We’re super proud of Australian author Diana Reid – who is set to release her third novel Signs of Damage published by Ultimo Press following the success of her first two novels Love & Virtue and Seeing Other People to the Australian market on March 4th, 2025.
But MP readers, we’re curious… have you ever had an inkling that you’d like to write a book, get it published, and see it thrive out in the world?
We caught up with Diana via Zoom for our High Agency Women series, and she dropped some absolute gold about her own writing process and the book publishing process more generally to help other writers get a feel for the inner workings of what can be a very opaque industry.
Here are three takeaways for the aspiring authors among you…
On getting an agent:
Reader question: “I would love to know how Diana got her agent! Was it through the querying process? And if so, how did she find that (e.g. creating something that’s a finished product with no promise of it going anywhere)?“
Diana Reid: I’ve actually submitted to agents twice. The first time was in Sydney with the manuscript for Love & Virtue. The second was in London with Signs of Damage (I’d just relocated from Sydney to London so I wanted a UK-based agent). I have three pieces of advice from those experiences:
- All agents have submission instructions on their website. You don’t have to follow these to the letter but you should be familiar with them and respect them as much as possible. E.g. When I submitted Love & Virtue, the agents’ websites said they weren’t accepting submissions so I called and politely asked if they’d make an exception and gave them a quick verbal pitch. Whereas, when I submitted Signs of Damage in the UK, the agents were all accepting submissions, so I just did exactly as instructed.
- Don’t ask for updates. The wait is excruciating but you just have to grit your teeth and trust that they’ll update you if there’s any news. Following up might give you a brief illusion of control but it will irritate agents.
- If you do get an update e.g. an agent responds and says that they’re reading your work, or (even better!) that they’re interested in meeting you, don’t keep it to yourself! Immediately follow up with all the other agents you’ve submitted to and let them know that you’ve got interest. Agents usually receive more submissions than they could ever read so they actually appreciate being updated on your progress–it means they can prioritise your work and not miss out on an opportunity.
Reader question: “How do you know what you’ve written doesn’t actually suck (from the perspective of an unpublished writer). More like during the writing process how do you know you’re onto a winner as opposed to writing hacky tripe?
Diana Reid: It takes months and months to come up with a good idea, and you can’t rush that process. I think Richard Curtis had this analogy – he said having a good idea is like going on a good first date. And seeing it through to completion is like a marriage. You can’t just commit to the first idea you have. You have to flirt with it, and get to know it, before you commit. And I definitely feel that – you have to kind of spend a lot of time with it percolating before you know if its something that will sustain your interest for the two to three years it will take to see it through to completion
That takes months, and then once I’ve settled on an idea, I just write. I call it free writing. I don’t have a plan. I just write every character and every scene connected with that idea, and then when I have 60-70k words of that, I print it out, read through it, and extract what’s good, which is usually only half of it, and from the stuff that I think is good I start to build out a plot. And then I take twice as long to go and rewrite the whole thing. There’d be a faster way if you planned first, but that is my way, and how I’ve written every book.
Sometimes you start writing and it just doesn’t go anywhere. You get 10k words in and then you… I think if an idea is good, it’s endlessly iterative. If I like an idea as I’m writing, I’ll be thinking of the next scene after that, so your brain is going and then, and then, and then. And if it’s not a good idea, you’ll get like 5k words in, and be like, I’ve said all I need to say.
On her “unfair” advantages as an author:
Diana Reid: I’ve thought about this before. Especially because in my time at uni and obviously subsequently in publishing I have met a lot of people who are really creative, and I think they are probably more talented than me. I’ve encountered people with what I think are better ideas, and really original turns of phrase.
But I would say that I am pretty good at being self-disciplined. I’m good at breaking a task down into smaller chunks, and if I tell myself I’m going to do a certain amount of words every day, I just do it. Even if the deadline is quite a long way away, or the goal I’ve set for myself is completely arbitrary, I’m good at getting to the end of day day.
The second one is pure luck – I’m not an anxious person by nature. I’m good at choosing not to think about things if I know I can’t control them. I don’t worry as much as I should about how my work is going to be perceived. When I’m writing, I don’t worry about whether its any good, I don’t worry about whether or not people are going to like it, it’s not that I don’t care, it’s just, for whatever reason I have a facility to choose not to wander. I think that ability to shut out the noise helps with the first one.
And then the third one is I’m quite good at identifying patterns in stories and texts that I like, and then replicating them. I don’t think I’m a particularly original thinker, but I think that if I see something that I like, I’m able to identify a formula for what it is that I like about it, and then try and replicate it myself, which is super helpful. From the most basic thing of coming up with story ideas to the nitty gritty of how to express them at a sentence level.
Head to Apple or Spotify on February 12th to listen to Diana Reid’s full High Agency Women interview.