OTwo Co-Editors Alice Keegan and Laura Molloy spoke to author Sylvia Leatham about her debut novel Chaos Theory.
Sylvia Leatham is the author of Chaos Theory. Leatham grew up in Stoneybatter in Dublin, and studied English and Philosophy at UCD.
Leatham told OTwo how she always wanted to write but “over the years found ways to self-sabotage and to find excuses for not actually getting down to it”. Reflecting on her journey, she said “With the benefit of hindsight, I can see now that I had two mistaken beliefs that held me back, over decades. One of those was about time. There was always like, it wasn't the right time to write or we didn't have enough time, or I was too busy, and, you know, in retrospect, I wasn't too busy at all. I had lots of time to go to parties and gigs and see friends and everything. So that was one kind of wrong belief that I had. And the other was that I thought that I didn't understand the amount of craft and practice that is in writing. I thought, foolishly, that you just sat down and you were either a great writer or you weren't - you were either genius or you weren't and it would just come out perfect. So there was a fear of failure, a fear of starting, in case it wasn't any good. And that held me back for years as well.”
Leatham told us about the moment she wanted to take writing seriously. “I was always doing writing courses and never actually, you know, following up or anything. But then during Covid, like many people, that's when I started properly. But it wasn't because I had suddenly lots of extra time. It was actually the busiest time of my life. Because even though everything was locked down, I was still working full time. I had to, in fact, move all of my work online and learn a lot of new online tools. Plus, I had a young daughter. She was five at the time, and the schools were closed. And she was young - she needed to be occupied all the time. So it was like an incredibly busy time. This is what I was saying about my mistaken belief about not having time.”
She continued “During that time then, I think I needed some kind of an escape, and because I couldn't go anywhere physically, writing became a kind of a mental escape into the imagination. During the second year of Covid, January 2021, Marian Keyes, who's a best-selling author, did four YouTube videos on how to write a novel, and they're still available, actually, if you want to look them up. They're really, really good, full of great advice. And at the end of each session, she would give a writing prompt.”
Leatham fondly reflected on their first prompt which was about “donuts that had failed to de-escalate the situation”. She continued “For me, this for some reason, I heard this line in the voice of a robot character, but in an everyday office setting. I'm actually obsessed with The Office [television show]. So, I always wanted to write something based in an office because I've worked in offices and they are, you know, the things that happen can be so ridiculous and hilarious. It's great grounds for inspiration. So it started with that, and then I just continued and continued and then I couldn't stop - and then I started reading craft books to get the structure right, and that's kind of how it came about”.
When asked about how long the writing process took, she told us, “I managed to find a 45 minute slot every day, after dinner, where I wasn't really needed by my family. I call this time the dead hour. And I had this hour every day for 45 minutes, and that's when I would write consistently. It took me two years to do the first draft in this method, an hour a day method, which is a long time - but I mean, it does get done eventually. And then after that, there was probably another two years of editing by myself, and then with the editing at my publisher”.
Discussing the biggest challenges Leatham faced while writing the book, she said “The time one, for me, was the biggest challenge, and having to write in those short bursts. But in a way, that was really beneficial, because it made me very, very focussed in that short time slot. And also, you know, with supply and demand, if something is plentiful, you don't feel any urgency, but because I knew [I had] this very, very limited time, precious time just for myself, I really made the most of it. Other challenges - I found in the writing process, everybody finds the different things challenging. And I guess for me, probably writing descriptions and settings, I found that very difficult, and it took me a long time to realise that those descriptions and settings are not just decorative, you know? They're not just superfluous. They're actually essential to bringing the reader into a scene and making them feel like they're there, physically, they go there. Mentally, through the senses, the imagination of the senses. And when I realised that and actually came to like more of doing descriptions and like, what is somebody seeing and hearing and what are they smelling? What does it remind them of? And it can become a very rich way to enhance your character.”
“I thought, foolishly, that you just sat down and you were either a great writer or you weren't - you were either genius or you weren't and it would just come out perfect. So there was a fear of failure, a fear of starting, in case it wasn't any good. And that held me back for years as well.”
Leatham also told us about her inspiration for Chaos Theory. “It was a few things. So my job at the time was science communication, or public engagement with science. My job was to get young people interested in engineering and in STEM subjects - a lot of my work was at schools, with teachers, and with teenagers. So during the course of that job, I read a paper by one of the big firms, I think it might have been Deloitte and it was called Jobs of the Future. And they were sort of projecting ahead into the future, imagining what would be some of jobs in the near future. And one of them was called Robot Coordinator. And they did a little kind of, what would this person's day be like? And it was kind of funny - the type of robots they were thinking about were ones on a manufacturing floor, in a factory where there's really just a rotating arm, that type of a robot. But I, because of my obsession with The Office, liked to imagine, what would it be like if it was a walking, talking, kind of humanoid robot? What would that be like in a regular scenario?”
