Welcome to the Creative Switch, the podcast inspiring the sensibly successful to switch on their unexpressed creativity for a more fulfilled life. When I started the podcast, I followed my intuition. I guessed that I couldn't be the only person who had switched to a creative career or found fulfilment after reconnecting with a creative passion which had long been neglected or pushed to one side. Once I started looking, I discovered so many switches, as I call them, and today's guest, Hannah Begbie, comedy agent turned novelist, is another perfect example. Hers is a story of change in circumstances, of breaking away from expectations, and of designing her own ways of working to suit her creative energy. And if you're looking to turn your creative inspiration into action, don't forget to listen right to the end of the episode and catch up with my creative adventures. This is where I share the challenges I encounter and how acting on the nuggets of wisdom I've learned from my guests and applying those learnings is helping me to move forward in my own creative projects. If you are feeling like learning a new skill is frustratingly and uncomfortably slow, I'll share some great advice about leaning into that discomfort from animator and author Lorna Gibson. Before we get to that, do remember to head to my website nikkivallance.com and sign up to Stay in the Loop with all my latest updates, blogs, publications and guides to help you with your creative challenges.

First, though, it's time for some creative News in the Edge. I've been following the impact of AI pretty much since the first episode of A Creative Sweat Twitch back in June 2023. There's talk now of there being an AI bubble where investors may have overestimated the value it will add to commerce, much like the Dotcom boom and crash. No one has a crystal ball, so it's hard to know what the future holds. But there is no doubt of its influence on our lives already, both as creatives and in general. A recent piece from Psychology Today hit me because while AI can generate words, melodies, even paintings, it doesn't wrestle with that doubt that we have or follow its own impulse of intuition. The Harvard Gazette echoed this asking, 'What is creativity without sweat and tears?' This question feels especially urgent when there are shortcuts everywhere. So if you've felt a strange numbness around your creative rituals lately, you're not alone. Reconnecting might mean just stepping away from the algorithm for a bit and back into the mess, whether that's journaling or gardening or baking your way into a story. My guest this week talks of the struggles of knuckling down to work at her desk on her own. Having swapped her days of agenting for comics and comedy writers, she still misses the people interaction and the phone ringing off the hook. It made me think about the jobs other authors have had before writing books. Before they were novelists, many writers lived completely different lives. Take J.K. rowling, who was working as a teacher in a language institute in Oporto when she started writing the first Harry Potter book. Or Claire Mackintosh, Sunday Times best selling crime author who gave up her 12 year career as a police inspector to become a freelance writer before her breakthrough debut novel 'I Let You Go' became a worldwide hit. And Joanna Harris, author of 'Chocolat', who taught French at a grammar school in Yorkshire. Then there's several of my previous guests like Ruth Hogan, who worked in human resources, Melanie Cantor, who left a career in PR behind, and Sarah Adams and Emma Stonex, who are former editors in the publishing sector. So if you're listening while working in a job that feels miles away from your creative dreams, take heart. You're gathering experience, you're developing your voice or you're practicing your craft. Even if you haven't started yet, the novel might be quietly forming in the background. For a more in depth exploration on the art and science of creative living, why not join in with the conversation at The Bold Types on Substack or message me on Instagram at nikki_vallance. I'd love to hear from you. And listen next to hear how growing up in a creative household and a regular childhood stocking present sowed the seeds for an unexpected writing career for my guest, Hannah Begbie.

Hello, Hannah, and welcome to the Creative Switch. It's so fantastic to have you here.

Hello. Thank you so much for having me on, Nikki.

We're going to start with the first question I ask everybody, which is what does creativity mean to you? But before we do that, could you just tell everybody a little bit about who you are and what you do?

Yes. My name is Hannah Begbie. I am a novelist. I have had my third book published very recently by Harper Collins called the Last Weekend.

Congratulations.

Thank you very much. I started out as an agent to comedians and comedy writers, did that for about 12 years before stopping it to write books when I had my second son. So this is my third novel.

Yeah, fantastic.

Okay, well, we're going to get into all of that. We're going to dig into all of the decisions you've made and how you've ended up doing what you're doing. So can you take Me back first of all to that word creativity and what it means.

Yes. I was thinking when you sent over the forms earlier about what it means to me. I think it means something quite simple really to me that it's just the alliance of two different ideas or images or words to create something new and that sparks a new set of thinking in somebody. So yes, just the. I think it is just about that. I think about that a lot when I generate ideas for my novels. Just the alliance of sort of existing ideas to create something new.

