In Episode 247 of So you want to be a writer: Meet Kayte Nunn, author of The Botanist’s Daughter. AWC alumni Sarah Bailey wins the Ned Kelly Awards for Best First Novel. You can submit an idea to Radio National for an audio series. We have 3 copies of Best Foot Forward by Adam Hills to give away. Plus authors are supporting Australian farmers and more.
I’ve been listening to this wonderful writing podcast ever since I took the plunge and started writing my first manuscript. I soaked up advice like a sponge as I varnished, painted, grouted and caulked every book and cranny of our new home. I listened (and forced my children to listen) as I drove up hill and down dale, ferrying said children to sports, family events and school holiday expeditions. I absorbed details on author platforms, bum glue and pitching protocols as I planted and weeded my garden. And now, after two years of advice from Al and Val, and four drafts under my belt, I have just signed a two-book contract with Allen and Unwin. Thank you Allison and Valerie for your entertaining podcasts, fabulous advice and shared wisdom!
Kayte Nunn grew up in England and the US, and then lived in Sydney, Australia for more than 20 years, working as a book, magazine and web editor and writer. She’s had more than two decades of publishing experience and is the former editor of Gourmet Traveller WINE magazine.
She is the author of Rose’s Vintage (2016), and Angel’s Share (2017), both set in the lush vineyards of the imaginary Shingle Valley.
Her new book, The Botanist’s Daughter, is a novel set in Cornwall, Chile and Sydney, and was published by Hachette in July 2018.
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Oh, thank you so much, Valerie. It's lovely to talk to you.
Valerie
Congratulations on your book, The Botanist's Daughter. I am seeing it everywhere and it's just obviously taken off. For those readers who haven't read the book yet, can you tell us what it's about?
Kayte
It's the story of two female botanists, the first of whom lives in the late 19th century in England. And she's charged by her father to go in search of a rare plant that has both dangerous and very beneficial properties.
And then in contemporary modern day Sydney, a young woman is renovating her grandmother's house and from behind a set of bookcases she discovers an old metal box. And inside that is a portfolio of dazzling watercolours of botanical drawings, a small bag of seeds and a diary. And she sets out to find out what they might be and how they could have got there.
Valerie
It's such a great premise and very intriguing. I have to ask, are you obsessed with botany or flowers and that sort of thing?
Kayte
Not enormously. I've always loved plants and flowers and gardens. And my grandmother and my mother were amazing gardeners and me, not so much.
But I have such lovely memories of spending time in the greenhouse with my grandmother and the potting shed and her talking to me about the names of all the plants and flowers. And to me they just sounded like poetry.
So I guess I've always had that in the back of my head. Yes.
Valerie
So I understand that you were actually walking through the Botanic Gardens in Sydney and you came across a sundial and that kind of started off a chain of events that ended up being this book. Is that correct?
Kayte
Yes, it is.
Valerie
Can you tell me more about that?
Kayte
It was about three and a half years ago and I took my daughter for a final mother daughter day out before she was about to start school. And we took the ferry from Manly across to the Botanic Gardens in Sydney and had a picnic.
And it was a very hot, sultry day and we wandered up towards the Rose Garden. And then next to the Rose Garden is the herb garden and there's this beautiful sundial with herbs cast in bronze all the way around it.
And I put my hand on the warm metal and it was honestly like a bolt of lightning. I just had a vision of a young girl in an English walled garden with a very similar sundial and knew that that was, I had a story there somewhere. And I spent the rest of the afternoon in a complete daze wondering what it might mean.
And then over the course of the weeks to come, I just thought about it and I had it in the back of my head. And I was in the middle of editing my second book and writing that. So, I wasn't ready to start on a new story completely then.
And then there just became a trail of breadcrumbs, really. I happened to be noodling around on the internet one day and I read this incredible story of a plant that had suddenly sprung up in an English suburban back garden. And the owners were really quite alarmed because they found out that it was a class B drug and it's illegal to grow it in England.
And they couldn't understand how it could have sprung up until they realized they'd been throwing out bird seed and that that seed had germinated, and the seed came from Chile.
