easily tell that story. And, you know, that's another
Tracy Stewart: challenge that people from all underrepresented communities
Tracy Stewart: faces, that very often, you know, their situation has been
Tracy Stewart: appropriated by someone who does not have that lived experience. And
Tracy Stewart: that in itself is a. Is another challenge because, you know, you see
Tracy Stewart: big publishers picking up books that, you know, do
Tracy Stewart: actually have a disabled character as a. As a
Tracy Stewart: protagonist, but it's not written by someone who has a disability,
Tracy Stewart: you know, and, you know, is that right? Is that wrong? You know, even
Tracy Stewart: with someone having read it for sensitive activity, why not publish
Tracy Stewart: someone who has had that experience and who can give
Tracy Stewart: much more depth to that story?
Joanne Lockwood: I've got. I mentioned earlier, I've got a couple of friends who
Joanne Lockwood: have physical disabilities and I see stories in the news about horror
Joanne Lockwood: story about a wheelchair user who was stuck on a train because there was
Joanne Lockwood: nobody available at the platform to lower the ramp to help them off. People trying
Joanne Lockwood: to navigate London, the bus stops without a drop curb or they can't
Joanne Lockwood: get up and down the curb, or the people on the bus won't let them
Joanne Lockwood: off, they tut and get angry when they're trying to move their
Joanne Lockwood: wheelchair or there's a push chair in the disabled space. There's all these stories
Joanne Lockwood: and we've all heard these, we've all seen them, but I travelled
Joanne Lockwood: across London with my friend who has cerebral palsy in a powered
Joanne Lockwood: wheelchair, on and off of buses, up and down
Joanne Lockwood: kerbs, across the town into
Joanne Lockwood: underground stations, having to navigate Victoria tube station with
Joanne Lockwood: a wheelchair user, going into a pub, going into the conference room.
Joanne Lockwood: And I didn't. Obviously I don't have their
Joanne Lockwood: lived experience, but I was able to have their experience by proxy
Joanne Lockwood: because I was right next to them during this journey. And all the
Joanne Lockwood: stories I see now have a relevance to my avatar of her,
Joanne Lockwood: if you like, knowing that experience. So I
Joanne Lockwood: experience her story through her eyes in real time. I
Joanne Lockwood: think just hearing it in the news, it never lands that same way. You have
Joanne Lockwood: to have that powerful story. I think that's what you're saying there.
Tracy Stewart: Yeah, very much so, yeah. We. Even if we
Tracy Stewart: experience that alongside somebody, we're still not living it in their
Tracy Stewart: skin, you know, which is, for me, something that's hugely important,
Tracy Stewart: is that, you know, these stories are told by the people who live them
Tracy Stewart: and we can, as you say, live them by proxy to some degree, but it's
Tracy Stewart: still. It's still far from what it's like to live. And when we're living
Tracy Stewart: it by proxy, often it's. It's. It's for a short amount of time,
Tracy Stewart: you know, and they are experiencing discrimination or
Tracy Stewart: they're experiencing, you know, difficulty, as you say, even something as
Tracy Stewart: simple as going up and down a curb or getting in a. Going on the
Tracy Stewart: tube. They're experiencing that day in, day out, year on year
Tracy Stewart: on year. And we can't imagine
Tracy Stewart: what that's like. We can be more sensible
Tracy Stewart: and more sensitive to it, but we can't truly understand
Tracy Stewart: what that means. And so to be able to have a true
Tracy Stewart: representation of what that is, I think, is hugely important.
Tracy Stewart: Hugely important, yeah.
Joanne Lockwood: Because I think we talk about putting the soul into the
Joanne Lockwood: conversation to the story that AI can't do.
Joanne Lockwood: I actually put the soul into the story of their story by being with
Joanne Lockwood: them. Because they could tell me about this problem, they could tell me about
Joanne Lockwood: what happened to them last night, they could tell me this, that and the other.
Joanne Lockwood: But what difference was, I could feel, and I think that's the
Joanne Lockwood: word, feel their anger, feel their frustration,
Joanne Lockwood: feel their disappointment, how upset they were,
Joanne Lockwood: how uncaring that situation was through
Joanne Lockwood: their eyes. So I was able to, as a human, feel from
Joanne Lockwood: them. And even when they tell me the story of another incident,
Joanne Lockwood: I haven't got that osmosis of feeling from them, have I?
Tracy Stewart: No, no, exactly. And
Tracy Stewart: there's no way we ever can. But the best chance we've got
Tracy Stewart: of really understanding somebody else's experience
Tracy Stewart: or, you know, seeing. And I think this is one of the things that, you
Tracy Stewart: know, kind of. We often look at this as in a
Tracy Stewart: negative sense, but actually, you know, the stories that
Tracy Stewart: I've read and the novels that are being written that are just not getting
Tracy Stewart: published, you know, these are celebrating the fact
Tracy Stewart: that, you know, people are who they are,
Tracy Stewart: that they are gay, they are someone
Tracy Stewart: of colour, they have a disability. But that's actually not the
Tracy Stewart: point of the story. It's. It's how these characters are
Tracy Stewart: developed and how these characters go through life and how
Tracy Stewart: they interact and, you know, the experiences that they. They have
Tracy Stewart: putting them comes back, I think, to one of the things we talked about
Tracy Stewart: early on, about this sort of, you know, normalisation, if
Tracy Stewart: you will, and I don't actually like the word normalisation, but actually making
Tracy Stewart: these part of everyday life. So, you know, if you're picking a crime novel up
Tracy Stewart: off the shelf or if you're picking a love story off of
Tracy Stewart: the shelf, it actually doesn't matter,
Tracy Stewart: you know, if the person is disabled or if the person
Tracy Stewart: is transgender, or if the person is of an indigenous
Tracy Stewart: population, it's that experience through
Tracy Stewart: their eyes and. And their situation, and
Tracy Stewart: there's just not enough of that out there.
Tracy Stewart: It was interesting because the other day, and I think I
Tracy Stewart: spoke about this when I had a chat with Marie,
Tracy Stewart: you can look in some of the big bookstores and they'll have
Tracy Stewart: a set of bookshelves which are labelled up and badged
Tracy Stewart: LBGPQ plus, you know, and they have it. It's kind of
Tracy Stewart: like, whoa, look at us. You know, we've got a bookshelf,
Tracy Stewart: you know, that's not integrating, that is not
Tracy Stewart: properly accepting, that's making it
Tracy Stewart: stand out and be different. And it's not. You know,
Tracy Stewart: you could. Yes, it makes it easier to find, but also it means
Tracy Stewart: that you lose a whole draught of audience because
Tracy Stewart: there are a lot of people who won't naturally gravitate to. Look
Tracy Stewart: in that little corner section where there are two books to
Tracy Stewart: two bookcases filled with LGBTQ fiction.
Tracy Stewart: How. How do you do it? You integrate it. You make it
Tracy Stewart: more the norm. You make it that you can look through a
Tracy Stewart: selection and you just. You pick out the author and the storyline. You're not
Tracy Stewart: going there solely for something that's written in that manner. There
Tracy Stewart: isn't a right or wrong answer. Because equally, there have been so many years where
Tracy Stewart: there were no books published at all that actually represented certain
Tracy Stewart: communities. You know, that. That it's important that we are able to
Tracy Stewart: see that there are now. But, you know, getting that balance right, I think it's
Tracy Stewart: kind of swung quite a long way the. The other way, now that it's
Tracy Stewart: sort of being trumpeted as being. This is. This is us being
Tracy Stewart: inclusive, this is us being diverse. And it's like,
Tracy Stewart: yeah, you can do it without the trumpet.
Joanne Lockwood: Yeah, I know exactly what you're saying there. Because, you know, often you go to
Joanne Lockwood: watch a film, watch a. A Netflix, whatever you got to watch,
Joanne Lockwood: and it's written in such a way, the directors cut
Joanne Lockwood: it in such a way that the plot is going to have a
Joanne Lockwood: romantic encounter between two of the characters. And it's not
Joanne Lockwood: explicit, it's not part of the major storyline. It's just human interaction.
Joanne Lockwood: There's going to be a bit of flirting and there's going to be a glance
Joanne Lockwood: at some point, isn't it? There's something going to go on here and you're
Joanne Lockwood: kind of drawn into the romantic. Will there be a bit of jumping into bed
Joanne Lockwood: later? Or there'd be a bit of romance later. And it's really powerful
Joanne Lockwood: when that is not a traditional heterosexual couple having that moment. You go,
Joanne Lockwood: does she look at her? Yay. So it's gonna, oh, I'm looking. And you
Joanne Lockwood: get drawn into it. And it's not the big purpose of the
Joanne Lockwood: story, it's that incidental storyline on the side from a
Joanne Lockwood: queer lens. And you don't want that to be on a queer shelf, you want
Joanne Lockwood: it to be on the mainstream shelf. It just so happens the relationship that's
Joanne Lockwood: evolved is not a heterosexual based relationship or a
Joanne Lockwood: transgender relationship. So. And I think it was an episode
Joanne Lockwood: of one of these Korean Alice in Borderlands. I think it was one of these
Joanne Lockwood: Korean type shows.
Joanne Lockwood: And halfway through the second series there was this fight scene
Joanne Lockwood: and everyone said, wow, go girl. Wow, you're
Joanne Lockwood: amazing. He said, that's my transgender superpower for you. It's like, well,
Joanne Lockwood: of course she's transgender. It didn't matter. It was just suddenly it
Joanne Lockwood: became a superpower that made her a great kickboxer. Halfway through the film
Joanne Lockwood: it was like, so that subtle
Joanne Lockwood: discovery doesn't have to centre the character on that. No
Joanne Lockwood: part of it. And I think Star Trek had a
Joanne Lockwood: same sex couple, two men were having a relationship on there,
Joanne Lockwood: but in the same way that another character flirted with another
Joanne Lockwood: character. It was just how it just again, go back to that word normalise.
Joanne Lockwood: We shouldn't be normalising it just didn't draw attention to it.
Tracy Stewart: No, exactly, exactly. You know, and I think
Tracy Stewart: that's across all genres, to be honest, of
Tracy Stewart: writing. It's. It's just important to
Tracy Stewart: almost, I think back to some avatar and you've got these
Tracy Stewart: blue human or non human, whatever, you know, however you
Tracy Stewart: interpret it, you know, and we're able to accept that,
Tracy Stewart: you know, without thinking twice. And yet if
Tracy Stewart: there's a film which is, is based around,
Tracy Stewart: you know, you say a full blown queer
Tracy Stewart: relationship or is focused around a
Tracy Stewart: character with, with disability, then often they'll
Tracy Stewart: look at it and they'll, you know, it's like, oh, I feel a bit uncomfortable
Tracy Stewart: with that. I mean, you, you going back to the point you
Tracy Stewart: made about the, you know, when someone has lost their leg, perhaps
Tracy Stewart: through war, through, you know, disease or illness. And I think about the character
Tracy Stewart: in Strike, Robert
Tracy Stewart: Galbraith's storyline and you know, that
Tracy Stewart: how that is portrayed is something that, you know,
Tracy Stewart: it became an important part of the storyline.
Tracy Stewart: You know, for some people it made them feel uncomfortable,
Tracy Stewart: you know, and it was interesting how it was portrayed in the,
Tracy Stewart: in the series when, you know, there were often occasions where the
Tracy Stewart: prosthesis would be on show in some way, shape or
Tracy Stewart: formal, or.
Joanne Lockwood: It took it off once, didn't he? Or put it back on or something.
Tracy Stewart: Yeah, back on. And, you know, you look at and you think, you know.
Tracy Stewart: And I remember distinctly, you know, somebody talking about it
Tracy Stewart: afterwards and saying, oh, well, you know, I don't. Don't think that was really necessary.
Tracy Stewart: And it's like, well, hold on a second. You know, this
Tracy Stewart: is someone's life. They weren't making it. I mean, he didn't have all of
Tracy Stewart: the rah, rah, rah stuff that we were talking about with, you know, with
Tracy Stewart: things that surround Paralympians. And, you know, and
Tracy Stewart: absolutely they should be celebrated, but there's a much
Tracy Stewart: bigger, broader community of people who are impacted
Tracy Stewart: because of disability or because they are different in some way, shape or form,
Tracy Stewart: perceived to be. They're not getting the support they're not getting. Their voices
Tracy Stewart: aren't getting heard. And that's something that needs to change. I
Tracy Stewart: mean, it's changed a little, but it's definitely not changed enough
Tracy Stewart: and not by any way, shape or form.
Joanne Lockwood: So if you're listening to this podcast right now, I mean, let me
Joanne Lockwood: ask a question on behalf of a listener. How
Joanne Lockwood: can someone who feels that they've got a story, whether that's fiction,
Joanne Lockwood: nonfiction, business, whatever it may be, but they've got a story to tell,
Joanne Lockwood: how should they go about it, A, overcome their imposter syndrome,
Joanne Lockwood: B, where do they start? And C, where do they head?
Tracy Stewart: Overcoming imposter syndrome is sadly something that if you're a
Tracy Stewart: writer, you pretty much have to learn to live with, you know, because
Tracy Stewart: it comes in waves. You know, you'll write something brilliant one day and you'll write
Tracy Stewart: something the following day that you. You look at and you think, why do I
Tracy Stewart: even think I can write? And it's sort of having that toolbox
Tracy Stewart: of being able to work through it, to write
Tracy Stewart: through it. You know, I always say when you. When someone's writing the first
Tracy Stewart: draught of anything, you know, we call it the shitty first
Tracy Stewart: draught, because that's what it is, you know, or it's
Tracy Stewart: a. It's a vomit draught. I mean, you can call it whatever you like, but
Tracy Stewart: essentially the first time when you're writing is just you
Tracy Stewart: telling yourself a story. You know, it truly is just you
Tracy Stewart: telling yourself a story because there's so much of our
Tracy Stewart: experiences, of our ideas, you know, and it doesn't matter, actually whether it's
Tracy Stewart: memoir, fiction, or whether it's a business book, what you're
Tracy Stewart: trying to do is you're trying to get everything that's in your head down
Tracy Stewart: onto the page about that particular subject. And it
Tracy Stewart: won't come out in the right order. It's impossible for it to come out in
Tracy Stewart: the right order because some ideas are just more bullish than others. You know,
Tracy Stewart: they'll. They'll be the ones that come to the fore. But you just. I
Tracy Stewart: would say, just. Just keep writing. Just write. You know, you don't have to share
Tracy Stewart: it with anyone at this point, but until you've got out all
Tracy Stewart: your thoughts and you've got your ideas and things will
Tracy Stewart: spark, you know, you'll. You'll write something down and the next day you'll suddenly think,
Tracy Stewart: I hadn't thought about it like that. So the next day you write something that
Tracy Stewart: you hadn't anticipated writing at all. Just
Tracy Stewart: write. Just get that as much as you can out of your head.
Tracy Stewart: And what that does is it opens up space in the brain to then
Tracy Stewart: look at what you've written and
Tracy Stewart: form it in a way that it can't when it's just all stuck in your
Tracy Stewart: head. So we always say, if you think you've got a story to write,
Tracy Stewart: the very best thing you can do is actually get it down on paper. Whether
Tracy Stewart: that's, you know, dictating it using a
Tracy Stewart: software programme or whether it's writing by hand.
Tracy Stewart: Just get. Get it out. Get it out of your head and onto the page.
Tracy Stewart: Once you've got something onto the page, you'll look at it and by and large
Tracy Stewart: you'll go, no clue what to do with it. Now, you know,
Tracy Stewart: no. You may even feel that it looks
Tracy Stewart: all right, but actually, you know, when you. When you look at it and you
Tracy Stewart: read it, you know, you know, it's not necessarily coher or it's got plot
Tracy Stewart: holes. If it's a piece of fiction, and at that point
Tracy Stewart: you can, you know, if you're. If you're part of a little writing
Tracy Stewart: group, you can ask someone to take a read of it if you want
Tracy Stewart: to have somebody professionally take a look at it. There are ways in which you
Tracy Stewart: can have someone literally just do a
Tracy Stewart: manuscript review. You can work with somebody,
Tracy Stewart: you know, relatively low cost, who can help you
Tracy Stewart: format, if you like that story and give you ways in which you can
Tracy Stewart: take it forward. And there are lots
Tracy Stewart: of different methods and approaches, but you cannot
Tracy Stewart: edit a blank page. It's a fundamental principle.
