The Joy of Writing

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It's great having the time say, oh, you're a Times Bestseller. That moment last it literally last a moment but the work when you're sitting there is actual joy. The people only ever talk to you about themselves and I forgive them for that. All the things that have stung me most when I look back on them were all about other people's lack of confidence or self-belief. It's got nothing to do with me at all. But which is quite nice. And now when people say, well, who do you think you are? I can say,. well, I'm Simon there.

Welcome to the Wintering Sessions with Katherine May.

'I am my childhood’s wildest dream,’ says Saima Mir. This episode is about the process of getting there, not just the determination and hard work, but also the intangibles: the beliefs, ambitions and understandings that you don’t even know how to articulate, but which hold you up on a decades-long journey to becoming.

In this conversation, the journalist and bestselling novelist talks about shame, failure, the experience of being gossiped about - but also the inner strength and family support that allowed her to reinvent herself after leaving her first two husbands. Saima came late to journalism, but forged a successful career on TV and in print before writing her genre-changing (or will it be genre-defining?) novel, The Khan. Here, she surveys that pathway to this place, and how it built her iconic character, Jia Khan.

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