And it was this particular plant that I do refer to in the book called the Devil's trumpet. And so I followed that further and I realized that that would be the plant that my botanist or my illustrator was searching for and that she would need to go to Chile to find it.
Valerie
And so the book has these two timelines. One of Anna who is the woman in modern day Sydney and one of Elizabeth who is in England in the late 1800s. And so they have very distinct feels and very distinct voices, because the eras are so different and obviously geographically they're so different.
Was there anything that you did to get into the mindset or the groove of each of these timelines when you started writing each of them?
Kayte
Yes. There was. Initially I wrote one chapter of each and was struggling a bit with that. And I swapped a couple of messages with the author, Kate Forsyth, because I knew that she had written dual timeline novels and I really admired them. And she gave me the fantastic advice of just tackle one timeline at a time and immerse yourself in the one story, which is what I did.
So I started off by writing the Victorian era story and once I had finished that, I wrote the modern day story. And it helped that, because I really struggle with words and I fight for every word on the page. So to write two 40,000 word stories seemed to be a lot easier than one 90,000 word story. I kind of fooled myself.
And then at the end of that I wove the two together and they actually fell together quite naturally. And I liked the fact that there were things mirrored in each story and echoed and then contrasts, as well.
Valerie
I find it interesting. So I think that that approach makes a lot of sense, to tackle one timeline at a time. But when you did weave the story together – and that's great that they came together naturally – but how did you decide where to split the story and kind of jigsaw them together in that way?
Kayte
Actually, they're almost alternating chapters apart from initially and then towards the end where… I think initially I needed a bit more of the historical story and then towards the end a bit more of the contemporary story.
But what I had to be really careful to do was that I didn't give things away in one narrative before they'd had a chance to be discovered in the other. And that took a fair bit of concentration and application to make sure I didn't do that.
Valerie
Did you find that you had to rewrite anything if you discovered it?
Kayte
Yes.
Valerie
Right. Okay.
Kayte
There was a little bit of rewriting. Not a huge amount though.
Valerie
And so the historical story is something… I mean obviously you've lived in Sydney, so you know what modern day Sydney is like. But you have not lived in late 1800s England. Did you do anything to… Just coming back to that whole…
Because it's a very strong and it's a very clear, incredible point of view. Were there things that you did to put yourself in that era? Did you surround yourself with, you know, botanical drawings of the time or anything like that?
And also the language that you've used in it, the dialogue is very authentic to that, or seems very authentic to that era. It's certainly very credible for being in that era. So how did you capture that?
Kayte
Thank you. I did a quite a good amount of research before I started writing. And so I read a lot of books about the Victorian era and very specific areas of that.
And then I also was really fortunate to come across a diary written by a woman probably about 50 years before my story was set. But she was a sea captain's wife and actually lived in Valparaiso for about six months. And her descriptions of the flora and the fauna of the area and the journey she went on, were absolutely invaluable. And I guess some of her voice might have come through as well in terms of the tone and the language used.
I've always read a lot of historical fiction, so maybe I had subconsciously picked up on it. But I did want to make the language more formal, and then much more conversational and relaxed in the contemporary strands so that there was that contrast.
Valerie
Why did you choose to have two timelines?
Kayte
Because I love the way that history can be present in the modern day. So if you have an object, you can hold it and think, gosh, somebody actually used this 100 or 200 years ago. And it sheets it home to me far more than just a more abstract story that's set in the past. So I think I wanted it to really be, you know, that these things still existed today or could have existed today.
Valerie
Now let's just take a few steps back and if you could just give people a brief potted career history before you became an author, so we can just see the lead up in your career.
Kayte
Sure. I grew up absolutely loving books and reading. And went to boarding school at the age of 11 where there was very little to do, but the boarding house had a very good library. And I quickly read my way through all the pony books and then had to be given special permission to get to read in the senior library, which by then was early dystopian fiction. John Wyndham, The Day of the Triffids, and then Solzhenitsyn, so I was quite a depressed teenager after that. Thankfully I discovered Jilly Cooper and things got a bit better.