She continued, “The second thing that kind of influenced or inspired me was, I worked in a research centre in UCD for six years, and it was focused around manufacturing and advanced manufacturing. And one of the things that kept coming up was artificial intelligence. Another was co-bots, or cobotics. So these are those kind of robots that are on the factory floor, but they're designed to work alongside humans, and they're supposed to learn from humans, and then humans teach the robot, and they work side by side. That was an influence. And then the third influence was that my daughter at the time - I mentioned she was only five- and she was in her prime question time, so everything was a question. She asked these really kind of philosophical questions like, Mama, what? She always said, instead of saying people, she would say humans. So she would say, Mama, why do humans sleep? Mama, why do humans die? And she sounded a bit like an alien, and in a way, all children are aliens - they just arrive on this planet. They don't know anything, nothing is instinctual to them. You have to teach them every single thing, and they just question everything, and think her voice influenced the character of Kobi, the robot - an innocent who kind of questions human behaviour that we take for granted”.
Leatham chose to write romance fiction because she, “thinks the question of who you love and who you choose to spend your life with is a really big, important question… I always loved rom-coms and books about love. It just seemed like a natural thing that I was drawn to.” Leatham had written her first draft, then was a year into an edit and decided to change the perspective the story was written from. The book is set in the Dublin office of an Irish tourism agency, and the main character Maeve is in a casual on-off relationship with her co-worker Shane. “She goes into work one day, she's called into her boss’s office, and through a series of circumstances, she’s told that they’re getting a temporary robot work colleague, and she’s going to babysit (or robo-sit) this creature, Kobi.” Through Kobi’s arrival, she meets the engineer who created Kobi, Josh. She finds herself drawn to him, and a love triangle between Maeve, Shane and Josh ensues. The novel got its title because, “Kobi is an agent of chaos.” Leatham was halfway through editing this when she met the agent Laura Bennett of the Liverpool Literary Agency. Leatham told her a bit about the book, and sent her the first 5,000 words. “If an agent asks to meet you, it usually means they want to sign you.” The book was sent to around 25 publishers, who told her “this book is really fresh, original, funny.” Publishers found it hard to sell however, as it was “part romantic comedy, part science fiction, part workplace comedy.” “Publishers find it hard to sell something that’s unusual. They like to have things that are very easy to go, this goes in this section, that goes in that section.” She said that the editor of Storm “just really liked my writing.” Storm has a big North American market - and readers there love Irish fiction. “So she made an offer for a two book deal… the editing was a very long, convoluted process, not for the fainthearted.”
Storm is a digital-first publisher. This is a model which newer publishers are doing, Leatham tells us. “They focus primarily on the e-book and the audiobook. The paperback is available…but it’s kind of up to me as an author to push that. I’ve been approaching bookshops.” Among those bookshops stocking it include the UCD Campus Bookshop and Chapters Bookshop on Parnell St. She also notes that “Dublin is a thriving city in literature…but it tends to be less associated with romance fiction.” She says the romance genre faces a “lot of snobbery”, with comments such as “this is womens’ stuff,” which writers such as Marian Keyes have spoken about. She also gives a shoutout to MoLi, the Museum of Literature as sources of support for Dublin writers.
“Dublin is a thriving city in literature… but it tends to be less associated with romance fiction.”
Leatham’s biggest influences come from a variety of sources; from the Russian literature of Dostoevsky and “the lighter stuff” from Emily Henry, while specifically for this book, she points to Douglas Adams and Terry Pratchett, and the writers of The Office. On various challenges facing authors in the industry, and whether the publishing process is more challenging when you write something more fresh and different, Leatham advises writers to “pick one genre and focus on the main one when you’re talking to agents or publishers.” She says making money is also a huge challenge, in addition to competition from other writers. “Most writers do other things, a lot of them are civil servants or they’re teaching, or are journalists. It’s very difficult to actually make money from writing. That’s a huge challenge, if you don’t have a support system.” AI also poses another challenge; “it’s causing chaos…the Society of Authors are bringing out a stamp that you can put on your book to say it is human authored. It’s just a very tricky, messy situation, where writers are already hardly making any money. And then some people are trying to shortcut the system and trick people into buying these terrible AI slop books.” She mentions the crime writer Sam Blake whose books were copied, “I think they buy them accidentally or they don’t realise…but there’s no AI book that has gotten a great review.”
The chaos AI is waging on the literature world aside, she says “we’re actually very lucky to be in Ireland, there’s such a thriving writing culture. I think we probably take it for granted.” Her advice would be to go to book launches, talks, events in local libraries and universities, “We kind of don’t appreciate that not everybody has access to this … Try to make connections and form a community if you can. It is a very open, welcoming community, I haven’t really encountered any gatekeepers.” She also recommends “trying to see writing as a craft and as a practice, something that gets better the more you put into it, but it does take time and dedication … Try to be patient and be kind to yourself, it’s gonna take a lot of time, a lot of effort, but that’s ok. Try to find what you like, things that you are into, everybody is different, has different tastes. Don’t be swayed too much by what other people think. Try to discover the things that you like and develop them.”
Leatham considers her book launch in Chapters as one of the highlights in her writing journey. “It’s a great way to bring together family and friends, it’s a real celebration.” She says the book lives in your head, and then it's on your computer for so long, and then it eventually becomes a physical book. It's a big moment, definitely worth celebrating … Anytime I do see it in a shop, I get a little thrill from that.”
Leatham has some works in progress for the future. “It’s going to be a pre-apocalyptic rom-com.” It “probably won’t be out until 2027,” but it is something we are sure to keep an eye out for. For now, you can buy her book Chaos Theory in the Campus Bookshop here at UCD.