3min chapter

How To Fail With Elizabeth Day cover image

S17, Ep6 Diana Evans: the bestselling author on writing routines, dealing with her inner critic and living life to the fullest

How To Fail With Elizabeth Day

CHAPTER

The Power of Dance

When you're actually writing, you yourself are immersed in the world of it. But to be able to take somebody else away in that way feels like a very powerful act. There's this extraordinary rhythm to your writing that I feel sweeps me up as the reader. And you combine that with these acute observations and insights about what's going on in individual characters' minds. Is that the heart of this podcast too? So you're in the right place, that idea of beauty and learning and growth from pain.

00:00
Speaker 2
Is that the heart of this podcast too? So you're in the right place, that idea of beauty and learning and growth from pain. What's the first book you can ever remember reading as a child? I mean, were books part of your childhood? Were you in a house surrounded by books?
Speaker 1
I wasn't actually. I mean, we had the Britannica insight to be to his and my dad's DIY books and really boring. We didn't really have literature in the house. It wasn't a writerly household at all. And I remember reading John Fowl's The Magus. That was when I was a teenager. I was about 13 or 14 and I was sitting on a bean bag. I remember sitting there for the whole weekend and I couldn't put this book down and I would just get up to go to the little eat or something. But I was just amazed that I was just completely immersed in the world of this book and the mystery of it. It was really magical. And I think that feeling of being completely captured by a book that really stayed with me. And that's something that I find so powerful about writing. When you're actually writing, you yourself are immersed in the world of it. But to be able to take somebody else away in that way, it feels like a very powerful act.
Speaker 2
There's this extraordinary rhythm to your writing that I feel sweeps me up as the reader. And you combine that with these acute observations and insights about what's going on in individual characters' minds. And you do it so fluidly. And I wanted to ask you because I had no idea that you started out as a dancer. But whether you think that informs how you write those sort of rhythms and that fluidity of dance, is that how your writing is also shaped? Yeah,
Speaker 1
I think that the dance for me is in the words as well. And when I was a dancer, I was in my early 20s. At that time, I was already writing poetry. And I was trying to write fiction. And at some point, I came to a decision that I had to basically make a decision about what I was going to do with my career, whether I was going to write or whether I was going to dance. And I decided that I had more to give to the world through words, through writing. But I think I've always been looking for the sense of movement that I've lost from dance in the work, in the writing. I think the poetry is very important in my prose because that to me is a form of dance because it's rhythm focused and pace focused. And so there is an element of, I think, choreography almost when I'm writing, not just within the sentences and the rhythm of the sentences. Like one sentence leads on from another sentence. The rhythm is very important. But also the rhythm of the whole book, the pattern, it makes it's almost like you're positioning a series of elements into a pattern that works and is coherent. So I guess I am thinking in a dancey way when I'm writing it. It's almost like I'm dancing with the pen. Oh,
Speaker 3
that's so good.

Get the Snipd
podcast app

Unlock the knowledge in podcasts with the podcast player of the future.
App store bannerPlay store banner

AI-powered
podcast player

Listen to all your favourite podcasts with AI-powered features

AI-powered
podcast player

Listen to all your favourite podcasts with AI-powered features

Discover
highlights

Listen to the best highlights from the podcasts you love and dive into the full episode

Discover
highlights

Listen to the best highlights from the podcasts you love and dive into the full episode

Save any
moment

Hear something you like? Tap your headphones to save it with AI-generated key takeaways

Save any
moment

Hear something you like? Tap your headphones to save it with AI-generated key takeaways

Share
& Export

Send highlights to Twitter, WhatsApp or export them to Notion, Readwise & more

Share
& Export

Send highlights to Twitter, WhatsApp or export them to Notion, Readwise & more

AI-powered
podcast player

Listen to all your favourite podcasts with AI-powered features

AI-powered
podcast player

Listen to all your favourite podcasts with AI-powered features

Discover
highlights

Listen to the best highlights from the podcasts you love and dive into the full episode

Discover
highlights

Listen to the best highlights from the podcasts you love and dive into the full episode