Nicci French at the Festival of Writing 2015

    The keynote address for the Festival of Writing 2015 was given by that well known couple, Sean French and Nicci Gerrard, who write their thrillers under the pseudonym, Nicci French. Their latest series features the psychotherapist Frieda Klein and I took `Thursday's Child' with me on the train up to York. As a psychotherapist, I particularly love the Freud quote at the beginning of that book:

     `He that has eyes to see and ears to hear may convince himself that no mortal can keep a secret. If his lips are silent, he chatters with his fingertips; betrayal oozes out of him at every pore.'

     My fingertips were chattering, along with my teeth, as I waited for their talk to begin. I had come seriously unprepared for a thermostat set for hungover students at the York University Campus.

     Sean French and Nicci French both looked thin and clever; serious people who might be about to deliver a dry philosophy lecture. The moment they began to speak, however, smiling, then laughing, finishing each other's stories, they were transformed: all I could see was their charm and nervous energy. Both seemed instantly 10 years younger.

     They clearly work brilliantly as a team and have been doing so for the past 20 years. She sits in her attic and he in his shed and they email each other back and forth, taking primary responsibility for alternate chapters, but respecting each other's edits.

     They are interested in dread, in extraordinary things happening to ordinary people, their themes are ones of loneliness, doubt, of luck, the madness of falling in love and the complexities of the human mind. They constantly mine their everyday lives and the world around them, quoting Philip Larkin: How can you have things happen to you and not write about them!

Here are a few gems from their talk:

In your writing, be full of faith and full of doubt.

Have a sense of the book's journey.

When a book refuses to do your bidding, you know something is working.

Nobody will rescue you, except you yourself.

Don't sit alone in your room too long, you need to stay connected to the real world.

Sometimes you need the tension of everyday life- and a job- to make the time to write. If you have too much time, sometimes that can work against you.

So I guess you need to work hard, believe in yourself, but not too much, stay connected and keep all your balls in the air. And the energy that requires is ultimately fruitful: