‘IT’S A REFRESHING CHANGE TO WRITE ABOUT FIRST LOVE’

His big hit One Day made readers weep and laugh in equal measure. As David Nicholls publishes his latest novel, Sweet Sorrow, he talks to books editor Joanne Finney about success, unwinding and teen crushes

David Nicholls talks about his new novel

Who didn’t look up from their sunlounger in the summer of 2009 to find that every other holidaymaker had their head stuck in the bright orange cover of One Day? David Nicholls’s story of love lost and found over decades has sold more than 5m copies. His three other novels have also been bestsellers, and one of them, Us, was long-listed for the 2014 Man Booker Prize.

Nicholls, 52, has carved out a successful career as a screenwriter, too, contributing scripts to Cold Feet as well as adapting classics including

Great Expectations and Far From The Madding Crowd. Most recently, he wrote the script for the Patrick Melrose TV series, starring Benedict Cumberbatch, which won several BAFTAS.

Despite these triumphs, he is surprisingly shy and self-effacing in person. Tanned and in a slightly crumpled suit, he has a warmth and genuineness that makes him instantly likeable. He has been with his partner, Hannah, for 22 years, and they live in north London with their two children, Max, 13, and Romy, 11.

Nicholls’s new novel, Sweet Sorrow, focuses on the life-changing summer when 16-year-old Charlie falls dizzyingly in love for the first time. It’s nostalgic, funny and heartbreaking, and takes you back vividly to the feeling of being young and in love.

You write so well about being a teenager. What were you like?

Quite nerdy, earnest and awkward. I was very spotty, gangly, badly dressed; just uncool. I was very proud of my O levels and very concerned to work hard and do well. And pretentious and pompous and all those things! Did you have a significant first love, like Charlie in Sweet Sorrow? There was a little flurry when I was 15, but then I went a long time with nothing much happening. My next serious relationship wasn’t until somewhere into my 20s. All I had were unrequited loves. I do look back and think how ridiculous they were.

Did you grow up in a family with lots of books?

My dad was a mechanic in a cake factory and my mum was a secretary for the local council. They weren’t bookish but they always encouraged reading. I hung around the library three or four nights a week; I spent most of my teenage years there.

When did you start writing?

The only things I wrote in my 20s were letters. I used to write dialogue and jokes, and my friends would say I should do it for a living. I was an actor but not a very successful one, so I spent a lot of my time working as a waiter. A friend was starting out as a comedy producer and I would tell her stories about working in a terrible restaurant, and she encouraged me to write it all down as a sitcom. I didn’t know anything about it; how long a scene should be, how to lay it out, but she guided me through it all and gradually I got paid tiny amounts of money. It took a long time for me to feel confident enough to show my work to people.

Was that the end of your acting career?

It let me go at the same time as I let it go! I lost my agent and didn’t get any more auditions. My parts got smaller and I thought, ‘No one really wants me to do this, so I’m not going to!’ My parents

How did your first book, Starter For Ten, come about? Was the success of One Day a surprise? What was the spark for Sweet Sorrow?

must have been going crazy because I didn’t earn a living until I was in my 30s. I remember being 16 very clearly; that change, that sense of everyone going off in different directions, how frightening that is and how exciting it can be, and I wanted to write about it. I’d also just written about mid-life, marriages breaking up and getting older. It felt like it would be a refreshing change. It’s set in 1997, which was a significant year for me. I met Hannah, I started to be serious about writing and it was bracketed by Tony Blair coming in and Princess Diana’s death.

What’s your writing routine?

So writing doesn’t come easily for you? No one sits down and thinks, ‘God, this is going well.’ Most of the time you’re just swearing and covering your face with embarrassment. I wrote a big chunk of Sweet Sorrow and then showed it to a few people and it wasn’t quite working, so I went back and started again. It started as a dramatic monologue. It took a lot of revising and rewriting but, by then, I’d written some episodes of

Cold Feet and had an agent. I learned a lot from Cold Feet and after that it didn’t feel so intimidating to write fiction.

How do you switch off from work?

I don’t. I’m very grateful for the work I do, but it’s stressful, especially TV production, because it’s expensive and involves a lot of people wanting things to be just right. I’m a nervous wreck! But I never talk about work at home. We like to hang out as a family and watch a lot of stuff on TV that I haven’t written. One thing that’s important to me is cooking dinner every night: that is a constant in our lives. I enjoyed writing it, which isn’t always the case, but I had no idea. Even now, its success seems improbable to me; it was very strange and unexpected. I’m loath to complain because it’s what every writer dreams of, but it did make writing very hard. It made me self-conscious in a way I hadn’t been before. I still feel jittery, but I don’t feel as if I’m labouring under the shadow of a monster any more! I cycle to my office and am at my desk every day at 8.30am. I write until about 2pm, then in the afternoon I do reading and admin. I’d rather do anything than write: empty the dishwasher or rearrange books or make playlists, so I have to go somewhere that’s neutral.  Sweet Sorrow (Hodder & Stoughton) by David Nicholls is out on 11 July

I didn’t start earning a living until I was in my 30s