Yeah, brilliant.

And how does that fit into your life? Is it just something that manifests in your work?

It's a really interesting concept, creativity, isn't it? I actually grew up believing that creativity was something that you were sort of gifted before birth. It was almost sort of mystical trait that you either had or you didn't have, like blue eyes or brown eyes. I grew up around a lot of creative people. My mum was an artist, my dad was in publishing, but also a good writer and cartoonist, my sister a really talented artist. And I was really good with people and good at organizing a party. And I think because I sort of excelled in that area, there was no particular pressure on me to create in the most conservative meaning of the word. So I grew up with that sense that creativity was really about the creation of stuff. It was about the creation of a painting or, you know, a cartoon or a piece of writing. And I learned two really distinct things as I got older, that creativity exists in every area of your life. I feel like you have to employ creativity when you're parenting, creativity when you're deciding what to do each day, particularly if you are self employed and freelance. Making decisions about what you're doing and what you're prioritizing, I think is partly a creative task because in setting one task against another, you can often generate a new task and a new piece of development to whatever project you're working on. I think you can be creative in the supermarket, you know, when you're thinking about what to cook. So I think it is just an inherent skill in everybody every day. But I think people's understanding of it can be quite distorted. As I moved away, and I know we'll talk about this more, but as I moved between one side of the fence, which is about facilitating creativity into making my own stuff, you start to learn that actually it's just something that when you're making a piece of work that you can lose touch with and really it is about coming back into touch with that part of yourself.

Yeah.

Is inherently childlike, you know, which is such a cliched way of talking about creativity. But I think. I think that's very true. You're just in a sandbox, aren't you? And you're just things about and creating things. So I think my relationship with creativity was complex and long and ultimately really good. But it started really from a place of, 'You don't have this, you weren't born with this.' Your role here is to facilitate the mystical gifts of other people. That was the journey that I had to go on, really.

Yeah.Gosh.

I don't know whether you believe in these things or whether you've done any sort of personality profiling things, but there's a set of questions, a questionnaire that. You can do, which is about your. Relationship with money, but it's a money archetype. So it's like how we operate in the world with money and basically how we produce value, if you like, as a person. And there are various roles. I'll try and dig it out and add it in the show notes. But we need all of the roles to function as an organization or a society or whatever. We all need to bring different strengths to the party. And one of them is a star profile, which makes it sound like that person's really egotistical and wants to be out at the front and, you know, doing the doing. And everybody else should be adoring them. But it doesn't really mean that. It means that you're leading with an idea. You're the one who's sort of putting yourself in the forefront in order for other people to take value from that. And then there's another one, which is the supporter. And you can equally be really, really talented at being the supporter to help the star to do their thing. And a bit like with yours, I started out as an agent. It's a different agent. I was a recruitment consultant, and it's exactly the same thing. I was finding the talent and matching it with the need. And it took me a long time to realize where that part of me had come from, why I'd nurtured that part of me, why it suited my personality, but why it wasn't all of me. And what I needed to do was go and really tuck into the other parts of what I was wanting to do. So I completely hear what you're saying. I totally believe it's inherent in everyone. I mean, people will get fed up and be banging on about this, but I genuinely believe it's as important to all of Us as being out in nature, as really strong and loving relationships. And I think part of that skewing and that distortion you were talking about comes from the educational construct and the societal construct that says art equals creativity. And that's just one way of expressing your creativity. And there's so many ways that you can use it and be creative. And as you say, we have to do that every day, every time we make a decision. Humans have adapted through being creative to all the situations that we're placed in, and that's why we've evolved the way we are. So, yeah, that whole thing about why do we suppress it, where is the value in it? All of that. I find it fascinating.

I think that issue of value is an interesting thing because I think the concept of creativity is inherently attached to value and commerce. Because quite often when I think parents are encouraging their children, you know, in one direction or another, one of the concerns you may have as a parent is about how, how they earn their money. And it is true that going into the creative industries is a really, really difficult way of earning money. And there's a large degree of people in that middle layer who just about earn enough. And then there's a very, very small percentage of people, for a variety of reasons, talent and hard work and luck and a combination of all of those things, who earn a terrific amount of cash from their creative and their talent. But it's a very, very small percentage. And so I think that mid layer of careers, there are so many other things that you can do to earn a secure and decent living that actually I think a lot of kids are naturally sort of pushed away from that kind of. Don't take too many risks. Don't be in that place where actually you may not end up paying your bills that year. Because it's the truth of it, particularly if you get the start for many years, it's really, really hard. And the people I had on my list, I had a list of about 26 clients and only about seven of them were properly earning. It was a tough way of doing it.

