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published book was in fact the seventh novel she had completed. “Lots of them were terrible, and I’d put them aside. But there were lots of learning points, so I didn’t find the writing a problem – partly because of having come from a very long background of writing,” she explains. Gytha has always written, both prose and plays, and feels that her background in playwriting adds a great deal to her fiction. “I hope it does, anyway,” she says. “I learned a huge amount writing plays: particularly making dialogue believable – there’s nowhere to hide when actors say your words, it either does or doesn’t work.” Alongside her own writing endeavours, Gytha studied English at Cambridge University, then – after winning multiple awards as a playwright – looked towards the University of East Anglia’s famous creative writing course to take her to the next level. “I thought if I went there I would learn and focus a lot, and it would really help me,” Gytha says. “Then I slightly freaked about putting myself down to do just pure prose, because I didn’t have the same track record that I had in plays. Right on the edge of everything, I decided: I’m going to apply for scriptwriting and then do some of the prose stuff on the side. It was an interesting decision, because I think actually I would have learned a huge amount from the prose course; they have an incredibly good route into agencies, publishers and so on, in a way that you don’t necessarily get out of scriptwriting.” “What I did learn, though, was how to pitch – and that was the single best thing that could have happened to me at that stage in my career,” Gytha says. “Between my first and second year I went to an event in London, which turned out to be awful – it was just lots and lots of people asking a panel of agents questions, but all they were really doing was talking about their own books, and the agents were looking increasingly disinterested – and I just thought: ‘What’s the point of being here?’.”
my day until I’ve left. So normally, I do the school run and then pedal on from there into town. I go and settle myself in one of the early-opening cafes, and I move to one of the larger cafes or somewhere that’s atmospheric. If it’s a nice independent cafe, I will buy lots of things – if it’s not, I tend to bring my own teabag and ask for hot water,” she grins. Gytha really enjoys the planning stage of embarking on a new novel. “I have a big notebook with blank pages, and coloured pens, and I draw character plans, charts of timings and clues, a chapter plan – I absolutely love it,” she says. “I have to know the ending. I say that, but in my second book I did change the ending! Once I started writing, it was obvious it needed to go in a different direction, and you have to listen to that as a writer. If you realise it’s just not making sense, or the way you set the characters out means they wouldn’t do what you’d planned – that makes perfect sense to me. So, I changed it.” Gytha finds her maps extremely useful to keep track of the more complex and twisting plots and multiple perspectives
Gytha had already written the first three chapters of a book that she was pleased with, along with a synopsis – so she marched out of the event, looked up the three literary agencies closest to the event’s location, and handed her work in at their front desks. “It obviously wasn’t polished, by any means, but there was enough there that the agents thought there was potential. I got the first reply the next day, asking for the rest of my book,” Gytha grins. “And then I got another reply – and then I obviously thought – ‘Oh my God, I need to write the rest of the book!’ So I then wrote the rest of the book that week, in a... frenzy of ridiculousness.” Although the hectic pace required to deliver that first book isn’t a recommended approach, Gytha still writes as often and as frequently as she can. “I just write all the time, basically,” she says, “except when I’m doing sport or having a nap – and I would say ‘or eating’, though I normally write and eat at the same time. But I always need to leave the house to write. I really hate feeling like I’m stuck at home: I have this awful feeling of not actually having started
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