How to write a book

From commission to publication it’s been a journey - logistics, unpaid leave, months in Ukraine - and then the actual writing, after I’d gone back to work … but Bread and War is here!

First there had to be the right idea. A few years ago, a very kind and experienced literary agent had got in touch, suggesting we meet up for coffee or lunch. We met up. She would ask me to pitch a book proposal, about baking or about my life. I knew I didn’t have a recipe book in me: I bake many times a week, from other peoples’ books, but I have no idea how to come up with a recipe of my own. And there are more than enough cookbooks in the world for me to try and produce another one.

But then, came my renewed involvement with Ukraine. After helping to raise money and support after the full scale invasion, I began traveling there in the early summer of 2022, delivering baking supplies to Kyiv. The day I returned, I remember a colleague saying to me ‘So when are you going back?’ That September I went to film with a young Ukrainian friend who was returning to see the home she’d fled in Kharkiv, and then to Odesa, where I began getting involved with the amazing team from Bake for Ukraine.

On the road from Kramatorsk to Pokrovsk

In December ‘22, I traveled through Donetsk region with the volunteers from the Ukrainian pop group Antytila. Since then, I have gone as often as I can manage, meeting so many people whose lives have been turned upside down by Russia’s war, but who have still found the energy and determination to help others, or serve their country, in whatever way they can.

They drove vans packed with supplies to the frontlines. They cooked for soldiers and for displaced people. They escaped occupation and rebuilt their lives and their businesses again and again. They championed Ukrainian culture and heritage and made it known and respected around the world.

Two and a half years ago, on the road out of Pokrovsk, I met an incredible woman called Natalia who ran a volunteer canteen, with a huge and lavish table of food available at any time of the day to anyone who came by - soldiers, medics, volunteers. I wanted to tell her story. I wanted to tell all of their stories.

With the amazing Natalia

My agent, to her immense credit, swung behind the idea and changed her pitch from cosy baking book to tales of people who kept their country going through the relentless cruelty of war.

Having a substack helped: although I have worked as a writer every day for 36 years, working in TV news means I write for other people to read aloud on air. There are no bylines, no body of work to show. But on this website, I could have my own voice and my own space. My lovely agent found me a publisher, and it all began to happen from there.

I have been using every moment of my annual leave allowance over the last three years to travel to Ukraine - so I applied for a three month unpaid sabbatical from work to spend a more extended period finding the right people to interview for the book, and spending time with them. In all, I spent around 5 months of last year in Ukraine, and I am incredibly grateful to everyone who helped me out, translated and trusted me enough to let me into their lives.

With Lilia and the Bud De Druzhe volunteers

I am not a naturally intrepid person, and I went into television news rather than newspapers aged 21 because I didn’t like the idea of working on my own. So it was quite a stretch for me to embark on this project alone, but of course I wasn’t really alone.

I have made lifelong friends in Kyiv, in Odesa, in Kharkiv and Dnipro and in Lviv, and I constantly try to learn more about Ukrainian history and culture from their vast knowledge and lived experience. With them, I have managed to travel to many parts of Ukraine, mostly in the east and south, and I am well aware that while I can drop into their lives and go back home again, this is not some abstract war zone. These are their homes, the places they used to go on holiday, or to school; their treasured childhood memories, their heritage.

What I didn’t fully expect was the extent of their incredible hospitality. When a Ukrainian invites you for a ‘cup of tea’, they will cover the table with whatever food they have in the house: bread, dried fish, pickles, cheese and salo, chocolate biscuits. When I was traveling with a volunteer delivering bread and drinking water to an elderly lady living in a half-destroyed cottage in Kharkiv region, she insisted on giving me a large jar of pickled cucumbers as a gift.

Kharkiv region produce

Another day, we gave a lift to a lady who couldn’t afford a bus to visit her daughter in Kherson. It was a highly upsetting and emotional day for the family - but she still loaded me up with some jars of fermented tomatoes and cherry jam, made with produce from her daughter’s garden. Two soldiers, who cook for their battalion in Kherson region, insisted on making me lunch, chicken and cabbage salad and bread neatly laid out on a plate.

A group of Marines not only whipped up a waffle cake layered with sliced oranges and caramel, but also pressed a box of hazelnut chocolates into my hands as we left. I was frankly relieved not to be handed the dark slabs of dried horsemeat which they gave to my fixer, although he seemed delighted with the gift.

It was probably about a year altogether between getting the formal commission, and completing the final manuscript, although most of that time was all about travel and logistics - the actual writing was the quickest part, mostly because I had to fit it around my full time job. The great team at Duckworth Press worked their magic on the edits. I also confirmed that I was not the kind of person who could get up at 4am and ‘get a few hours of writing done’ before an 11 hour writing shift at work.

With the journalist Zarina Zabrisky in Kherson

There were many interviews to transcribe, and I thought how much easier it would have been if I had remembered the microphone which still lies forgotten in the depths of my backpack. Or the notebook, which I had never quite managed to get out of its packet, amid all the juggling with the phone voice recorder while taking photos and videos all at the same time.

And of course, after the final copy deadline when really nothing could be changed - I was still returning to Ukraine, hearing updates, and meeting new people who had found inspiring ways to help. I collected enough testimony for a dozen new articles.

It is a tremendous privilege to write a book, to have someone believe in you and your voice - and borderline terrifying at the same time. I have been repeatedly told that now comes the really difficult part - marketing and selling it - which is not my natural forte - but these are Ukrainian stories of courage and of resistance which deserve to be told, and deserve to be shared.

And here we are: I have a small box of actual copies in my hands - and ‘Bread and War’ is officially out on May 1st!