Jane Sanderson

However, Jane started her writing career as a journalist, not a novelist. She graduated from the University of Leicester in 1982 with a degree in English Literature and an obsession with Jane Austen’s novels, but by this point she’d also done some work experience on the Sheffield Star, and although she always felt she had a novelist’s soul, she knew she had a living to earn, and she wanted to make that living as a newspaper reporter. This turned out to be easier said than done. Scores of speculative letters to local newspaper editors around the country drew a complete blank, so she took a job as a trainee with Benn Publications, in the unglamorous world of trade magazines. And, as is so often the case, this twist of fate turned out to be the best possible outcome, giving Jane a solid grounding in journalistic essentials such as shorthand, libel laws and the humble art of clear, straightforward writing.

From this beginning, she easily found work as a reporter for, first of all, the Oxford Star and then as deputy news editor of the Hampstead and Highgate Express (where, incidentally, she was to meet her husband and Writers Inc partner, Brian Viner) and finally was launched in a different direction altogether, as a news producer for the BBC. At Broadcasting House she worked for The World at One and PM  for two years, covering global news stories such as the fall of the Berlin Wall, the Croatian war of independence from the former Yugoslavia, and the ousting by her party of the Conservative Prime Minister Margaret Thatcher. Next came a varied eighteen months working with (now Dame) Jenni Murray on Woman’s Hour, before Jane finally left the BBC, a couple of months before her second child was born, to throw herself into motherhood.

All this time, novels provided a dependable and glorious escape from first, the stress of a high-pressure job, and then, the unavoidable mundanity of domestic life. Jane had always read voraciously. As a child, Enid Blyton’s Famous Five, Secret Seven and the adventures of Darrell Rivers at Malory Towers were her first loves, and easy reads such as Catherine Cookson and Barbara Taylor Bradford accompanied her through her teens, but she always shone at English at school, and the O Level and A Levels in this subject introduced Jane to the classics, and to the satisfaction of weathering, then appreciating,  the densely-written but powerful style of Emily Bronte’s Wuthering Heights or Thomas Hardy’s Tess of the D’Urbervilles. Later, at university, she delved deeper into classic literature, and specialised in the novels of Jane Austen, which remain firmly in her heart; she reads them all over again, on a (roughly) five year rotation, and if ever she’s on Mastermind, they’d be her specialist subject!

All of this – from Enid Blyton to Jane Austen and everything in between – fed into the eventual inspiration that made Jane sit down and write a book of her own. Netherwood came first, a historical novel inspired by the mining town in which she’d grown up, her family’s connections with the collieries, and her grandmother’s talent as a cook. This was published in 2011, and was followed by Ravenscliffe then Eden Falls before she changed direction and wrote three contemporary novels, This Much is True, Mix Tape and Waiting for Sunshine. She’s currently writing her seventh book, which will be a companion – not a sequel – to Mix Tape.

 It’s Jane’s firm belief that you can’t write a novel if you don’t read fiction; the books you read and love will inform your own understanding of the narrative arc, the structure of your plot, the line and length of your prose. This is one of the most frequently asked questions at author Q&As – what can I do to help get started with my writing? Jane’s answer is, read, and write. Get on with it. Make a start. It’s truly the only way. You have to be prepared to write badly before you can write well. And now that Writers Inc is up and running in Jane and Brian’s lovely old family home in Herefordshire, would-be writers of both fiction and non-fiction have access to everything Jane and Brian have learned in their own long writing careers.

Jane believes Writers Inc is unique, in that there’s no other writing retreat in the UK which is hosted by two published authors-in-residence who understand the business of writing from conception to completion. The thirty year gap between leaving the BBC and writing her first novel is testament to everything Jane can teach others about overcoming self-doubt, being brave enough to start and finish a novel, and using the countless threads that make up our own life experience, to write a readable, authentic, and thoroughly enjoyable work of fiction.

Currently reading and enjoying: