Tom Newlands: Homesickness Played a Huge Part in the Writing

Tom Newlands is a multiply neurodivergent Scottish writer. He is a recipient of the London Writer’s Award for Literary Fiction, a Creative Future Writer’s Award and a Creative Future/TLC Next Up Award. He was one of eleven writers selected for New Writing North’s “A Writing Chance,” and in 2022 was a featured writer at the Scottish Mental Health Arts Festival. He now lives in London. Follow him on X (Twitter) and Instagram.

In this interview, Tom discusses how being furloughed at the beginning of the pandemic paved the way for him to start work on his debut literary novel, Only Here, Only Now, the surprises in the publishing process, and more.

Name: Tom Newlands
Literary agent: Gráinne Fox (U.S.) Sophie Lambert (U.K.)
Book title: Only Here, Only Now
Publisher: HarperVia (U.S.) Orion (U.K.)
Release date: November 12, 2024
Genre/category: Literary Fiction
Elevator pitch: A brilliant new talent writing from lived experience makes his debut with this irresistible and original story in the vein of Young Mungo and Hang the Moon, that pierces the beautiful, brilliant, and lightning-quick mind of a teenage girl growing up with undiagnosed ADHD in working-class Scotland.

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What prompted you to write this book?

I was given three months furlough from my warehouse job at the start of the pandemic, and I decided in the first week to do something. I hadn’t written any creative prose since high school, but I grabbed a pile of books (Roddy Doyle, John Fante, Willy Vlautin) and kept them by my laptop, and they gave me enough belief to get started. I am Scottish but I live in London—like many others I wasn’t able to visit family and friends in lockdown and I felt more displaced than ever, so homesickness played a huge part in the writing, but I only see that in retrospect.

How long did it take to go from idea to publication? And did the idea change during the process?

Four years from the point at which I began to write seriously, but some of the ideas came from poems which preceded that. I wrote a series of poems about a fictional family living on a council estate; there was no appetite for them to be published in the U.K., so they sat in a drawer. At the beginning of writing the novel I felt I was tinkering around with what would be a short story or two, but as my belief grew, I realized I was capable of more, and those poems ended up providing a lot of material that went into the book. So, the main change during writing was my own ambition for what I was creating.

Were there any surprises or learning moments in the publishing process for this title?

Every stage held surprises: the agent I was able to attract, the editors we had interested, that there was an auction to acquire the book, that Roddy Doyle agreed to read it! I could go on—the book has brought me surprises on a weekly basis for at least two years now.

Were there any surprises in the writing process for this book?

Writing a book is a big undertaking, and plotting it seemed a hugely daunting and complex thing, but one of the biggest surprises is how it all sorts itself out as you go along. I was also surprised by how much editorial freedom I was given; my U.K. editor made suggestions, but at the same time told me that the final decision on everything was mine. I wrote a couple of very strange paragraphs just to test this out and they made it into the book—she is a woman of her word!

What do you hope readers will get out of your book?

Difficult subject matters handled with warmth and humor, and the experience of seeing an unforgettable protagonist growing up right in front of their eyes.

If you could share one piece of advice with other writers, what would it be?

So much of the seemingly uncomplicated advice on writing handed down to us is ableist and exclusionary—write daily, join a group, read voraciously—it all belongs in the bin. The only advice should be find what works for you!