Meet The Tutor: Louise Tondeur

Louise Tondeur writes (mainly) novels, short stories and poetry, and is a writing coach and creative writing tutor. She has previously been a full-time university lecturer, a secondary school drama teacher, a bookshop worker, a washer upper and a chambermaid. Here she talks about her writing life.

When do you first remember wanting to be a writer? I became a writer aged about eight when I first got my hands on a notebook. I used to fill notebooks with handwriting only I could read (and still do now). There’s something about writing longhand that feels comforting and different from typing – it’s like a kind of thinking out loud. I don’t think I realized that writing could be a job! 

Your first novel The Waters Edge was published in 2003, it is set in a ramshackle Bournemouth hotel and I see you have worked as a chambermaid, was this the inspiration behind the novel? I grew up in Bournemouth in self-catering holiday flatlets and most of my friends had hotels too. I did briefly work as a chambermaid, most young people in Bournemouth had done a bit of that. The main inspiration was the story of Persephone and Demeter – I was attempting to write a modern retelling of that myth. 

Can you tell us about your journey to publication? I won the Curtis Brown bursary while doing an MA in Creative Writing at the University of East Anglia, and so an agent read part of my novel and took me on. She got me a two book deal with Headline Review. 

You then wrote a second novel The Haven Home for Delinquent Girls which was published the following year. Could you tell us about this book? I love writing about old buildings as they seem haunted by the history of the people who’ve inhabited them. The Haven is also set in a building. Synchronicity is an odd thing, the building had been through several iterations, and used to be called The Waterside Bed and Breakfast. Although they were once fairly common, this was the ex-nearest home for unmarried mothers I could find based on where I was living at the time, so I based my research on it. 

You’ve also written two collections of short stories Unusual Places (2018) and Invisible, which is coming out next year. How does your writing process differ with short stories and novels? I also use place (and buildings) when I write short stories sometimes but the main difference is that I often use writing in situ for short fiction, that is, going to a place and writing a short story inspired by it while I am there. The stories in Unusual Places are almost all written that way. The locations are mainly in London where I lived for nearly 20 years, but there are a couple written in East Anglia and one set in Cornwall. 

And you have also written non-fiction and poetry! Do you have a favourite literary form? I love the writing process and sometimes I don’t know what form an idea will take until I start writing it. I tend to use freewriting first, and then I’ll edit and plan, rather than planning first. That said, I think of myself as a fiction writer. 

Which of your books are you most proud of? I’m most proud of the resilience I’ve shown over many years of writing, when things haven’t always gone smoothly. When I look at my publication trajectory, there were several life events happening at the same time which are the real story if you like: loss of family members, including my cousin Lucy who came to the launch of The Water’s Edge, despite being in treatment for cancer, the end of Section 28, finally being able to get married, starting a family, and everything that goes along with being a parent. But to answer the question: I’m always most proud of the book I’m writing at the moment, because it’s a reflection of where I am now and what I care about. 

You have also taught creative writing for a number of years and have written a series of ‘How to’ writing guides. How does teaching creative writing impact your own creative process? I’ve written all my life, but my first ‘proper’ paid job was as a drama teacher, running a kids club. Then I became a secondary school drama teacher but after a few years I started teaching creative writing to university students full-time. I hadn’t planned to do that – I simply wanted to do something that would enable me to write. Now I teach part-time, which is much better! For me it’s true that I learn stuff by teaching it. For example, I didn’t understand narrative structure until I taught it. There’s something about explaining a concept to someone else that makes it land in my head. I’ve heard other teachers say the same. 

 And you read tarot – do you use this in your writing? I’ve read Tarot for about 25 years. I learnt properly by doing evening classes at Treadwells bookshop when it was still in Covent Garden. There was definitely an element of storytelling involved in the way we were taught. I invented a version of Tarot for the Haven, called Scrummage, so yes, I used it in that way. Scrummage also appears in one of my earliest short stories, which I wrote in a café in RedRuth in Cornwall. I don’t think I’ve ever written about it directly. 

What’s the best piece of advice you’ve ever been given about writing? Don’t wait for inspiration. It was from Oliver Burkeman. 

What’s your go-to book about the craft of writing? As I’ve been teaching all of my adult life, I have quite a collection and I go to different books to help students with different things. (In fact, one of my favourite things to do is to prescribe a book to cure a writing ailment!) Screenwriting books are great for story structure, even if you don’t read all of them, for example. I’m about to read Good Writing by Anne Lamott and Neal Allen. For my own writing, it’s not a writing book, it’s Brene Brown’s work, in particular Daring Greatly. From that I took, for instance, that writing imperfectly – and being an imperfect human - is ok, in fact, it’s the only way to write/to be.  

You’re marooned on a desert island with the complete works of Shakespeare and a religious text of your choice. What fiction book do you want to have with you? And would you prefer a notebook and pen, or laptop to write with? The books I’ve read the most, and have used like a comfort blanket since I discovered them as a teenager, are the Hitchhiker’s Guide series, so I’d probably take the omnibus edition of that. The complete Sherlock Holmes stories would also be a good option. Either that or I’d sneak a stack of Agatha Christie paperbacks into my suitcase and use it as a liferaft. My favourite books are Beloved by Toni Morrison and A Chronicle of a Death Foretold by Gabriel García Márquez, but I probably wouldn’t read them repeatedly.

I suppose it depends whether I’ve got somewhere to plug in the laptop – although I prefer writing by hand a laptop with an unlimited battery life would allow me to keep going without running out of space. 

What are you working on at the moment? I am writing a novel set in Norwich-in-the-future about a weird kind of prison and a couple of ex-band mates who are secretly in love with each other. I’m also writing a book on writing and mindfulness for Bloomsbury Academic.  

Lou Tondeur teaches on the two-year Creative Writing Programme on Monday evenings in Kemptown Bookshop, Brighton starting in September 2026. Want to join her? She’s running a taster session on Monday 7th September so you can see if the course is for you.