Yeah. Yeah.

I think it's an amazing thing to do and an amazing leap of faith in yourself, a wonderful thing to do. The only thing that really can keep you going in a situation like that is just grit and faith, getting up and getting up and failing and getting up again. Those people that make true success from it and those that don't. I do believe that.

Yeah. I mean, there is that question really, isn't there, about if somebody recognizes they have a creative passion or desire to pursue something creative. The question is, do they need to make it their job? Does it have to be their job? And I think each of us, I certainly do this. There's things I categorize as things I do for me that are creative but aren't because I want to make money out of it. And I think I probably couldn't because I'm too slow. Like, for example, knitting. I love knitting, but I wouldn't be able to make a business out of it unless I charge people, you know, more than a golden coat's worth of value because it takes me so long to make it. But I'm not doing it for that reason. I'm not doing it to create value. It has a different sort of value, of course.

Yeah.

But then also there is that recognizing, well, how can I, if I can't make money out of my creative passion, how can I support myself creatively? So it might be about a mindset thing. It might be - If I go and do a job, I don't really care whether that job is creative as long as I know I'm good at it and I can earn enough money and have the time. Normally, people either have one or the other, and it's hard to have both. But to create space, to be able to then create is a talent in itself, I think.

I think it goes back to what we were saying about, again, if you've got your time and you've got to work and you've got other things to do, you have to be really creative about how you structure that. What you were saying really made me think of when I made the switch between agenting and writing novels. Agenting is a very people career. I was on the phone all the time. And if I wasn't on the phone, I was in a meeting. It was constant engagement. I love that I'm an extrovert. I get real energy from talking to people. And overnight I was in a silent room with a blank page, with the phone not ringing, no conversations. And it was an immense cultural shift for me, and it was one that I struggled with initially. I knew what I was writing, so that helped. And I knew I had some other work going on, but it was a really, really huge shift. And it's something. I've been doing it for 10 years, but I do still struggle with the isolation of being a novelist. So I think going back to what you were saying, quite often, I think it's a really good thing to be able to kind of work out again, related to what you're saying about earning if you're in a job that you're working with colleagues that you really like and they're quite enriching and you're, you pretty much enjoy your day job and you've got that kind of. That feeds your people side of yourself. And then to really put boundaries around a time for an hour a day where you are almost putting yourself in solitary confinement for an hour, or paint for an hour or knit for an hour. And then, you know, and you're, you're basically looking at the period of time you have in the day and, you know, and all your caring responsibilities or whatever responsibilities you have balancing it so that in some way you can meet all of the requirements of your own personality. Because it is entirely possible that if you just packed it all in to sit in a room all day, you would be crashingly depressed. I mean, I was depressed. I had lots of people around me, but I was like, oh, something, something doesn't feel right. And I write about people, I write about, you know, quite a lot of the ideas I have come from conversation and being around people. So actually it probably would have. That transition would have suited me better to have half the week really like intensively with people and then half the week intensively alone. But these are the things that you, you do work out. And I think again, putting aside meeting those needs in yourself and putting aside time for yourself, you have to not only be creative about it, but really, really disciplined about going like, this is what I'm going to do and no one's going to get in the way of that. And finding an hour, if that's staying up late or getting up earlier in the morning to do that, it can be really, really valuable.

Yeah, definitely. So we talked a little bit about the switch there and that's the other concept I'm exploring here. So can you tell me when you first identified that you wanted to write? Was it actually earlier? Was it when you were younger and you just put it to one side or.

