Show Notes
In today’s episode, journalist and author Sam Baker talks to fellow writer Kate Spicer about her latest book
The Shift. Join Sam and Kate as they discuss the cultural silence around menopause, the invisibility of women past child-bearing age and the
freedom, power and confidence of life after menopause.
The Birmingham Lit Fest Presents... podcast brings writers and readers together to discuss some of 2020’s best books. Each Thursday across the next few months we’ll be releasing new episodes of the podcast, including wonderful discussions
about writing, poetry, big ideas and social issues. Join us each week for exciting and inspiring conversations with new, and familiar, writers from the Midlands and beyond.
Take a look at the rest of this year's digital programme on our website:
https://www.birminghamliteraturefestival.org/.
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Credits
Curator: Shantel Edwards (Festival director)
Guest Curator: Kit de Waal
Production: 11C/ Birmingham Podcast Studios for Writing West Midlands
TRANSCRIPT
BLF Podcast Transcription, Episode 7 – Sam Baker in conversation with Kate Spicer
Kit de Waal
Welcome to the Birmingham Lit Fest Presents…podcast series. I’m Kit de Waal and I’ve worked with the Festival Director, Shantel Edwards, as Guest Curator of this year’s podcast series. Each Thursday across the next few months we’ll be releasing new episodes of the podcast, including wonderful discussions about writing, poetry, big ideas and social issues. In today’s episode, journalist and author Sam Baker talks to fellow writer Kate Spicer about her latest book The Shift. Part memoir and part feminist manifesto, The Shift redefines the narrative around menopause and makes visible the lives and experiences of women over 40. In this podcast, Sam and Kate discuss the cultural silence around menopause, the invisibility of women past child-bearing age and the freedom, power and confidence of life after menopause.
Kate Spicer
Hello, and welcome to the Birmingham Literature Festival. My name is Kate Spicer and I'm here with Sam Baker. Sam started her career in journalism and was the editor of some very significant British women's magazines including Just 17, Company, Cosmopolitan, Red. She went on to edit an internet magazine called The Pool, which was multiple award winning and generally recognized as changing the way women's journalism was done online. She's also written five novels, and now is the author of The Shift her first nonfiction book and a podcast of the same name. This is an extraordinary book and I would expect no less from a woman who was once my editor. It is very deep, very wide, it bears her soul, her guts, and also, I should say, her vagina.
Sam Baker
Thanks Kate!
Kate Spicer
It’s one of the most extraordinary books I've ever read about the menopause, because it is so incredibly fearless, and also refuses to get too boring on the technical stuff. Sam, can you start, can we start with a reading?
Sam Baker
Yeah, we can start with a reading and hopefully one that doesn't mention my vagina. I'm just going to read from the very beginning of the book.
‘It dawned on me that something wasn't right around the time I was 46. It could have been earlier, but after a lifetime of gynaecological chaos, I didn't pay much attention when my periods dribbled more or less to a halt. My confidence crashed. Not ideal when you've just ditched a high-profile job to start a business that depends, at least in part, on your capacity for self-belief. And now you're standing in the kitchen howling that you're a failure and resigning was a terrible mistake. Where once I would have bulldozed straight on, confident on the outside, if not inside, now I simply couldn't see a way through. On top of that came the depression, which was less a matter of highs and lows than a case of lows and lowers. I had less than ever to be depressed about I just was. Then came the sweats. Oh Lord, the sweats. I'm not sure which was worse. The hot flushes during the day when you could at least feel them roaring in and try to get to the nearest loo to lie down, body pressed to the cold and inevitably vile tiled floor until they passed or the night sweats. Often, I’d wake in a puddle, skin-soaked, hair slicked to my body, sheet and duvet drenched. I seriously worried I’d started wetting the bed. What the hell was going on? Then my good friend the flesh duvet moved in and decided to stay. Indefinitely. Of course, I had a suspicion, but I couldn't bear to accept it. I wasn't old enough was I? I was 46 going on, I don't know 30. I looked young for my age people always said. I felt young, wasn't menopause something that happened to old people? Was I old?