Valerie
Yes, quite different to Solzhenitsyn.
Kayte
Yes. And I loved books and reading so much that I went to university and studied English and publishing and went to work in book publishing to start with.
Ironically, because I had that underlying feeling that I wanted to write more, I moved from book publishing to magazines, so I could be a features writer. And I did that for a number of years and I ended up as an editor of a number of magazines, one of which was Gourmet Travel and Wine magazine.
But there had always been a voice in the back of my head saying, Kayte, you just really want to write. But I thought other people wrote books and I wasn't really clever enough to even have the courage to start.
It wasn't until I was in my early forties that it really became a case of now or never. I was freelancing by that time. I had two young girls, and freelancing as an editor and a writer. And I had six weeks between projects and I thought, actually, this is your moment, Kayte, this is your time.
And I had an idea for a story and I just sat down and started writing. And that book a year or so later eventually became my first novel, Rose's Vintage, not without a lot of rewriting I might add.
Valerie
So, Rose's Vintage is set in a vineyard. Did that come out of your time at Gourmet Travel and Wine magazine? Was that the influence?
Kayte
Absolutely, absolutely. I was lucky enough to visit a number of wine regions to meet the people there and I loved the sense of community and the stories and the environment. So it just became absolutely the perfect place to set my first novel, and indeed my second novel.
Valerie
Wow. And so you had these six weeks in between projects. How much of the book did you write in that six weeks?
Kayte
Not a great deal. Enough to get me started and to get me excited about the feeling of having written, I think. And then after that I would get up early in the morning to write, I would get myself ready for bed and lie in bed and write for an hour at night and try and get a thousand words done. I would take myself off to the library at the weekends and my husband would take the girls to the cinema.
I would squeeze it in where I could. I sat on the side of swimming pools and the side of soccer pitches in my car and wrote.
Valerie
Was that your first attempt at writing longer fiction?
Kayte
Absolutely. I'd written a couple of short stories in the months leading up to that. And I had a small amount of success in being shortlisted for a couple of local competitions and that gave me a bit of an encouraging boost as well.
But yes, it really was actually.
Valerie
So that's astounding. That's your first attempt at writing longer fiction and it became Rose's Vintage, your debut novel, is that correct?
Kayte
Yes. Yes.
Valerie
Wow.
Kayte
Look, I was lucky in that the agent who took me on a gave me a 45 minute instructions on the phone when we first spoke about what needed to change, including changing the nationality of the protagonist and various other things. And then she said, “okay, well you don't seem to be daunted by that. Go away and change it and then we'll see how we go.” And so it was really useful to have her input.
I think I started reading a few books on craft as well to try and get an idea of how to write fiction. I obviously had written a lot in my professional career, but I still didn't know how to tell a story in fictional terms. So I really needed to learn that.
And actually, you know, I didn't know what I didn't know at the time.
Valerie
Yes. I mean writing features, which you know, could be 800 words, 1500 words, if you're lucky, 2500 words. It's so different to writing a novel. And you get a lot more instant gratification in a sense when you're writing features because you can complete things and then you see them published.
So what was it like, when you're so used to that to then write something that's going to takemonths, years even?
Kayte
I'm quite stubborn, I think. And I had two little post it notes on my computer, one of which said ‘play big'. Not ‘dream big', but ‘play big' to remind myself that, you know, to take it seriously and to actually try and make it happen.
And then the other one was just the word ‘believe'. And if ever I doubted myself, I would just look at that and repeat it, almost like a mantra to myself to keep going.
Valerie
I love it. Believe. That makes so much sense.
So you've changed gears a bit because the first book, Rose's Vintage, and then the second book, second novel, Angel's Share, were both set in vineyards. But this one is a little bit of a departure from the first two. Was that a strategic decision? Or why did you decide to do something different?
Kayte
I think I just wanted to challenge myself a bit more. And then the gift of the idea came to me and it just seemed like a natural progression in some ways. I really believe that sometimes the story chooses you and you just have to do your best to honour it.