Yeah, I think I was probably 7 or 8. My dad used to give me a diary on Christmas when I still thought there was Father Christmas. He would put an empty diary in my stocking and write a note from Father Christmas. Say, if you fill this diary by the end of the year, I'll give you two pence for every day that you write it. And I was quite commerce driven. I was like, I was always finding ways to like, earn money. So I was like, great, that's a good way of earning money. And it turned out it was a very clever bit of parenting because I think he realized I was a great talker and communicator. And I think he realized that where my sister was painting, I needed to find something that enabled me to metabolize quite a lot of the stuff that I was coming out with. And I locked onto it really quickly and it was really genuinely one of the most valuable things because in writing every day it's just started to understand myself better, start to tap into my voice. And I did that from very early on. I think I always wanted to write, but never gave myself permission to do that. And then when agenting became. Well, agenting was a very stressful career because you are at the nexus of everybody's requirements, both emotional and practical. And that can become very stressful quite quickly. And partly, I think I used to regain my sense of control and I think this was about. I think this is quite a personality driven thing that you can do a job like agenting and go, you know what, there's a limit to what I can change here. And my job is to come in and change what I can change and facilitate what I can facilitate and go home at night. And that's the job I've done. I think I did have that, but I think I also felt deep frustration when I had clients who I knew had enormous potential and who had these emotional or psychological or practical blocks in their way. I was, would have this kind of deep seated, how do we make this happen? We've got to keep on, we've got to make this happen. I know we can solve this. I know we can fix this. And the truth is that you can't fix other people and you can't fix every situation. And with writing, I was able to open my computer and give myself a situation or a story, whether that was a short story or a novel I was working on. And it was entirely up to me to fix the thing that I had made and was moving characters around a stage. I was determining whether it was a drama or a comedy or a thriller. I was. There was a calmness to that. There was a this is mine and this fails or succeeds on my terms only. And I used to sit on a bus with a tiny little Samsung and just write for 45 minutes in the morning. And it was like a meditation because it reminded me that whatever happened in my working day and however chaotic or it was peopled by big emotional characters, that business in the most wonderful and interesting and brilliant way. It was an amazing job to have. But I knew Whatever happened there, I had this calm place to return to. I feel that now I find writing phenomenally hard. But when it works, it's just. It's like magic. It's wonderful.

Yeah.

So was there a moment when you thought, okay, this is great for me, but actually I want more of it. Do you remember the moment? That switching moment? Do you remember it?

Yeah. It was before I had kids. I was absolutely obsessed with romance writing. I loved everything about that kind of the frisson, the energy of it and the. The hope of writing romance and, you know, that kind of holding back and the pacing of romance. And I wrote several different novels to try and teach myself how to do it. And I joined the Romantic Novelist Association, which was a very easy entity to join. It was again, people by just wonderful, just amazing women and a couple of men as well, who wrote Mills and Boone, who were signed up to all sorts of different imprints and publishers who were unpublished, all sorts of different ages, but this kind of wonderful, supportive atmosphere. And I could walk into those meetings and just go, whoa. I felt like I was in the right place. And you'd send out your manuscript and you'd enter competitions. And two things happened. I went to. They'd have these huge conferences each year which had lots of, you know, Gianna Trollope would come and talk. It was wonderful. And there was a competition you need for unpublished writers. You had to write a thousand words. And the woman who was chairing it and judging at the time lived in the farthest parts of Scotland. She was a woman called Eileen Gallagher. And you had to write your piece and post it. And I wrote this piece of writing and I thought, I'm really proud of this. But I just. And it was the day before the entrance date, and she lived in the wilds of Scotland. And I went for a run. I didn't have quite enough money for the postage that it needed to get there on time. So I just thought, you know what? It's not going to go anywhere anyway. I've done it. The value is in having done it. So I shoved the postal stamp on and I. I just went about my business and I posted it to the wilds of Scotland. And then the conference happened and sat down and they announced the winners. And she then said, I've given everybody feedback. Come and pick up the work. And I went and picked up mine. And she said. She said, do you, Hannah Begbie? And I said. Said yes. And she said, why didn't you put enough postage on your entry? She said, you could have been a contender. But I couldn't put it in there because your entry was two days late because you left a pound off the postage. And she was like, this is really good. You know, that was a rookie error. And I was so pleased and proud and devastated all at once. Yeah, I walked away from that and I just thought, like, you've got to believe in yourself more. You've got to take the right postage if you're going to put yourself out there, at least, like, back yourself enough to get the thing in on time. Had a real, like, annoyed agent in my head, and I just thought, she's given me a share of confidence. She's. I can send this to my agent. I think you should get on with this. I really needed it. I needed a bit of validation. I went ahead and I finished my manuscript and that manuscript got picked up by a publisher and then it won their new writing competition. So, you know, it was a really nice thing to return to the RNA and to win something. But that little piece of validation where I completely messed up was really important because it was kind of, you're not going to be able to do this unless you back yourself, because no one else is going to do it.