Despite the countless blogs and Facebook groups and self-help books, I didn't really know where to turn. None of my friends would admit to being perimenopausal yet and seeking help on social media felt like a public admission of aging, which sounds ridiculous now, but then, only a few years ago, when no one would even whisper the word menopause, it felt like a huge deal. Eventually, unable to carry on in the body and brain of someone I hardly recognised, I barged into the office of the gynaecologist who's helped me with my endless problems yelling “help give me all the drugs!” Brushing aside her futile attempts to talk me through a leaflet that explained the link between HRT and breast cancer, I left triumphant with a prescription and the leaflet. I never did read the leaflet. Right then I didn't care about the potential risks or side effects. All I cared about was taking a magic pill to bring me back to me. I took it and lucky for me, it worked. Slowly I started to re-emerge. As months passed, I began to be able to identify other women with that faintly deranged “what the fuck is happening to me” look in their eyes, and a tendency to suddenly overheat. It didn't happen overnight. After all, it's not as if you can go up to complete strangers and say, “oh, I noticed you were looking a bit hot”, and at work I was surrounded by women who were up to 20 years younger than me. Their conversation was all about whether they would ever be able to afford to buy a flat and if or when to start trying for a baby. Why would they care about someone so ancient that their eggs, and plenty of other bits, were drying up? If I'd known then what I know now, I would have approached the whole thing totally differently. I wouldn't have spent precious hours hunting down other women who looked a bit hot and irritable and kept tugging uncomfortably at their clothes. Instead, I would have developed a radar for the rare, relaxed older woman you see very occasionally in the streets, in cafes, at work dos. Rumour has it they're more plentiful in certain parts of America but in the UK, you have to look pretty hard to spot them and, on finding them, I would have begged them to share their wisdom. How did they get there? And what was it like on the other side? How did they shift from hot, flabby, depressed, confused, and convinced they had early onset dementia, to calm, radiant and in control, with an indefinable air of togetherness, and an ability to rise above the whole shit show? Journalists tend to romanticise or demonise menopause. It's a time when you supposedly either stop caring about the shape of your jeans and start wafting contentedly along beaches in wide leg linen trousers, sensible sandals and floppy hats, or become the plate smashing heroine of revenge of the menopausal woman. Unsurprisingly, the reality is not a lot like that. You’re either judged for taking HRT, or judged for not taking it, for giving up or living in denial, for Botox-ing or not Botox-ing. The list of things you're doing wrong is endless and let's face it, that list was never short, just ask a pregnant woman, or indeed any woman. Plus, everyone is suddenly an expert, especially the berks on the internet. But in reality, nobody knows enough about the menopause and that includes the bulk of the medical profession. But don't despair. This book is here to show you that on the other side of menopause, there is a whole new life, and an opportunity to discover a new, unexpected version of you. A body, mind, attitude and sexuality that is recognisably you but different, a you who is not ruled by your fertility, or lack of it. It's called the shift.’
Kate Spicer
Fantastic. I love your book, Sam. And it's quite astonishing, in the number of different elements you've got in there. For a start, it's a romp of a read, you know, you can get lost in it. But you know, you have a very strong feminist sensibility and there is something of a feminist manifesto in there. It's an extremely brave memoir and you go through things that you probably didn't need to address in this book, but you have and it's all the better for it. And we'll talk about that a little bit later, why. It’s a polemic for sure and it's a polemic that needed writing, it is not because you're an angry menopausal woman, it is a polemic that needed writing and it is a self-help. I did find myself quite sort of nourished and nurtured at the end of reading it. I actually don't know where to start. It's a real cracker. I'm gonna start and ask you, firstly, how are you now?
Sam Baker
I'm great now. Seriously. And that sounds facetious, but no, I really am and that was what made me decide to go there with the book. Because, you know, my menopause was really grim. I mean, really, really grim and, you know, it's worth saying that, not everybody's will be. You know, some people just sail through it and personally, I don't want to know them or talk to them, but, you know, some people just don't even hardly notice it. But mine was terrible. And when I came out the other side, and I felt, I mean, it wouldn't be an exaggeration to say I felt completely different. Certainly, psychologically and I just thought, how would it have been to have, you know, for a book to have existed that said, you know, it might be terrible, and these are the things you might go through. But actually, on the other side, is a whole new thing. It's like, I think there’s a tendency to think that menopause is like, it's the end, it's the end of the story, full stop. And it's not, it's just the end of a chapter and there's a whole, there are loads more chapters.