Tracy Stewart: Get it down and write it. When you've got something
Tracy Stewart: written, really think about who it is you're writing. For when
Tracy Stewart: someone picks up your book, what experience do you want them to take
Tracy Stewart: away? Do you want them to feel entertained? Do you want them
Tracy Stewart: to feel enlightened? Do you want them to feel
Tracy Stewart: angry about a certain situation, but then empowered to
Tracy Stewart: do something about changing their life in that respect?
Tracy Stewart: So really think about who the audience is. You can do a lot of this
Tracy Stewart: stuff yourself. You can, you can't complete the whole thing, but you can
Tracy Stewart: build a lot of this. And each time, each, each time you go back to
Tracy Stewart: your manuscript, you can refine it, you can change the focus, you can add in
Tracy Stewart: something, take something out, and then you'll get to the stage where you feel
Tracy Stewart: that you physically can't do any more with the piece of work that you've
Tracy Stewart: got in front of you. And at that point you do need
Tracy Stewart: in some shape or form a professional view of whether or not
Tracy Stewart: it's something that is workable as a, as a commercial project
Tracy Stewart: or even if you want to get it self published comes back
Tracy Stewart: to the fact that you, you have to respect the end user, you have to
Tracy Stewart: respect the reader. And so you need to then look at
Tracy Stewart: getting editing done, getting a decent cover design, and there
Tracy Stewart: are various ways in which you can do that, but fundamentally, get
Tracy Stewart: it out your head, get it out of your head and then look at it
Tracy Stewart: objectively and see where it can take you. And very often where you
Tracy Stewart: think your book is going to take you isn't at all where you end
Tracy Stewart: up, you know, you, because it, having all of that actually
Tracy Stewart: in front of you instead of having it all just, you know, randomly whizzing
Tracy Stewart: around your head means that you see it in a different light
Tracy Stewart: and you can see that a book that you thought might be, you
Tracy Stewart: know, a memoir actually turns into something that is much more
Tracy Stewart: collaborative with the reader and so may become more of a workbook or a
Tracy Stewart: self help book rather than a straight memoir. Or, you know, you may look at
Tracy Stewart: it and think, you know, I don't think I really want to tell this
Tracy Stewart: story as me, I'd like to tell the story through a
Tracy Stewart: character because that gives you that one degree of separation,
Tracy Stewart: if you like, between the experience. And you know, often these are very
Tracy Stewart: uncomfortable experiences. They're painful for people to
Tracy Stewart: work on and to look at. So I think, you know,
Tracy Stewart: first get it out there. Second, think about what you actually
Tracy Stewart: want the book to achieve and then think about how you can
Tracy Stewart: turn all of those ideas into something that
Tracy Stewart: meets those two objectives.
Joanne Lockwood: I read my late grandfather's memoirs, which he wrote
Joanne Lockwood: going back 20 or 30 years now and he was really
Joanne Lockwood: proud of it. But as a reader, it was just
Joanne Lockwood: historical dates that had no context or reference. It was
Joanne Lockwood: him dumping his life onto a bit of, onto, well, two
Joanne Lockwood: inches of paper probably in the end, you know, it's 80 odd years of life.
Joanne Lockwood: So you're so right. You know what matters to me? My story matters to me
Joanne Lockwood: and for me. But if, if I want my story to resonate with you,
Joanne Lockwood: I have to tell it so that it's, you know, what's in it for me?
Joanne Lockwood: Why should I? Why do I care? So if it's just about
Joanne Lockwood: me, my ego, it's not going to land with you, is it?
Tracy Stewart: No. And it's actually one of the most difficult things as a writer
Tracy Stewart: to realise that the book you're writing isn't about you at all. In that sense,
Tracy Stewart: it is always going to be about the end reader because if it is about
Tracy Stewart: just you, then you're going to have that experience that you have with your great
Tracy Stewart: grandfather's memoir. There's no context to it, there's no, how does
Tracy Stewart: this help me move forward in life? Or how does this help me understand
Tracy Stewart: something I didn't know? There has to be an exchange. As a writer, we write,
Tracy Stewart: we pour our heart and souls into the books, but as a reader, you're paying
Tracy Stewart: money for a book and you're
Tracy Stewart: investing time in reading that book. So there has to be a fair exchange
Tracy Stewart: between the writer and the reader.