Yeah.

So that was a really interesting moment for me, that kind of crossover into, could you do this professionally? Or it's going to be the thing that you set aside an hour each day to write just because. Because you love doing it and it's a hobby and it's something that you need to do. I did want to do it professionally, I think. I think I just thought, you know what? Part of me thinks that I can do this? And there are lots of little signs along the way. And that was the first one, I think, really.

So talking about agents, obviously, having been an agent, different field. I know, but how was the process of finding someone? Did you know people already in the field or did you have to do the whole, who is the right agent for me? And pitch to them and so on?

When I was an agent, I was at one of the big agencies, so I did know literary agents, but when I was there, I was a comedy agent. I was in a very different field, literary agents who were friends. But I was really keen that the thing that I was doing was kept separate. I didn't, of course, confusion, I think, when you're starting to move those categories around with your colleagues. And I just thought, you know what, there are other ways of doing this. I've always been a really big course taker. Like, I have taken so many writing courses in the past, I've done it, Did a comedy writing course with my dad when I was 22 years old. I've done journalist courses, documentary courses all around writing. And when I decided to leave agenting, I decided to do the equivalent of an MA. And it was the best course I've ever done. And we worked with a group of about 12 of us, and we would meet two nights a week at City University and we would have teaching and then we would workshop each other's work. And it was really, really wonderful. Within that, I had the focus, I think over about a year and a half of getting together a synopsis in the first three chapters of something. And actually, during that time, I finished half the novel and I. Part of that course was about drawing together a list of potential agents and writing your letter and approaching those agents. And they were agents who weren't known to me at all. So I had a list of about five people that I sent half the manuscripts too. And one of those was an agent who was known by the woman who ran the course. So she was on that list as well. And I was in a really fortunate position at the end of that, with half a manuscript, where I had about four different meetings and I was lucky. I had offers from four different people and we sat down and so I could sit down and go, like, how is this actually really what I want to do? Despite, you know, that lists and their heft and every agent has a different angle on their list, I really, really want to be able to have a good conversation with my agent. I want to be able to feel that I can ask the questions that I need to ask, have the difficult conversation that we may need to have, make sure that we've got the same way of talking about things. And so those meetings really about. And I ended up going with somebody who I just. She responded, I think, to my manuscript in exactly the way I had intended when I wrote it. It was a very nice way of. And a very easy and natural way of talking about ideas and business. And this sounds terrifically egotistical, but I felt like she spoke to me in the way that I spoke to my clients when I was an agent. So I recognised the DNA of something where I was like, I know what you're doing with this, and I get it. And she's Veronique Baxter at David Hyam, and I've been with her since the beginning and she's just wonderful and a real sense of just. She's got your back Cause it's a difficult old business and you have to pick your battles and you have to celebrate the good stuff, work your way through the difficult stuff and get up again. She's really good at supporting that.

You've got a good person in your team.

Yeah, I do. Yeah.

So tell me about your working process, your day because. Or days because. Lots of people say to me, well, they've been told if they haven't yet been published, oh, I've been told I have to write every day, otherwise I'm not a writer. And I had a conversation with somebody else actually recently about that, and it seems to be a theme that keeps popping up. I have my own views, but I'm interested to know what you think about that.

I mean, I don't know. You know, I'm just about to. Now everyone's doing this at the moment. I'm about to start a Substack and actually one of my article ideas was going to be about this very notion of the things that you're told you have to be and do when you're doing something like writing. I mean, honestly, if I wouldn't be a novelist if, if I, I don't adhere to any of those things. I don't have a notebook. I've never had a notebook. I never write ideas down. I rarely spend longer than an hour in my study without going out and having a conversation with somebody. I am absolutely not an introvert. I hate being on my own. I mean, you know, I, I don't write every day. It's true to say that I am always doing something to do with my work every day. And, and I do think that is, that is just driven by the fact that I, I really want to do that. So it's a kind of about building an idea or a place for yourself to move into. And it also depends on the projects that you're working on. So I think, I think if you are drafting something, particularly if you're doing a first draft, writing every day, 100% like you have to, it's like a beast that you have to tame and you have to calm it and you have to be in the room with it. And if you leave it for too long, it gets angry and it gets annoyed and the distance grows and you, you form a sort of problematic relationship with it. And that goes away when you're in the room with it every day. And so I think that is really important at first draft stage, all through drafting. But, you know, I'm doing simultaneous things at the moment. I'm drafting, and I'm doing shorter form pieces and I'm planning another project. So actually, I've got to be at my desk all day, and I've got to build my day in chunks. And I've got to go, right, that's for the pros. That's for the short form stuff. That's for planning and research. And that's my day. And I just plan it in a very military way. I think the language that's used with that can be really oppressing to people. You must sit at your desk and write every day. And I think lots of people, particularly if you're in kind to create stuff and you've got a creative brain, really rally against being told what to do. And I just. I think sometimes you just one of the great. Like, it's a wonderful thing to do. You can. Because you can do it anywhere. You can do it on a train, you can do it on a bus. My brain is not necessarily allied to the nine to five. And so I just have to be with that and understand that maybe I'm not gonna rigidly and militaristically sit from nine until four, rigidly generating prose. I'm gonna be in my work, but I'm gonna be in it in lots of different ways. That's a really long way, I think of saying, do your work every day. I mean, and again, this depends on whether you're doing it as something that you're building towards making a living for or whether it's your primary means of making money. And if it is, like, you do really have to sit at your desk and be disciplined about generating ideas and getting them out there and finishing the draft and hitting your deadlines 100%. I think there are two different scenarios there. So, yes, making your. Paying your bills. I mean, yeah, of course you have to be at that desk.

Yeah. Like any other job you do. Yeah, I think you touched on it there. It's about doing your work every day. I think that's probably a more accurate description of what I think of as being a writer, because it's also dependent on where, as you've said, where you're at in your project. Because if you're at the beginning and you're generating ideas, you need to be absorbing the world. You probably need to be out there more and interacting with the world to be able to pick up those ideas. And then you're sort of taming them, and you might be doing some research, and then you sit down to write the first draft. And in between books, actually, probably what you need is not to be sitting at your desk, if you can afford to not sit at your desk. Because, I mean, I know lots of people are very prolific and they can write many books in a year. And in some ways I wish I could do that, but I'm not, I'm not that person. So I need a different energy in between projects. I can't be constantly on any project because then actually I need to be taking inputs rather than creating outputs. Does that sort of resonate?

Yeah, it really made me think. When I first started writing professionally, when I left agency, I think I defined myself in opposition to two things. The first was my clients. I was like, I can't go anywhere near comedy. That would just be. They'd just think, what a weirdo. You're going from one side to another, you know, it would be like me doing stand up. I just. So I decided to write dark, gritty, disturbing thrillers. I went completely opposite. A lot of the writers I worked with were screenwriters. So I was like, you can't do that, write novels. I'm married to a screenwriter who works on multiple projects across sometimes days, you know, often has many things on the go. So I was like, you're not going to do that. You're going to work on one project. I told myself certain things and then what I realized over time was that A, I really miss comedy and laughter and why was I stepping away from it? So I moved back into that. B, I was work so much better when I'm working on a couple of ideas a day. Which goes back to what you were saying that actually. Yes, having input from the external world, which for me is conversations with different people all the time. In any different situation, it can be like being in different places, it can be travel, it can be art, it can be lots of different things. But mostly for me, it's having proper conversations about stuff that make me think about things. But what I've really, really learned is that I'm a multiple projects person. So actually when you're working on a couple of things a day, they can inform each other. Yeah, they can just take the pressure off one, you know, and you can go, I'm stuck on that. And. Or I've just sort of come to the end of that and it's making me feel a bit tired, so I'm just going to step away and whoa, new, you know, new spark you've got, you know, the novelty has sparked. At 2pm rather than having that exhausted slump, most people get off to lunch, you know, just like, oh, okay, I know what to do with that, you know, and that can drive you through the next couple of hours. That was a great realization. And again, everyone's completely different. You know, like a deep dive absorption, which is what I was. You deep dive and you absorb yourself for six months in a draft, you know, every day. Get up, do that, get up, do that, finish the thing, finish the thing. You know, tame it, tame it, tame it. And actually there is another way. And again, different for everybody. But yeah, I mean it's, you know, and again, if you're working in different genres, that can be really useful if you're doing some life writing and doing some fiction and doing some journalism, all of it feeds each other and stops you from feeling a bit shit about writing. Because I think it can be so difficult sometimes and it's hard for it not to affect your self esteem occasionally. Just think, this project isn't working, this isn't working. You really have to find ways not to go too far down that tunnel. And having other projects that you've got in the sideline that you're really excited to buy, that you've got a little fire burning here can just be enough to make you go, do you know what? That's just the way this is. I'm just going to leave that for a bit. Right, that. But you know, get into it. That can be another way of like managing that ebb and flow of writing, which can be quite tough on the ego sometimes.