Kate Spicer
I mean, it's quite, in a way you’ve sort of written it in a big sisterly way. It's like, you know, read this, don't suffer like I did.
Sam Baker
A swear-y big sister.
Kate Spicer
Yeah, the best kind, but you, I mean, you interview a lot, a lot of women, very wide ranging and you've also clearly done your research and you've read a lot of the existing material. If you were to give your menopause marks out of ten, where ten is that poor woman in the vaginal, here we go, how many times can we say the word vagina in this podcast?
Sam Baker
It will end up with a big E on the end of the title of the podcast for explicit.
Kate Spicer
Yeah, like an NWA album. But, if you were to give your, because there's a lady in your, Jane, in your vaginal atrophy chapter, which I actually quite enjoyed I liked reading bits out to my boyfriend. There's a lady in there who clearly has the most horrific menopause, if we put her at say 10, and the woman who sails through that none of us want to know at zero, where do you think you sit?
Sam Baker
There were moments when it was probably a seven, or maybe an eight. I mean Jane, the woman you’re talking about, Jane Lewis, who's written a leg cross inducing book called Me and My Menopausal Vagina, about her experience of vaginal atrophy. I mean, she, what that poor woman has been through is incredible but no, I would say I probably netted out at about a seven.
Kate Spicer
Right, that's a tough one. And how long did that last?
Sam Baker
Oh, God. Well, like I said I started, I kind of became aware that everything wasn't right when I was about 46. But I wasn't really aware of what, what wasn't right at that point. Because I think that you're, you know, we're all aware that, oh, yeah, menopausal women, they get hot, and they get a bit kind of like padded, and they’re kind of like the butt of jokes on TV. And that's about it. So the mental health symptoms of menopause are massive, and so many, and they're the most common symptoms. But I just, when I kind of started having massive anxiety attacks, my confidence was through the floor. You know, it was just horrific. And then also the brain fog. I didn't know. I didn't know what that was. So, it probably took, I don't know, maybe took me 18 months, couple of years to even work that out, what that was, so probably all in all, it lasted about five years. But that's not hugely long. And by that, the end of that I was, you know, taking HRT and working through other stuff, and, you know, so it was not five years of unmanageability, probably two years.
Kate Spicer
It's funny, my mum, my mother, I mean, we're roughly the same age. I'm 51. And you are 54?
Sam Baker
Yeah.
Kate Spicer
My mum never really talked to me about periods in the kind of 80s. So, they were a bit of surprise when they came and I have to say she didn't talk to me about the menopause, either. And that, you know, like, exactly like you say, you know, it's a kind of, it's a stereotype, a cliche, like a cartoon type understanding we have of something that's going to profoundly change our bodies and our lives, because we're not taught anything about it. And so I, you mentioned early onset dementia, that was the thing that in the end made me realise I might be menopausal, is that I just kept, I actually thought I had dementia, I was so frightened. But I didn't mention it to anybody because I was so paranoid. And it was then I had this bizarre reaction to eating raw onion and my face swelled up and it was like anaphylactic shock. And I went to my GP, who, thankfully, was middle aged, as you say, in your book, middle aged female GPs tend to be a lot more sympathetic than the other female GP I went to who told me, oh, you'll be fine, you’ll sail through it, very few people have a bad time.
Sam Baker
And how old was she?
Kate Spicer
Oh, she was like, 30, she was a child. But yeah, and so this anaphylactic shock, and this early onset dementia turned out to be the menopause and I went on HRT, and I was like, whoa, my life’s back, it was the most kind of wonderful thing. Anyway, we're not here to discuss my menopause, but it has been a real relief to have seen it written about in so much detail. And also, with such great humour, it's a really good read. Just a little bit about your process before we go more into the nitty gritty of the material. You know, how did you start? Where did you start?
