Former Books Editor releases her debut novel

Lucy Skoulding was Books Editor in 2015-2016 and, since graduating from Warwick, she has become a reporter, undertaken the Press Association’s part-time National Council for the Training of Journalists (NCTJ) course, and co-authored a trilogy of books – So Great a Man.

So, talk me through your journey from graduation to today.

I always wanted to be a journalist, especially since being on The Boar. When I  graduated, I immediatelydecided to move to London as my boyfriend and some friends were coming here, but I didn’t have a job. So, I moved and worked somewhere totally unconnected from what I wanted to do for a year. I worked in a tech company and it was quite a good experience. It was good to get some industry knowledge I guess, but it wasn’t what I wanted to do.

For the first year in London, I saved up to do an NCTJ to get into journalism. I started that last September. Because I’d already started living in London, I couldn’t financially support myself if I wasn’t working and I wanted to carry on my life as I was doing it. I’m coming to the end of it now – it’s been a whirlwind.

I was still working at the tech company when I started the course, and then I got my current job in December. I’m currently working as a reporter and editor at a financial trade publication, for accountants. I’m reporting on news that affects anyone in the financial sector, so GDPR and things like that. I’m getting to interview politicians, so it’s actually a pretty good job and is great to do alongside my course.

I always wanted to be a journalist, especially since being on The Boar 

How did you balance writing the trilogy alongside all of this?

It’s been tough, particularly whilst doing my exams. When I’ve finished the course, I will feel more relaxed and there will be more time. My co-author is actually my step-grandad who is writing under a pseudonym. In 2016, he approached me to say that he wanted to write a book and afterwards had the idea for me to help him out.

We wrote the first book and we’ve already written the second book. At the moment, it’s fairly chilled. The only thing that’s taking time up is to get it out there and trying to tell people about it, which is important.

We’re planning to finish book three after my course is over. It has been difficult but while my course was intense, I haven’t really been writing. It’s taken a while to get from the very raw copy to what it is now, though.

Did you each write different parts? Or did one person write and then the other person edit?

We’d call every week and discuss the ideas together. My step-grandad would write a chapter or two and send them to me to go over and change anything. Then I would send it back. I did write a couple of chapters but most of them have been written by my step-grandad with my editing. That’s why it’s ‘with’ me rather than ‘and’ because I didn’t do the majority but I had a part.

Did you enjoy co-writing?

Yeah, I did actually. It’s like an essay, when you’ve worked on something for so long and you get to the end, you’re not really sure if it’s good or not.

You can bounce ideas off each other if there’s something you’re stuck on. I know that writer’s block is a thing but if you’ve got someone else there saying ‘why don’t you do this?’ or ‘what about this?’, it really helps you to think of ideas. If you’ve got an idea for a book and you’re like “I want this, this, this and this to happen”, it’s probably best if you write alone because, when co-writing, you need to be able to discuss ideas all the time. I had to adapt my writing to my step-grandad’s style because otherwise it wouldn’t have worked.

Because it’s written in the past, he had to teach me about the language used. When I wrote one of my first chapters, some of the language I was using was slightly wrong. You definitely need to be collaborative but you feel much more confident about what you’re doing; it’s quite an enjoyable process.

It’s like an essay, when you’ve worked on something for so long and you get to the end, you’re not really sure if it’s good or not

A lot of people struggle when trying to find their first publisher – was finding one easy?

The publisher we’ve gone with is growing and they’re doing really well, but they are still quite small. We didn’t send the book to any big publishers or anything. I know you can get lucky or you’ll write incredibly and get spotted, but I just find it so hard to penetrate the big publishers. We approached the managing editor of our publishing company [GB Publishing]. We knew him through somebody else we’d worked with. I’d actually done some book reviews for him before, so we sort of had a relationship with him.

We didn’t have the same experience of sending it up to loads of publishers and getting rejected. It’s obviously a risk you take but if you do get in with the big publishers, it’s incredible. We decided not to take that route and it paid off because we could get published.

After the trilogy is published, will you look to write any more books or will you stick to journalism?

I guess I always wanted to write a book. I really liked creative writing when I was young and did a life writing module at uni, which incorporated creative stuff. When I was Books Editor I helped with the short story competition and ran a poetry one. I would like to try writing on my own as well. I didn’t expect the trilogy to happen. I probably wouldn’t have started writing novels at this stage in my life if it was just me writing a book! I love reading fiction and I enjoy writing it, but I’m also into reading non-fiction now as well. I know a lot of journalists have written books and things like that. So hopefully, fingers crossed!