Yeah, totally. I couldn't agree with you more really on all of that. I wondered if you had any not so much writing tips because I think there's plenty of those out there. But life tips for being a creative person and it being your primary way of earning money. Is there anything you pass on to anyone else who's thinking about stepping into that career?

Yeah. I think to sort of foster a kind of front footedness not to think too much about what someone might think if you approach them. Just do it. Just do it. Do the thing. Writing this email is gonna, you know, whether it's pitching an idea or asking for an introduction to someone, just don't think, do it. Just write the email. Because the chances are you'll write 30 of them and one will come off. But that one is not going to come off unless you've written 30. So don't think about it too much, just get on with it and do it. And also I think just to foster a quiet sense of there's a bigger picture. I think this is a bit of a life thing. I haven't answered this at all. I'm working on this, but I think with everything that happens day to day or week by week or month by month, just to quietly say, there is a bigger picture here and some of this is not going to work and some of this is going to work, but you don't give yourself a chance at any of that and moving forward to whatever that end goal is without just getting out there. So I think that equates to the same thing, which is just a sense of move forward. Don't sabotage yourself. Be your own supporter. I say it to my kids quite a lot. You've gotta back yourself. You'll be backed by us for your entire life, but we're not always gonna be here. You have to foster a sense of backing yourself because you can't rely on other people to do that. And don't do it in an arrogant way. Just quietly move forward and have faith in yourself to pick yourself up as well. Allow yourself to feel disappointed when an idea doesn't get picked up or an idea doesn't work. Move through it and then pick yourself up the next day and get on with it.

Absolutely brilliant advice. I think everything you do, you can't know what place it's going to have until it's happened. And you look back and then you go, ah, that horrible thing that happened over there, that happened because I needed it now.

Yeah.

So it's kind of almost always having your radar up and your eyes open and just moving forward and gathering things in. I'm terrible at names, so apologies for whoever this was, but there's a very well known writer I heard on Desert Island Discs who was talking about her writing process. And she said, of course, my writing is semi autobiographical because I'm writing it. And what happens, she said, is that everything that's in my life at that time gets hoovered up and somehow ends up in a novel. Because you can't not do that. It doesn't mean you're the central character. It means that you're getting your ideas and your connections from being you. So it will end up there somewhere.

I think that's really true. It just very briefly made me think, this sounds terrifically narcissistic. But it is part of the narcissism I think, of novelists. My book is about my sort of generation, my age, and there are lots of characters in it that could or could not be people I know. And they're not. They are creations. But a few people have said to me, you know, who's based on here in our friendship group. The answer is just none of them. That you know, that there are shards of, as you say, everybody and everything in each one of those characters. And the only thing I can say for sure, as a novelist, that in my main characters, there is something about myself and each one of them that either I can't get my head round or I can't resolve something that I need to resolve. And in writing about that character, I move slightly further forward in understanding that that's the only thing I can say about creating a character, you know, that it is just a soup of everything. And then a kind of like the. This is something about myself either I'm not quite sure about, don't really like, or I really love. And you know what? I want more of that. I'm gonna just put all of that into that character. And I love that. And that just sounds very navel gazing. You know, you are just trying to understand really sort of what's going on around you. It's a way of doing it.

Yeah. And reading as well. I've interviewed a bibliotherapist before, and it's becoming more of a known thing, but I hadn't come until I interviewed her. And of course, the books we read, whether they're fiction or nonfiction, are gonna help us resolve things because we're experiencing things through the characters that we might come across in life or we have already experienced, or we know someone who's had that. So it helps you to kind of order your thoughts and have a different perspective on things, which changes who you are. So I do think, whether it's fiction or nonfiction that we're writing, we are channeling our questions about everything through what we're writing. And often people have the same questions. We're all living in the same world at the same time. You hope that your work is relatable and people can identify with those things that you're questioning. That's my favorite type of writing, is actually leaving people thinking and going, 'hmm That's a really good point. How does that fit for me?'