Sam Baker
Um, I think one of the reasons I really enjoyed, I mean, I can say, I enjoyed writing it, I mainly enjoyed writing it, was just, I was just a journalist about it. You know, I just did journalism. So, I did loads of research, all of the kind of, you know, reading all the menopause books, realising in the main that this was why I had never read any menopause books.
Kate Spicer
Why what were they like?
Sam Baker
Well, they're either extremely dry, or, God, every word has a connotation. [Laughter]. Every word has a connotation now, but they are extremely dry and academic, or they're a bit, you know, ooh take this vitamin with your guava juice. And I'm not that person. But there is actually one great book, which I will give a little plug because it's, it's quite something. It's a book called Flash Count Diary by Darcey Steinke. And I quote from it a few times in the book, because it's the only other book that I've read that made me think, yeah, that makes sense to me. So, I did, I did the book learning research, and started doing face to face interviews. But I also, I mean, my favourite bit of the whole process really was I did a shout out on social media for women to volunteer to tell me their stories. I was really conscious that, you know, I am a straight white cis woman. You know, I come from a working-class background, but I've lived a middle-class life all the time I’ve worked in media, so my experience is limited, you know, so I wanted to speak to as many women as I possibly could. Then lockdown happened, I was about halfway through. So a lot of the conversations then took place online or on social media. So, I did, I did a journalism approach and basically did all the research and then I sat down to write it. And I always planned for each chapter to be kind of memoir, and then other women and then, you know, and then social and political context, and all of that, but I hadn't really quite envisaged some of the memoir working out quite the way it did.
Kate Spicer
Yeah, I mean, there’s some incredibly intense moments of memoir in there, which really surprised me actually. Because I mean, having worked for you on the ill-fated but incredibly brilliant Minx in the late 90s, you are an honest person, but you don't go into a lot of detail about your life. And I wouldn't have called, I wouldn't have expected to see these moments of memoir that are, that are very intense.
Sam Baker
Are you trying to say I've overshared?
Kate Spicer
No, I'm not trying to say you’ve overshared, I also wrote a memoir that could be called endless amounts of oversharing. I don't think it's oversharing at all, it just surprised me for you. And I wondered how hard it was for you to go into those moments of intense memoir where you discuss, you know, your repeated sexual abuse as a teenager. I mean, less surprising, you discuss having to deal with lots of horrible men who, let us know that the feminist cause still has a long way to go. You talk about your eating disorder, you know, you do really, really go there. Can you talk me through that process? Did it surprise you? Did it just happen? Did you sit and consider it? Did you think about how much detail to go into? Was it cathartic?
Sam Baker
I didn't sit and consider it. If I’d sat and considered it, there's certainly a couple of chapters that wouldn't be there. I think, once I started it, there are two things really, I mean, it's not disingenuous to say that, a couple of chapters, especially at the end when, I kind of find writing a book, when you get towards the end, it's almost a bit like riding a bike downhill. The rest of writing the book isn't like that, it's like a big uphill slog. But with every book I've ever written, there's been a point where you turn the corner almost and then you're just typing, typing, typing frantically and it all comes spewing out and certainly, a couple of chapters at the end were really like that. And the bravery chapter in particular, it wasn't the chapter I intended to write when I sat down and wrote it. But you know, I wrote it very quickly. And then I went and said to my husband, oh, I think maybe you need to read this. Tell me what you think. And he went, whoa, I didn't know you were gonna do that and I said, no, nor did I. But actually, you know, one of the big drives of the book for me is that, I just think that if we all talked about it more, if menopause was just a thing that we talked about in the way that young women now talk about periods it just wouldn't be the issue that it is. And I think it would start to address a lot of the societal problems around the way older women are treated. So I got to that point and I just thought, in order for this, sorry for the writers’ speak, for this narrative arc to make sense I need to tell the truth about the resolution that menopause gave me and that meant I had to, I felt I had to write that bravery chapter. It made everything make sense and that's, it's definitely one of the reasons why I feel so much better within myself than I ever have because instead of spending my life fighting against the mixed, well, mixed emotions would be something of an understatement, that that abusive relationship gave me. I dealt with it and I dealt with something that had taken me 30 years to deal with. So, I felt like it was really, really important to say that. I mean, ironically, sorry, the vaginal atrophy chapter, that didn’t bother me at all writing that. I mean I felt a bit conscious of my mum reading it, poor woman, but it didn't bother me. It's more the emotional stuff that was a little more stressful.