Valerie
Okay. So with this book then, after you got the idea and you started writing it, you knew this is the story that I'm going to write. Can you tell us a little bit about the writing process and your routine for it? Did you have a certain word count that you wanted to reach each day? Was it something that you set aside – you know, I'm going to write it in these five months or whatever? And did you have any daily routine to get the words out and onto the page?
Kayte
I definitely set myself a word count every day. The feeling of achieving small goals every day, it really helps to keep me going.
My daughters go to school, I would try and get some exercise done before they went off to school. And then if I didn't have any freelance work on, I would sit down and write and not get out of the chair until I'd achieved that word count.
Or even sometimes when the story is really flowing, I was able to write a bit more, but I've never been able to write thousands and thousands of words a day. So a thousand words a day is a reasonable goal for me.
Valerie
So that was your word count? That was your word count goal?
Kayte
Yes. Pretty much. A thousand words a day. And if I hadn't achieved it by the end of the week, I'd make myself do it on the weekend. I used to kid myself and say, I'll just go and sit in, you know, probably hideaway in my bedroom for an hour. And I called it the hour of power. And I'd usually find that an hour and a half, two hours later, if nobody disturbed me, I was still there and still writing. So that was helpful.
I do have to say that the hour between two and three before my daughters come home from school or I have to go and pick them up is always my most productive, because I'm under the pump and it has to happen.
Valerie
Yes. And so when you were in the throes of writing, are you the sort of person who rereads what you wrote the day before? Or did you just plunge straight into the next bit of the story?
Kayte
Usually I do a bit of rereading. And sometimes if I would've had to have left it for a couple of weeks, if I had another project or something, I then have to go back and reread from start. And I tend to fiddle and finesse and make changes.
What that does mean is that by the end of a first draft, there's not too much rewriting and restructuring needed in the second draft.
I also got myself a whiteboard, and I divided it up into sections, so I knew what was happening pretty much every five to 10,000 words. And where the story was at and whether my character was facing difficulties or things were going well. Just to try and get a bit of rhythm and momentum in the story, as well, so that the pace was right.
Valerie
So if you've got that whiteboard, basically you plotted out the entire story before writing it?
Kayte
Not so much. It was as I was writing it. So in fits and start. And once I got more into the story, I was able to see ahead a few chapters and know where that was happening and where the signposts where.
I think I wrote it and I knew what was going to happen in the end, but I wasn't sure where the story would take me from the beginning.
And I usually start writing when I can envisage the first opening scene and I know where the story starts.
Valerie
Yeah. So essentially, you did know what was going to happen in the and you just didn't know how you're going to get there. Is that right?
Kayte
Yes. Yes, exactly.
Valerie
And presumably with the whiteboard, you did one story at a time. It's not like you had two timelines on the whiteboard or did you?
Kayte
I did actually. I had two timelines on the white board, each in a different colour. So for each section I knew what was happening in one colour of the story. And then in the other.
Valerie
Right. Now you've made mention, you said “if I don't have any freelance stuff on”. So does that mean you're combining fiction writing with freelance feature writing?
Kayte
I think up until about eight or nine months ago, yes, I definitely was. I now am fortunate enough to be in a position where occasionally I will do some freelance work if I'm approached, but for the most part I'm focusing on fiction writing.
Valerie
Okay. Now you mentioned that 2:00 to 3:00, before the kids come home from school, it's like witching hour. You get heaps of stuff done. I can totally understand that. Does that mean you didn't write at night? I'm interested in this because a lot of writers have limited time because they have families. So I'm interested to know whether, you know, the kids come home and you cut it off, kind of thing?
Kayte
Pretty much now, yes. Because, I've usually achieved what I need to during the day.
When I was doing a lot more freelance editorial work, I would have to write at night sometimes. But I'm better first thing in the morning. I'm a bit more awake. So I try not to unless I have to. But I am quite goal oriented. So if I want to just get something done, I'll make the time and find the time.
Valerie
What kind of research did you need to do for this book? You know, whether it's botanical, whether its research of a historical period. What kind of research had to be done?
Kayte
Both of those things, actually. So I started off with general history books from the library. I spent several days at the State Library because they have an amazing collection of books. This diary as a primary source that I found was quite astonishing.