You know, Certainly. Yeah, you hope. You hope that the things that are keeping you awake at night. Quite often I do think that we're all kept awake by the same kind of thing. The only reason you don't know that is because quite often those are subjects that people are worried to talk about, that there's something shameful about them or dark. And you sort of think you're the only one worrying about them, which is, I think, an indicator that everyone's worrying about them, you know, so. And then as a writer, you can go, do you know what? I'm gonna take that. And then I can clothe that in my fiction and my characters and check it out. And I like you. It's my favorite kind of writing and reading because you're. Then, you know, then at some point somebody's gonna read that and go, oh, thank God, you know?

Yeah. Yeah. I'm not the only one. I'm not on my own. Brilliant. I've thoroughly enjoyed talking to you. I can't believe we've come to the end of our time. Just so that everybody knows how to follow you or find your work. Where are you most active?

I'm most active on Instagram, probably. Yeah. Under my name, Hannah Begbie.

Okay. Okay. What we'll do is we will put all the links to your work and everything we've mentioned in here. And yeah, really glad to have met you. This is the first time we've spoken. I'm sure we'll speak again.

Great. Lovely to meet you. Thanks, Nikki.

What a wonderful conversation. I'm so grateful to Hannah for sharing her thoughts and feelings on creativity and on her writing practice. I loved her openness and honesty about the challenges of being an extroverted writer and how she has designed her working life to suit her creative energies and her needs. Whatever your creative pursuit, take heart that it's okay to follow your own path. If you want to buy her books or connect with her on social media, the links, as ever, are in the show notes.

Now it's creative adventures time and I promise to share some advice from animator, illustrator and storyteller Lorna Gibson. Regular listeners and readers of my blog will know about my dream of dancing the Argentine tango and that we have been having lessons on a Saturday morning for quite some time. This is one of those adventures which allows for creative expression but has no obvious connection to my work. Last time I updated you, we were in the first year of lessons and I talked about that uncomfortable feeling of knowing we weren't very good, but we carried on anyway. Eighteen months later, you might expect that we'd be much more able, but as every week we are working on more and more complex moves or focusing on mastering the fundamental skills, we still feel like beginners on a week to week basis. Progress seems frustratingly slow. This is where Lorna's advice comes in. But before I share it, just a quick reminder. If a podcast is a creative adventure you'd like to begin, check out the links for Ality my podcast recording and editing software and captivate my podcast hosting software. I really couldn't do it without these great, easy to use tools. Back to Lorna in our conversation she said, sometimes you have to wait a little bit and that space can be uncomfortable. But I think repeating a bit of faith and patience and belief is the way to go. Remembering her words and the fact that the Argentine tango takes a lifetime to master, we take each lesson as it comes. We focus on the learning and do our best to be okay with the discomfort of not knowing what we're doing. That said, when we look back at the early videos, we can see we have come such a long way. And last weekend, having been practicing that faith and patience and belief, we shared a moment of joy when we were lost in the music and it felt like we were actually dancing. It was a glimpse of how it could feel, maybe all the time It felt like the patience was paying off and that by sinking into the learning and accepting the rough with the smooth, we can enjoy ourselves either way, have you found yourself frustrated at a lack of progress? It's a very common experience, especially when you're learning a complex skill. Letting go of expectation, allowing for discomfort and sticking with it regardless can really help you move forward. Maybe you've found a way to practice patience in these situations. Why not get involved in the creative conversation by subscribing to the Bold types on Substack or say hello to me on Instagram? The links are in the show notes. I'd love to hear all about the ups and downs of your creative adventures.

Thanks so much for listening to this episode of the Creative Switch. If you enjoyed it, please leave a review over on podchaser.com and if you've got any questions, please let me know on Instagram at nikki_Vallance. As we approach the festive season, there will be a short gap before the next episode. After a year packed with activities, adventures and new experiences, it is time for a well earned rest. Join me in 2026 where we start the year with the perfect guest to help you plan your creative projects. Creativity Coach, Nina Lenton until then, rest, recharge and stay safe. And remember why Survive when you can thrive.