Kate Spicer
You quote Simone de Beauvoir and Germaine Greer, both kind of more or less saying that actually, it's a good time, the postmenopausal period is a really good time. And I was going to see, this is rather embarrassing, a shaman once and he, ugh he, said to me, this is a great time for you, you're about to come into your power, but you know, because of your menopause, and I was like you what mate, I’m on HRT. But the book is about the physical and mental shit that we will go through but also the mental stuff that we need to go through, exactly what you were talking about there. Do you think part of confronting the menopause is not just about HRT, do I, don’t I, and the old vaginal atrophy and hot sweats and this that and the other, but is it about confronting the demons in our lives? Does menopause ask us to confront our demons?
Sam Baker
I don't know whether I would have put it like that. I think the thing that I found when I was talking to women when I was researching the book was that what I think it does is it, it gives you permission to put yourself first. And that's, whether that's because of the drop in oestrogen, you know or whether it's something to do with that or whether it's to do with life stage, whether it's, for women who have children, with the children having left, but every woman I spoke to, almost without exception, had reached a point in her life somewhere between 45 and 55 in the main, where she had gone enough. Enough. I am not putting up with this anymore. And whether that was psychological, whether that was a relationship, whether it was work, every single one had reached that point which I found absolutely fascinating.
Kate Spicer
I was talking to a psychotherapist the other day, he said that, I mean, he was generalising, but he said, around middle age, men tend to narrow their focus and shut down. Whereas women's focus really widens out and they look to the world for adventures, whereas men can really, they're just all about their telly and their rituals and their routines.
Sam Baker
So many of the women I spoke to said that about relationships. I mean, actually one of the most fascinating chapters to write was the one that was about sex and relationships. And you know, the number of women who, I would say 50% of them had either left their partners or wanted to leave their partners. And of the ones who didn't, you know, several of them I mean, there’s one, I can't remember which one it was, but one of them saying, you know, basically he's a nice bloke, he's a good dad, he's a perfectly good husband. But you know, all he wants, really wants to do is play golf, have a pint on the way back and eat kung po prawn and then do it all again tomorrow. And that's not what I want. And there was another woman who'd left her husband of 24 years once her children were more or less older. And she said that most of her friends just couldn't accept that she hadn't left for someone else, that she'd left for her. And she went to see a therapist, and they said, this is so common that you know, at this age, women leave their husbands and it's very, very rare. I mean, I keep saying husbands, but it was mainly in a heterosexual context. That it's very, very rare that men leave just to leave. They, you know, almost always leave for someone else which I thought was fascinating.
Kate Spicer
The book is very well researched, although you wear the research very, very lightly, as I say it's quite a romp. But there was some really interesting stuff in there about an increase in eating disorders in menopausal women and higher rates of suicide. Talk me through some of the things that you learnt, I mean, I have to say when I was reading some of the things, it was a bit of a penny drop. When I started becoming menopausal, I became really fascinated by fasting. I don't necessarily think it was a bad thing, but I did get slightly into a kind of obsession about eating and stuff. But talk me through some of the things that you discovered that surprised you. I mean, because I've also seen menopausal women really get their shit together when it comes to looking after themselves and you actually have a chapter about that, about women, you know, realising they’ve got to look after themselves because this, you know, this is the only body they’ve got, talk me through some of the surprising things you learned about.
Sam Baker
Well, 50 did seem to be a real, real turning point for loads of women in terms of fitness. And, you know, it was weird, last week, I went out for a drink with some friends and a guy was there and he's like, oh, you know, my wife, she couldn’t come because she's gone kayaking. And I was like, kayaking. She's probably, in fact she's, I think she's exactly my age she’s 54. And so, I asked has she always been sporty and he was like, no it started when she was 50. And I think it's partly to do with like, you've got one body, use it or lose it. But it's also that point when you realise your body is changing, and it feels out of your control. You know, in the way that in adolescence, your body changes. And that, you know, when most young people, young women develop eating disorders is at that point, that point when their body starts to spiral out of their control. And I think it's really interesting that that kind of almost recurs. The more I read, the more it makes perfect sense to me that menopause is almost like a reverse puberty. And it's like all the kind of maelstrom of going through puberty but with the additional, you know, responsibility and grown up-ness, allegedly, of being 50. And it was that, when, like you say, when that penny dropped, I just thought, well, yeah, because, you know, puberty is all those hormones rushing in and menopause is all those hormones rushing out. And we are programmed to think, society's programmed to think that that's a bad thing. But why? Just because, you know, in what world, are we still in a world where women are only useful if they can have children?
Kate Spicer
Well, I mean, this leads me to another big thing that you go into. I mean, without putting any fine point on it, it's the loss of your fuckability. I can remember, there was a picture by-line of me in Minx and I'm just wearing like, the most ridiculously boyish un-sexy clothes. And I look at that picture and I think, oh, why didn't I look more hot? But like, why do I even think I should look hot?
Sam Baker
Yes, yeah. Why did you even? Because that’s still, you know, that is still the way that young women are judged. I mean, they're still expected to kind of pay their rent, if you'd like, in society by looking and behaving in the appropriate way. Even though a lot of them are pushing back against that I think it's still, it's still a really, really big thing. Well, there's that brilliant Kristen Scott-Thomas Fleabag quote, isn't there, the Kristen Scott Thomas quote which I use at the beginning, and which was a real kind of lightbulb moment for me in writing the book. I mean, she said, ‘The menopause comes, and it's the most wonderful fucking thing in the world. Yes, your entire pelvic floor crumbles. And you get, sorry so many swears, you get fucking hot, and no one cares. And then you're free. You're no longer a slave. No longer a machine with parts. You’re just a person. It's horrendous. But then it's magnificent.’ And that's, that's how it feels. You're a person, you know, what the book is about really, is about that. For me the journey through, that menopause was the link through to finding this was my old identity and this is my new identity. And I think identity is completely the right word. It’s like who am I now? That's who I was then. And I’m like do I still want to be that person? If I do, then great. If you do knock yourself out to keep being that person, but I'm happier in the new identity that I found. And I think that's, you know, what a lot of this is about, you know, anti-aging treatments and, you know, all your clothes suddenly not suiting you, all of that stuff. It's all about, it's not that they're different, it's that you are and this process is about well, okay, who am I now and who do I want to be.
Kate Spicer
One thing, one place you do not go, is death.
Sam Baker
I can’t believe you’ve found one.
Kate Spicer
One thing menopause really made me confront, and I think its part of what you were talking about, you're talking about who do I want to be. And one of the things I had, I didn't want to make this all about me, but it is effectively all about us women who are going through so I felt like I wanted to share, the menopause for me really made me realise I've only got a few decades left. And I really had to sit with death and the pandemic’s helped with that. But I've really had to sit with death and my own death. And nothing focuses your mind like considering the end. And I was like, whoa, I need to sort my shit out. So, I can really enjoy the next however many decades I’ve got. I hope its decades. Did you consider that at all?
Sam Baker
I don't think I did, you know, I think, I would say for me it was, I think it's the second chapter I talk about kind of a sense of an expiry date and feeling moribund, which is the worst word in the world. And so I think I didn't really think about death, other than to think about the fact that while I was writing this book, there was a four week period where three women who were my age, you know, bright, intelligent, successful women all died of cancer in the space of one month, and that really concentrated my mind, I wasn't really thinking so much about my own death as I was thinking, what are you moaning about? You are here. You are comparatively really, really healthy. You know? And that's, you know, as Nora Ephron said, ‘consider the alternative’.
Kate Spicer
Yes. Rest in peace, Nora Ephron included. As a writer, I have to ask you about your process, and your routines. I'm so fascinated by all of that. What is your writing routine? How is your discipline? As you know, I always get my copy in late. Do you write to a kind of incredible, get up at five, write for three hours then get on being, you know, a world-famous editor? What is your process Sam Baker?
Sam Baker
Well, I haven't really got one, I'd like to say I do. I've been really all over the place actually, for the last couple of years. So, I mean, this book, I did the research really, by way of procrastination, and I tried, I tried to keep a structure because for most of my working life, I've worked in an office, and I've commuted and, you know, it was nothing, it meant nothing to me for my working day to be between 12 and 14 hours. And so, really, I've been going through a process of adjusting to not having to work stupidly long hours and that kind of presenteeism, I must be a good person because I'm working really hard. And no, I tend to, I'm a bit of a, you know, like, I was the person who revised the night before exams. I'm the person who writes the feature the day before it's due, not like you the day after its due, but literally the day before. And that's how I wrote the book really, I got to the point where I’d done all the research, and I couldn't put it off any longer. And then I wrote it in, I pretty solidly just got up every day, did it, went to bed, got up every day, did it. So I don't, I'd love to be one of those people, like, who gets up at five, does three hours, gets the kids off school, goes to the gym, does another three hours, I'm just not, I'm not that person, you know?
Kate Spicer
Yeah, I read once that Caitlin Moran wrote How to be a Woman by getting up at five o'clock every morning and writing for a couple of hours. And I've just, I'm waiting for that moment to kick in for me. Do you plot out your books? Do you get graph paper and chart it out and put in key events that you think are really important? How does all that work?
Sam Baker
Well, with all the fiction, I did plot it out, because when I was writing those, I did have a full-time job so I was writing, you know, all weekend, every weekend. And if you put something down for a week, and then you go back to it, you need something that helps you easily pick up where you left off. But with this, the way nonfiction works is that I had written an enormous proposal and the book was sold. So, the proposal was probably 15,000 words.
Kate Spicer
Did you have sample chapters in there?
Sam Baker
Yeah, there was, there weren't whole chapters, they were probably the first couple of thousand words of two or three chapters to show the variety of content. There was a great big structural breakdown, there was a chapter breakdown, and then the introduction of the book, pretty much was the pitch document. So, it was all mapped out. And so, then I just went off and researched, read all the material, broke it down into the subjects and then did all the interviews to pad that out. So, I mean, it's quite different to writing fiction, it’s much more like a great big journalism project, whereas writing fiction is much more, okay, I've got all my stuff on the wall, and this is this character, and that's that character, and you just have to sit down every day and do it, whereas I didn't approach this in the same way at all.
Kate Spicer
So, fiction versus nonfiction, it's a structural difference or do you engage emotionally differently with the project?
Sam Baker
Yeah, I mean, this project was obviously for me very personal, as well, but I think it's, you know, fiction is, it's very solitary. I mean, so I think it's really strange being a fiction writer in you know, today's climate where you have to spend so much time selling your book, but the rest of your time is spent like sitting at your desk or in your bed just writing in your head with made up people. Whereas nonfiction is much more journalism and I think it comes more naturally to me to do it. I like writing fiction but I'm always really grateful when it's finished.
Kate Spicer
And with writing, when did you first realize that you wanted to be a writer and was writing books about feeding that need when you were an editor because actually editors do bugger all writing really don't they?
Sam Baker
Oh, no writing at all apart from the dreaded editor’s letter which you spend the entire month avoiding writing. I wanted to write stories when I was little. And I remember when I was nine we were set, it was really hard project for nine year olds, we were set this project where we had to write a 40 page story, and only two of us in the class finished it and in fact, I didn't get 40, I only got 30. And I remember the teacher saying to me you need to keep this because you'll look back when you're a bit older, and you'll see why I'm laughing. And it was all like, you know, here's this character and he's three foot six. But then I went, you know, the school I went to it wasn't a school where kids got to do anything like that. You know, I remember going to a Careers teacher and saying I want to, I had a new obsession with Smash Hits, and saying to the careers teacher, who asked what are your plans, I was like, well, I want to work on Smash Hits, I want to be a journalist. I want to be doing that. And he just looked at me and went girls like you don’t do things like that, you can be a nurse or a teacher. And both of those jobs are incredibly important, good, valuable jobs but that was what I was told, to get out and go be a nurse or a teacher.