Joanne Lockwood: So the brain chemicals, that reward thing in your brain's
Joanne Lockwood: dopamine or whatever it is, you got to get a pleasure, pleasure reaction from
Joanne Lockwood: it. It's going to change you in some way, hasn't it?
Tracy Stewart: It has. I'm sure we've all been there where, you know, we started a book
Tracy Stewart: and, you know, even if somebody else has, somebody enjoyed it, it just
Tracy Stewart: doesn't resonate with us, you know, and, you know, so we don't
Tracy Stewart: finish it and we feel disappointed by it in some way, shape or form.
Tracy Stewart: So, and that's often, you know, we talk about the fact that they may not
Tracy Stewart: have really thought about what they wanted their reader
Tracy Stewart: to feel, but you still might touch some people because
Tracy Stewart: we all get touched in different ways by all of these stories.
Joanne Lockwood: One thing you missed in your bit of advice here, Tracy, was call you,
Joanne Lockwood: message you for help, advice and guidance. How
Joanne Lockwood: can our listener here get hold of you to find out more?
Tracy Stewart: Well, they can go to my website, which is
Tracy Stewart: www.freshlypress.com. they can
Tracy Stewart: look me up on Instagram as Tracy Stewart, author. And
Tracy Stewart: both of those have the ability for people to connect with me through a message
Tracy Stewart: and the details about the services that I offer. Um, and I do, I do
Tracy Stewart: offer a gift call for people. Because I think one of the things that's important
Tracy Stewart: is, is that people can have the opportunity to just explore
Tracy Stewart: some of these ideas first. And often, you know, I'll talk with people and
Tracy Stewart: then they'll go away and do something and then they'll come back later.
Tracy Stewart: But sometimes they just need that potential to
Tracy Stewart: their idea through to, to say out loud, I've got this idea
Tracy Stewart: for a book and it's hard to do that sometimes with
Tracy Stewart: friends or family who don't understand the industry or don't
Tracy Stewart: necessarily understand what the type of degrees you're looking to
Tracy Stewart: achieve. So I always recommend just talk to a professional. There's
Tracy Stewart: lots of professionals who offer the opportunity to have that initial
Tracy Stewart: chat and just sometimes articulating the fact that you
Tracy Stewart: want to write that book and get a little bit of direction can make all
Tracy Stewart: the difference between stepping over that threshold of imposter syndrome
Tracy Stewart: and actually getting the words down on the page.
Joanne Lockwood: And I would say you've been extremely helpful,
Joanne Lockwood: insightful in the conversation we've had about my own creation. So,
Joanne Lockwood: you know, and I would encourage anybody to reach out. You're very
Joanne Lockwood: generous and very insightful, so it's been really helpful. So thank you,
Joanne Lockwood: Tracy. Tracy's been an absolute blast. We've been chatting now for a few quite.
Joanne Lockwood: Oh, way too long. But it's thoroughly enjoyable. But no,
Joanne Lockwood: thank you so much for your time again. I'm sure if you're listening to
Joanne Lockwood: this, then people will get in contact with you as well, Tracy. So thank you
Joanne Lockwood: so much.
Tracy Stewart: It's been a pleasure. Thanks for the opportunity.
Joanne Lockwood: As we bring this conversation to a close, I want to express
Joanne Lockwood: my deepest gratitude to you, our listener, for lending
Joanne Lockwood: your ear and heart to the cause of inclusion.
Joanne Lockwood: Today's discussion struck a chord. Consider subscribing to
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Joanne Lockwood: colleagues. Let's amplify the voices that matter.
Joanne Lockwood: Got thoughts, stories or a vision to share?
Joanne Lockwood: I'm all ears.
Joanne Lockwood: Reach out to
Joanne Lockwood: jo.lockwood@seechangehappen.co.uk
Joanne Lockwood: and let's make your voice heard. Until next time, this
Joanne Lockwood: is Joanne Lockwood signing off with a promise to return with
Joanne Lockwood: more enriching narratives that challenge, inspire and
Joanne Lockwood: unite us all. Here's to fostering a more inclusive world one
Joanne Lockwood: episode at a time. Catch you on the next bite.