I managed to find old photographs online of Valparaiso in the 1880s, so I could see what buildings were there. I managed to contact a forum of shipping enthusiasts who were able to help me determine exactly what type of ship Elizabeth might have sailed on and the port it would have left from and the route it would have taken.
I found Pinterest actually quite helpful because there were lots of useful pins of botanical illustrations. I also visited Kew gardens a couple of times during the course of writing the novel. And while I was there, there were a couple of exhibitions of not only botanical art, but of plant hunting and plant explorers and I was able to visually see for myself the equipment they use, the tools they used.
I read letters from Kew's archives of plant hunters and the tribulations and the trials they underwent.
I'm just trying to think what else I did.
Valerie
That's heaps of research so far.
Kayte
Yes. It was over the course of writing it as well. So I was able to add to things.
I went to Cornwall, last year, which was towards the end of the book. But I had visited Cornwall many times for holidays as a child, but I went back there and actually I was researching next year's book as well. So it was that I was able to include material that I discovered there.
Valerie
So did you do the bulk of your research before you started writing or was it a concurrent kind of thing?
Kayte
No, most of it beforehand. Certainly the historical information and the basic background just of Victorian life and the Victorian pharmacy and Victorian gardens and all that kind of thing.
And I remember my husband raising his eyebrow at me because I'd leave the house with a stack of books and go down to the nearest ocean pool with my notebook and he didn't really believe me that I was working hard. But I was.
Valerie
That's interesting because you went there with a notebook as in a paper notebook, is that correct?
Kayte
Yeah.
Valerie
And so I'm interested in how did you collate and keep the research that you needed so that it didn't get lost in your brain somewhere or just physically lost somewhere? Practically speaking, what was the physical process of keeping the research that you needed?
Kayte
I had a notebook. And I'm afraid it wasn't terribly methodical. And then from that notebook I transfer everything onto a Word document that becomes my notes for the book. And it's not terribly well organized, but I think that process of writing it down and then typing it out somehow it lodges somewhere in my brain.
And I keep that notebook because my characters might start talking to me odd hours of the day and I hear a line of dialogue or I think of something or I see something, and I want to include it.
And then, at the end of the book, I print out the document of notes and I go through it and cross everything off and make sure I've included it, or have I remembered where it goes, that kind of thing.
Valerie
Yeah. Right. And so do you also write the manuscript in Word, or do you use…?
Kayte
I'm afraid I do. I have looked at Scrivener and run away screaming. I'm petrified of losing material. The writing doesn't come easily.
So yes, I have a Word document for each narrative strand. And then I combine it towards the end. It's not ideal, but it seems to work for me.
Valerie
Yeah, sure. What was the most enjoyable thing about writing this book?
Kayte
Oh, that's a very good question. I think, what I wanted to do was really make my characters quite distinct. And to have the idea that they might really have been born in each other's century, in the wrong century. And I love that idea, that are you born in the right time for you?
And so Elizabeth in Victorian times is very headstrong. She doesn't like the strictures of life then, and she really walks her own path. Whereas in the modern day strand in Australia, Anna is more subdued and she's quite quiet, but no less courageous.
And the idea of courage being yes, it can be these great grand adventures, or it can be something as mundane as just having the courage to get out of bed every day. And I like the contrast of those two characters I think.
Valerie
And what was the hardest thing about writing this book?
Kayte
I'm not sure that there was one particular thing that was hard. I guess it was really wanting to make sure that I got it as correct as I possibly could. So checking and double checking things and trying to find out the information I needed. But that was different to writing historical fiction, which I had never done before.
Valerie
Yes. So when you first thought of this book, did you tell an agent or a publisher first and what was their reaction?
Kayte
I talked to my agent about it. Because also I have a new publisher, Hachette, who wasn't my publisher previously. And she was fantastically encouraging and says, oh yes, that sounds great.
But I didn't actually show it to her until I was finished and had done a second draft, because I just wanted her to come at it completely fresh. And she was fantastic. She read it over the course of a weekend, which was wonderful. And she said, “you've done everything I could, you know, anything, everything I could have asked of you,” which was really nice feedback.