Kate Spicer
Wow, Sam girls like you don't, that's quite an extreme kind of trigger I imagine when you go into, I imagine the managing director of a publishing company to apply for the job of one of Britain's premier high fashion titles and the guy tells you girls like you don't get jobs like this.
Sam Baker
Do you know what, it was only when I said that just now, when I said girls like you don’t that I thought, oh my god, you know, I've written that whole book, this is not the first interview I've done about it and I just thought and that was the point when I realised that's what happened. So, I've literally had a revelation live on air that that's what happened. When he said that to me, when he said you don't come from the right background to do this job, now it makes perfect sense to me that that literally did push me right over the edge. And that was it. For me, that was it. I was like no going back from here.
Kate Spicer
Reading your book really recharged my feminism. I'm not as good a feminist as you are, you know, I think you've read the books and you’ve walked the walk and talked the talk, but it did make me realise we’ve still got a long, long way to go. The semaphores from our culture about femaleness are still really so negative and so narrow. And I've got a niece of 11 and I'm so inspired by her, I think that generation are going to be awesome and I hope I'm around long enough to see how they work with it, but we, our generation are still living in a very sexist culture. And you really re-lit that fire and that fury in me, actually, because I think, especially when you're in a relationship, everybody can just settle down into their roles, doesn't mean I don’t feel like throwing the bloody laundry basket through the window sometimes.
Sam Baker
And I think that has really happened hasn’t it, it's really happened through lockdown, it's like the number of people who used to say, of my friends, who said their relationship was equal and now you know, they're the ones worrying about home-schooling. And, you know, they were the ones, suddenly they found they were the ones doing the cleaning. And, you know, I think there's a lot to be done, but feminism also, it needs to be more inclusive, it needs to, you know. It's like all areas of society, it's not just about people that look like you, it's got to go wider than that. It's got to be if you're, I mean, I don't want to get all you know, patriarchy, blah, but if you're, you know, if the job of feminism is fighting misogyny for the want of a better way of putting it, then, you know, all sorts of all women are subject to misogyny, you know, trans women, black women, working class women, you know, we're not all in it together, because some people have a much worse experience than others, but I think it's really important that we’re fighting for all of them.
Kate Spicer
Well, you've done a great job with this book to open big, wide sisterly arms and make us all feel, if not fuckable, then just fucking fantastic in our own lives. Tell me what's next.
Sam Baker
Oh god, I don't know really. I mean, I'm just kind of waiting to see. The books out 10th September, and I'm just waiting to see how it goes down really, it's had a good response so far. There’s a podcast, which is just really about celebrating women who are north of 40, also called The Shift and that launched on Tuesday, and that will run, you know, the plan is for that, it will definitely run weekly until Christmas and I hope I'll be able to make it pay enough just to keep going.
Kate Spicer
Who have you got on?
Sam Baker
So the first season, the episode that's out is Tasmina Perry. Next week its Marion Keyes, JoJo Moyes, Sara Collins, Caroline de Maigret, Jo Wiley, you and then I've just started filming the next season, which so far is the lovely Meg Matthews, Jodi Picoult, Denise Mina and loads more lined up. So yeah, it's really exciting, it's just so fascinating talking to loads of women between you know, roughly 45 upwards, just about their experience of it and the completely different conversations that you have.
Kate Spicer
Cool, well, good luck with the book. I loved it. I'm gonna buy a couple for a few friends of mine. And it's lovely to see you again. And I will see you soon.
Sam Baker
Yes, thanks Kate.
Kate Spicer
Sam Baker. Thank you so much.
Outro message
Thank you for listening to this week’s episode of the Birmingham Lit Fest presents…podcast. If you enjoyed this episode, we’d love for you to tell us about it – leave us a review or a rating and find us on Instagram, Twitter and Facebook @bhamlitfest. You can download our latest podcast episodes, every Thursday, from all the places you would normally get your podcasts and find transcripts of our episodes in the shownotes and on our website at www.birminghamliteraturefestival.org . Details about our full programme can also be found on our website. Until then, happy reading!
The Birmingham Lit Fest Presents... podcast is curated by Shantel Edwards and produced by 11C and Birmingham Podcast Studios for Writing West Midlands.