Interview: The advice Nicola Sturgeon got from Val McDermid on writing her memoir - from friendship to fiction

A love of books brought Val McDermid and Nicola Sturgeon together and they've been talking about them ever since

Put Nicola Sturgeon, former First Minister and MSP for Glasgow South Side and Val McDermid, Queen of Crime, together and what you get from the firm friends is books, books and more books. Books they’re writing, books they’re reading and books they love - with a helping of dry humour and droll banter thrown in.

Val McDermid and Nicola Sturgeon will be appearing at a special festive Edinburgh’s Christmas In Conversation event, In The Company of Books, on 15 December at The Assembly Rooms on the Mound where they will be joined by Alan Cumming and bestselling author Paula Hawkins to discuss all things books. | John Devlin

Now they’re taking their double act onto the stage at a special festive Edinburgh’s Christmas In Conversation event, In The Company of Books, on 15 December at The Assembly Hall on the Mound where they will be joined by Alan Cumming and bestselling author Paula Hawkins and an audience to discuss all things books.

Relaxed in each other’s company they’re a bit of a double act, both opinionated and exponents of the kind of dry banter that tells of a firm friendship and you can see how they’ll fit into another stage event at the Glasgow Comedy Festival in March.

It was books that brought them together when Sturgeon interviewed McDermid at the Edinburgh Book Festival in her role as selector when she was First Minister.

“The grounding of our friendship really is a love of books,” says McDermid, 69. “I didn’t know Nicola but we bonded very quickly over our taste in books, our interest in books, and thought this would be a chance to talk about it to more people.”

Sturgeon, 54, joins in with: “When we get together over dinner and, you know, a modest amount of red wine, we tend to talk about books a lot. The books we’re reading, we’ve enjoyed, hated. Often we’ll agree, sometimes disagree - and that’s more fun - and we thought it would be fun to open this discussion to a bigger audience.”

Val McDermid and Nicola Sturgeon will be joined by Alan Cumming and Paula Hawkins at In the Company of Books in Edinburgh on 15 December. | John Devlin

Both currently writing - Sturgeon her memoir and McDermid a new Karen Pirie novel as well as a short 20,000-word work on ‘winter’ - the pair are also vocal about conversations about books being accessible, not least because they’re both from similar backgrounds

“I think we came at books from a similar direction,” says McDermid. “We’re both from working class backgrounds where our access to books came through libraries,” in her case literally with Kirkcaldy? central library across the road from her childhood home.

“We’re both really excited about it,” says Sturgeon. “We’ve got a couple of great guests and it will just be good fun, I hope an interesting, entertaining, accessible conversation about books and the joy that books and reading brings to people, the solace in tough times, the escapism it gives you, the education it brings, the way it opens your eyes and deepens your empathy to times and cultures and people that you don’t know anything about from your own experience. The trick will be shutting us up long enough to let our guests speak. Or me shutting you up long enough,” she says looking at McDermid.

“Yeah, right. You’re the politician,” says McDermid, “you’re the one that talks all the time. But the one thing it won’t be is po-faced.”

“I’m the politician,” agrees Sturgeon. “I’ll be the po-faced one. You can provide the laughs.”

In their mutual love of books, where do they agree and where disagree?

Nicola Sturgeon MSP and author Val McDermid | Charlotte Graham

“I think we both have a love of crime fiction,” says McDermid. “I think we also both read pretty widely. I’ve pretty eclectic taste. I don’t read much non-fiction if I’m honest, I tend to only read non-fiction when it’s relevant to something I’m working on.”

“You’ll read my book when it comes out,” says Sturgeon, who is currently editing her memoir, due out next year.

“I’ll totally read your book, yeah, yeah yeah,” says McDermid. “Absolutely I’ll be glued to it, every page.”

Sturgeon continues: “Crime fiction I suppose is what made us friends, but like Val, I’ve got a very wide taste. I like reading about different themes, different parts of the world, different time periods and I think that makes for good conversation, and the odd disagreement. We’ve had books where Val’s loved it and I’ve hated it or vice versa.”

McDermid gives a recent example of a Booker shortlisted book. “There was one that I could not finish and you got on reasonably well, so that happens. We’ll have a vigorous discussion about why I’m too stupid to read it,” she laughs.

“I’ve NEVER said that!,” protests Sturgeon. “Obviously when we disagree I’m right and you’re wrong, but…

“Of course, I’m accustomed to that,” says McDermid.

And so it goes, the women of words enjoying their verbal dexterity in a forgiving, friendly environment and the talk turns to Christmas traditions.

“When I was a kid,” says Sturgeon, “The Broons or Oor Wullie was in the Christmas stocking and that was my favourite bit of Christmas morning.”

“And annuals as well,” says McDermid. “You got your Bunty or Girls’ Crystal Annual - but you won’t remember that because you’re too young.”

Val McDermid is working on her latest novel in the Karen Pirie series as well as a 20,000 non-fiction work on ‘winter’. | Lisa Ferguson

They still live in houses full of books, despite McDermid having given 172 boxes to charity during a recent move.

“I had three copies of Ali Smith’s How To Be Both. I could justify two because it’s published in two editions, one with the medieval story first, the other the contemporary story first. And also Ali gave me her reading copy, so that’s special.” The Ali Smiths survived the ‘winnowing’.

Sturgeon agrees with this philosophy, saying “I’ve got loads of books in different editions. I don’t know how many copies of Sunset Song I’ve got. And I was in a second hand bookshop and bought a couple of The Women’s Press editions of your earlier books,” she says to McDermid. “I keep meaning to get you to sign them to up their value.”

“I think that probably lowers their value,” says McDermid.

With the Queen of Crime recommending short stories, such as a Reginald Hill collection with an introduction by Mick Herron [A Candle for Christmas & Other Stories] for the festive season, what would Sturgeon suggest?

“I’m reading the book that won The Booker, Orbital, which you recommended, because I read the blurb and thought ‘I don’t really fancy that’, but I’m absolutely loving it. I’m about to read a proof copy of a friend of both of us, Mike Pedersen, who’s got a first novel coming out next year. I’m really looking forward to it.”

“That’s on my pile as well,” says McDermid. “But Orbital is a terrific read. Very short and accessible and manages an extraordinary trick of scale. It’s about the universe, but also about the inside of a tin can in space and a group of astronauts who in the course of one day see 16 sunrises and 16 sunsets and it manages to balance the scale of those concerns beautifully. It’s beautifully written.”

Former First Minister Nicola Sturgeon is currently working on her memoir, due out next year. | Jeff J Mitchell/Getty Images

Sturgeon has also been reviewing books for The New Statesman, appropriately a couple of memoirs.

“I read Boris Johnson’s memoir which wasn’t time well spent. And I read Angela Merkel’s which was better than Boris Johnson’s.” she laughs. “I used to read more non-fiction but in government you spend so much of your life reading papers about real things that fiction is definitely my preference.”

McDermid agrees, enjoying what she calls the window on other people’s worlds.

“One of the main reasons I read is to be taken into somebody else’s world rather than stay inside my own existence so I can try and understand how somebody else lives their life. That could be somebody on another continent or in another culture or in the same city as me who leads a different life. It makes you examine the world. And if it wasn’t for books, I wouldn’t have the life I have now. I was reading a Chalet School novel and one of the characters gets a letter from her publisher with a cheque in it and that was the moment I realised, it’s a job! I could do that.”

“Yeah,” says Sturgeon, “for different reasons… I’m not a writer, although I’m trying to write a book just now, but....”

“You’ll get there, you’ll get there…” says McDermid.

“I am writing a book just now, not trying, I am,” says Sturgeon, then continues her thread, “but for different reasons I can’t imagine my life without books. It would be, frankly a life not worth much, and I have learned more through fiction about the world and history and different cultures and places than I ever would reading big, weighty non-fiction tomes, because it doesn’t just educate you and give you insight, it gives you a sense of empathy for different people and different times.

“I do think there should be some way of making it compulsory for leaders everywhere to read fiction and do some of their learning about the world through that medium.”

Moving onto favourite writers, McDermid mentions the book that first gave her the crime fiction bug when she was nine, Agatha Christie’s The Murder At The Vicarage. She loves Robert Louis Stevenson “for the range and scope of his work”, Ruth Rendell and contemporary writers such as Ali Smith and Margaret Atwood.

Sturgeon agrees on Atwood and Smith and is also “a huge fan” of Elif Shafak.

“Every book she publishes I pounce on. And one of the best feelings is coming across a writer you haven’t read before and finding out they’ve got a massive back list. It’s about keeping your mind open. I love looking at new releases, reading reviews, trying to find authors I’ve never heard of before, or read before like J Storer Clouston who wrote The Spy in Black, set in the First World War in Orkney. “It’s brilliant.”

As for old favourites there’s a unanimous vote in the house for Muriel Spark, summed up by McDermid:

“There’s nobody quite like Muriel Spark. That sort of wit, intelligence, the coming at the world at a tangent that she was so good at.”

Talk turns to their own writing, McDermid’s non-fiction piece for a Hodder series about the four seasons.

“It’s good because it’s pretty wintry just now, and then at the turn of the year I’ll be starting the next Karen Pirie novel….

“Hurry up!” says Sturgeon. “Karen Pirie is one of my favourite characters of all.”

With the second series starring Lauren Lyle as the eponymous detective due on TV in January/February, McDermid is enthusiastic about the rough cut she’s seen. “It’s tremendous.”

“I went on a set visit in Dysart and thought ‘I know this block of flats, it’s where my aunty Mary and Uncle Davie used to live’, which was very weird.”

And how is Sturgeon getting on with her memoir?

“I’m deep into the edit at the moment and I’m enjoying it,” she says. “I never thought writing a book would be easy. It’s been harder than I thought. I’ve got a greater respect now for what people like Val do.”

“I’ve enjoyed the process, trying to take something big and in my case way over length and unwieldy, and moulding it into the thing you want. I’m starting to get a little bit stressed at how close it is now to publication.”

“I’m looking forward to reading it, genuinely,” says McDermid.

“Occasionally someone will ask me if Val is helping me to write it,” smiles Sturgeon. “No, she’s isn’t!”

“No, I’m not writing Nicola’s book. I take no responsibility for it whatsoever.”

Val McDermid and Nicola Sturgeon enjoy discussing books with a wider audience. | John Devlin

Has McDermid offered any writing advice?

“In the early stages,” says Sturgeon, “excuse the language here but it’s her language not mine, I was sitting in front of the computer really struggling to get anything down, so I texted Val and said ‘does this happen to you? Do you get writer’s block?’. I was hoping for some very sage, writerly advice. What I got back, and this is a direct quote, was: ‘stop fannying about on whatsapp and just get on with it’ That’s been my mantra ever since.”

Both writers draw on their lives in their writing, McDermid on her days as a journalist and more directly, for Sturgeon on her life in politics. What would they leave out?

“The boring bits,” says McDermid.

For Sturgeon there is a further dilemma in writing a memoir.

“It dawned on me that in writing my own story I’m impinging on other people’s. How much of other people’s stories do you feel you have the freedom to tell? I’ve not consciously gone into thinking ‘I’m not going to talk about this or that’, not consciously left things out, but obviously not everything can be in. So I’ve tried to include everything I think is relevant to the story I’m trying to tell.”

“That’s a good recipe for any kind of writing,” says McDermid. “You leave in the things that carry the book forward. Anything that isn’t earning its keep has to go.”

Would they ever swap, McDermid have a go at a memoir and Sturgeon write fiction?

“I would love to try my hand at fiction,” says Sturgeon. “Whether crime fiction or fiction generally, I don’t know. I’ve got one or two embryonic thoughts. People say when are you going to write a novel as if it’s a really easy thing to do. It’s not, it’s an art and people like Val are brilliant at it. I don’t know that I’ve got a novel in me, the ability to write a novel, but I’d certainly quite like to have a go.”

“I can’t believe that after a lifetime in politics there are not people you’d want to kill off,” says McDermid.

“That would be the problem with any crime novel I wrote; there are too many people I’d want to knock off.”

As for McDermid, while her publishers would love her to write a memoir, she’s not keen.

“I don’t want to spend a couple of years navel gazing when I’ve got other stories,” she says.

“Are you trying to say that’s what I’ve done?” asks Sturgeon.

“Uh-huh,” says McDermid and they both laugh.

Val McDermid and Nicola Sturgeon | John Devlin

McDermid continues. “That’s why I started writing the Nine series, with Allie Burns and Rona Dunsyre, 79 and 89 and moving forward because I can use my experience in the world of words [she’s a former journalist] without having to write a memoir. The thing about writing a memoir is you’ve got to be careful. Quite a lot of people would have to die before I could write a candid memoir. I don’t want to hurt people’s feelings, cause them distress just for the sake of getting things off my chest. So it’s probably easier if I put it into fiction then nobody knows what I’m doing.”

Is hurting someone’s feelings in her memoir something Sturgeon worries about?

“Em, no. I hope I’ve not gratuitously hurt anybody and actually there are not that many people I’ve got grievances with that I would want to do that, so no. I’ve tried to be honest and sometimes yeah, I guess there will be accounts in my memoir that are absolutely honest from my perspective but somebody else might think ‘well my perspective on that is different’ because there are two sides to every story, but I certainly haven’t set out to write a memoir that is about settling scores because that’s of no interest to me.

“Hopefully my memoir is as much about the last 30 years of Scottish history, which have been quite eventful politically, as it is about me and my life. So I’m not promising I won’t ruffle anybody’s feathers, but hopefully not too much.”

McDermid says: “The thing about fiction is you can always get the last word. I wrote a series in the 1990s about a private eye, Kate Brannigan, and she got to say the things you think later you should have said in the moment. That’s one of the advantages of writing fiction. You get the last word. Unlike politics.”

“Obviously having the last word doesn’t matter to me,” says Sturgeon and they both laugh.

Before McDermid has the final word: “Really?”

Val McDermid and Nicola Sturgeon will appear with guests Alan Cumming and Paula Hawkins at Edinburgh’s Christmas In The Company of Books, Assembly Hall, The Mound, Edinburgh EH1 2LU. 15 December 4pm, tickets from: £24, (edwinterfest.com/whats-on/val-mcdermid-and-nicola-sturgeon-in-the-company-of-books)