And then actually my publisher at Hachette, Rebecca Saunders, read the book when it was on submission and she actually rang my agent on a Sunday and she said, “I have never done that before.” And my agent said, “I've only ever had one publisher ever ring me on a weekend before.” So she loved it straight away. And her enthusiasm for it was just absolutely heartening.
Valerie
Yeah. Yeah. And I have to say, I know one should not judge a book by its cover, but I have to say this is possibly the most beautiful cover of the year. Just gorgeous.
Kayte
That's very kind.
Valerie
Don't you think? It's beautiful. It's stunning.
Now, for some reason I imagine you in your home surrounded by these beautiful botanical drawings. Whether or not that's true, don't shatter what's in my imagination.
Have you learned more about plants and applied that knowledge to your own garden as a result?
Kayte
Well, I take a bit more care now, that's for certain.
Yes, I learned a huge amount and that was really very interesting to me. Not least of which is the fact that you can germinate seeds that are thousands of years, hundreds of thousands of years old, which was crucial to the plot of the book. And I was really pleased to be able to find out that yes, it was possible.
Valerie
Yeah. And so what's next for you? What are you working on? You mentioned that there's another book?
Kayte
Yes. I'm, I'm actually in the copy edit stage of the next book, which is quite a nice position to be in, having gone through two structural edits with it.
It has a similar dual timeline. It's set in the 1950s and in the present day and it is about a cache of unsent love letters found in an old suitcase on a remote island. And somebody finds them and has to discover why they're there and why they were never sent.
Valerie
Love it. And finally, what would be your top three tips for aspiring writers who hope to be in a position like you are one day?
Kayte
All right. I have prepared this earlier.
I think first of all, be prepared to do the work. I have had people say to me, Oh, I think I'll try that. And it's just not something you can do half-heartedly, write a book.
You need to learn your craft. And that's something I wasn't that aware of at the beginning. There are numerous online courses, for example, at the Writers Centre, and there are books on craft. If you want to go down the academic route, you can do academic courses. But you really need to learn how to do it, I think, and be prepared to work hard.
And prioritize your time. Make sacrifices, because something is going to have to give to fit in writing time in around your life, really.
Valerie
What did you sacrifice?
Kayte
Time with my family, I think. Very definitely. Yes. I don't think I sacrificed sleep quite, but it might have come close.
Valerie
Okay, so we have, you have to do the work. What's second?
Kayte
My second one would be to read poetry. There is so much you can learn about the use of language, about being precise with language, about syntax, about cadence that will help you become a better writer of prose. I heartily believe that.
Valerie
Do you have a recommendation of any particular poets?
Kayte
Any poetry that speaks to you, I think. Absolutely anything. It can be from any era, any style. Just to absorb it, I think, is really helpful.
I've loved poetry since I was a teenager, really. And always read it and found it useful.
And then my third tip would be to just banish doubt. Ignore that little voice that says what you're doing is rubbish.
Valerie
Easier said than done!
Kayte
I know, I know. That says that it's rubbish, that says that you're wasting your time. Because that will lead you to give up. And if you give up, you don't finish the book, you never know what might have happened with it.
Valerie
What techniques do you suggest to banish doubt? Because it is easier said than done. So was there anything that you did to help you do that?
Kayte
Absolutely. Do you know, I actually, and no word of a lie, I listened to this podcast. I found that incredibly useful and heartening to know that other people are out there scribbling away on their own.
Valerie
Awesome.
Kayte
I would try not to think about it and just say, well, just write the next 500 words. Just write the next thousand words. And tell myself that it doesn't have to be for anything other than just the satisfaction of doing it.
Valerie
Wonderful. All right, well on that note, congratulations on the book. I have no doubt it's going to be the hit of the year. And thank you so much for your time today, Kayte.
Kayte Nunn grew up in England and the US, and then lived in Sydney, Australia for more than 20 years, working as a book, magazine and web editor and writer. She’s had more than two decades of publishing experience and is the former editor of Gourmet Traveller WINE magazine.
