Sarah K Jackson: ‘Find your reason for writing – this will sustain you’
BY Katie Smart
3rd Apr 2023
Sarah K Jackson studied with on our Writing Your Novel – Three Months course in London back in 2017. Sarah is an ecologist specialising in botany and has a keen interest in human-wildlife coexistence, conservation, climate change and microplastics pollution. Her debut novel Not Alone comes out from Picador on 6 April 2023. The narrative follows a mother and son in a post-apocalyptic future, it is a thrilling tale of survival in a world ravaged by a toxic storm.
We spoke to Sarah about her time studying with us, how her work as an ecologist helped inspire the dystopian world of her debut novel, and her top tips for aspiring authors.
You worked on an early version of your debut novel Not Alone during our Writing Your Novel course in 2017, how did your time on the course impact your approach to writing?
During the course, the first rough draft about Katie’s survival alone and attempt to re-find someone she loved and thought lost evolved into a deeper, moving tale of fierce motherly love and hope in a richer post-apocalyptic world. I would say that each draft of the novel has been like this, during the course and since, delving deeper into the story and trying to pull it to the surface.
It was a huge benefit to be with other creative people on similar journeys on the course – to feel that connection and shared goal. It made me feel much more settled and determined in this big dream to write published books, and it made me be more open with other people in my life about my writing and become more disciplined and scheduled in my approach. I think the encouragement and support are also massive factors – it’s easy to underestimate how important it is to have a few people like what you’re doing and encourage you, especially when you’re developing confidence in your own writing.
What’s one piece of advice from your tutor Charlotte Mendelson that’s stuck with you?
Charlotte’s a wonderful human being – kind, encouraging, articulate and full of insight and useful knowledge to impart on the course. I love reading and devour books far too fast and certainly don’t need anyone to give me an excuse to read – but her encouraging us to read as much as we could and explore different things, and the way we bounced around ideas about what we read in class helped me to read not just for fun but read more critically and notice what the writer had done and not done. It gave me a sort of confidence to open up more conversations about books with people, to ask for recommendations and really think about writing as a craft.
Many of our students find a real community on our courses – are you still in touch with any of your course mates?
I would have loved for us to have kept in touch as a group and still meet up. However, I do keep in touch with a few of them and we have shared chapters and news with each other and several are coming to my book launch on the 6 April, which I’m so happy about.
Being part of a group of writers was one of the best parts of the course to me – I’d never had that before. As well as that feeling of permission to be a writer described above, it also made the trying to write a novel seem like an ambition that was valid and celebrated. It was nice, too, to share the difficulties, challenges and self-doubt of writing, all of which can seem insurmountable at times.
Not Alone is a gripping dystopian novel about a mother and son fighting to survive in a world ravaged by a toxic storm. Can you tell us a bit more about your debut and the inspiration behind it?
Katie has survived alone with her young son Harry since the toxic storm that killed nearly everyone else. As we meet her, she thinks she might be dying, but she discovers the man she loved might still be alive, so she takes Harry outside into the changed and toxic but beautiful world for the first time to try to find him.
The first draft was written during a time of grief and also after having just got married – it was the story tugging at me to be written, where, I guess, I could pour all those conflicting intense emotions. Hope and resilience are powerful driving forces through the novel, both of which are things I find we have to keep re-learning in life, and I was inspired by real life survival stories I was reading – the endurance people are capable of when it’s either go on or give up is a powerful reminder to dim the negative internal chatter and dig deep. Grief can also show us how painfully deep love for someone goes, especially perhaps a mother’s – there’s an endurance to Katie’s journey and her determination to do ever more in order to keep that little person she loves safe and give him the future she dreams of for him.
I love wild places and was inspired by all the adventures I’ve had in my job and also for fun – kayaking up rivers and across lakes, seeing a mountainside spread out from the highest peak, squelching through bog and peat. I wanted the characters to go on an adventure. Whilst Not Alone is grounded science fiction, I have loved fantasy and science fiction, adventures in imaginative worlds with a hint of magic, and grew up loving the likes of Garth Nix, Philip Pullman, Ian Irvine, Robin Hobb… Harry’s love of dragons and make believe, things that sparkle, and having a curiosity about the world feels precious and hopeful in a world Katie sees as dangerous and not how things should be at all.
You have a background in ecology, did your interest in conservation help influence the premise of the novel?
As an ecologist, I was definitely inspired by the wild and in creating a lived-in world that has been altered by a toxic event. In my job I often have to imagine what might survive under future scenarios or after particular impacts, and am too aware of the threats of climate change, air pollution and microplastics – these elements all fed unnervingly easily into an imagined environmentally-caused apocalypse. And that frustration and fear of the slowness of progress too, yet hope and optimism that is both natural and needed in my job.
I specialise in botany and habitats as an ecologist, so my love of plants, their uses, their ability or not to thrive or adapt, and all those experiences outdoors amongst trees and hedges and rivers definitely fed into Katie’s journey and the world she inhabits. It’s an altered, toxic world, but it is still beautiful.
Which novel do you always recommend to others?
I’m not sure I have just one… But in the realm of post-apocalyptic/dystopian novels, it would be Earth Abides by George R Stewart, which is a beautiful thoughtful post-apocalyptic novel written in the 1940s (ecological, anthropological, about surviving and starting again – not crawling with zombies and violence, though I’ve read plenty that feature those too) or Station Eleven, The Road, The Dog Stars...
What does your typical writing routine look like?
I work part-time as an ecologist now, so I typically use all the other days to write – whether that’s trying to sit down 9-5 to blissfully make stuff up or to sit and edit, or I am squeezing in the same amongst other activities. When not at my desk, I write ideas on my phone and in notebooks and keep a journal – it’s best to write ideas and thoughts down so they’re not forgotten. I find the mind often works through problems or plot and character ideas in the background and solutions sometimes just pop up while I’m doing something else.
When I’m aiming for a deadline for my writing, I try to start out with a clear schedule and routine, but I’m afraid I soon become completely absorbed and I am all-in until I finish.
What top tips would you like to share with the aspiring authors reading this?
1. To read all the time – read what you love and explore new things, take recommendations, find reader friends.
2. Find your reason for writing – this will sustain you, I think, no matter what disappointments or difficulties or lack of time you have.
3. To take all the advice you can, find mentors, read interviews, go to classes, watch tutorials on YouTube – do whatever you can to learn, because writing is a craft/an art and wherever you are right now it is only the start.
4. Accept that writing and creating will likely always be squeezed in amongst other parts of your life, and try to be grateful for the time you have. A focused hour can be more useful than an unstructured day.
5. Following on from the above, be careful not to run yourself into the ground. Pursue health, sleep and peace, I have learnt these do actually help with the writing!
6. Above all, be persistent.
Finally, what’s next for you and your writing journey?
I’m writing something new, which is a delicious and freeing feeling, and enjoying writing for publicity and marketing too about Not Alone, writing, ecology and environmental issues. At the moment, the new novel is a dystopia where extreme environmental revolution has allowed nature to recover, but people live in walled towns, the wild so sacred they are cut off from it, their own natures too – emotion a dangerous brutality of the past. It’s about greenwashing, censorship, human beings split off from nature, and finding hope, truth and connection.
Get your hands on a copy of Not Alone, out 6 Apr.
Get tuition and feedback from leading authors and publishing professionals, apply for one of our three- or six-month Writing Your Novel courses.
If you’re writing your own dystopian novel, learn more about the craft of worldbuilding on our six-week online Writing Science Fiction course.
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