Mentoring

I'm now available to give one to one feedback on work :) 

The Irish Writer’s Centre have compiled a Professional Mentor Panel. Basically, if you need a critique or feedback on specific work, you can choose a particular author to work with. If you're struggling to complete your novel, or finish a short story, or short story collection... check it out ! 

Further details are Here or contact the Writers Centre - General Manager, Bernadette Greenan, at 00353 1 8721302.

To Hell With Housework

I asked some other writers how they get through their summers, and still managed to write ....

 Contrary to the notion that it gets easier to find time as the children get older, Carmel Harrington among others (myself included) finds parenting now demands just as much if not more of her writing time. She writes ‘every morning while they are in school, and after they go to bed, but throw in chicken pox back to back, broken arms for both of them (you couldn't write it) and various other life curve balls, I've just not got the word count done.'  Carmel began to write through the weekends as well. With a novel deadline approaching; she checked into a local hotel for a week. ‘It’s tough balancing it all, but any working mother will tell you the same.... This summer, Carmel’s using camps, and kid swapping with another mother - they’ll take each other’s kids a couple of afternoons a week. ‘After that, it’ll be a lot of late nights and weekends. Somehow or other, I'll get there. And so will you.’

by Sarah Andersen

Maria Duffy agrees, ‘the juggling never really stops, no matter what age they are and the guilt is always there. I tend to do a lot of my writing at night when everyone is gone to bed. I can get way more done without any interruptions. It does leave me exhausted the next day, but I try to pick nights when hubby is around the next morning so he can hold the fort while I get a lie-in. There should be a mandatory week in September when all mothers are made go to a spa to recover! Louise Phillips also finds going away to write is a terrific help, ‘but early morning is the most guilt free time although it's all about juggling, including the guilt!’

Keep a notebook or page of your manuscript on you at all times, so you can write or revise whenever you get a second Ruth Long recommends doing this, ‘in the car outside schools, coffee shops,waiting for classes, supervision, naptimes etc. I then type things up later. It's also important to look after yourself, so if you set a writing word count for a day make sure it's a minimum, and anything on top of that is a bonus and will make you feel better.’

Hazel Gaynor finds it useful to break the days/weeks up into work time and family time - as much as is reasonably possible. She also finds ‘it often comes down to getting up very early to write for a few hours before the boys are up, or staying up late after they're in bed. That way I at least feel I've made a start before breakfast etc...’

Lorna Sixsmith comments that summer camps aren’t always that helpful – ‘They’re so short, and as I live half hour drive from most. By the time I've got them there, it's time to collect them.... add to that,’ said Lorna, farmer and writer, ‘a husband who says 'can you stand in a gap for 5 min' and an hour later...!’ 

‘Forget the housework,’ says Shirley Benton- Bailey  'and let the lot of them find what they need when they need it. I find whenever I down tools, my family are a lot more resourceful about getting what they need than they'd lead me to believe....! She recommends online food shopping or getting your partner hooked on Aldi. ‘I have totally outsourced Aldi to my husband now, and won't be taking it back :)

Cat Hogan who just launched her first book, They All Fall Down, empathizes – ‘I spend my days crippled with guilt. The grass is up to my knees in the garden and I can't see out the window with the grime! I'll write in the morning when the half man is in school (the baby will be put in front of the telly or out the back garden) - then, when they go to bed, I go back to it. I look like a crack head as I'm wrecked all the time. I just about manage a shower every day and the weekends don't exist. That said- I love it.’

Margaret Scott thinks the key is to ‘be 'ready' at the first sign of having an hour or two to yourself, so be thinking all the time working out the next bit you want to write so that when an opportunity presents you can 'drop everything and write'. And that means write, not hoover, not put on a wash, not clean out the fridge... Funnily enough I do find I read so much more in the summer which always puts me even more in the mood for writing so it’s as much me wanting to find time for writing as having to, if that makes any sense... it's not easy though, and with a broken armed seven year old and the two year old half-boy-half-bullock this summer will most likely prove to be the ultimate test of my dedication!’

‘Gin sales are going to rocket this summer!’ says Hazel Gaynor, adding that its ‘very reassuring to realize everyone is facing the same plate-spinning, house-falling-apart-around-your-ankles, child-juggling, deadline-stress predicament over the next 8 weeks. I was explaining it to a friend the other day like this: imagine your office job. Now imagine having the same expectations and deadlines and work to get done as you do all year, but that you have to take your children to work with you every day for eight weeks. Not easy!

Thanks for all your tips, wisdom and humor - here’s to September, down with guilt, and up with gin! Good luck everyone, keep going!

Interview with Caitriona Lally

'A fairytale of contemporary Dublin, both edgy and eloquent.
A remarkable debut.' —Declan Kiberd.

Caitriona Lally's excellent debut novel Eggshells is published by Liberties Press. The book is about Vivian, a woman who doesn't fit in, and never has.  'She believes that she is a changeling, left by fairies on Earth, replacing her parents’ healthy human child. Now, as an adult, she’s trying to get back to the 'other world', where she feels she can finally belong. The thing is, Vivian is having some difficulties going back, so she’s forced to go about her Earth life in the meantime.' 

Here, I ask Catriona about setting, voice and writing advice.....

Vivian travels through Dublin, listing place names and tracing the shape of her route till it almost feels like city is woven into the pages of this novel. Was where you wrote, as well as where you lived, an important element in writing Eggshells?
The places I did the actual writing weren't as important as where I went to research the book. I walked my legs off around the city, writing down details of graffiti and unusual street signs and encounters with eccentric people in a notebook, but I saw the note-taking and the novel-writing as separate activities. When I finally came to write Eggshells, I had several scrawled notebooks and hundreds of paper-scraps, so the main work was putting some sort of shape on the notes. I'm not so organised as to have actually created a structure before I started the novel, so there was a lot of sifting through notes and scratching out. Having said that, I wrote a lot of Eggshells in the National Library on Kildare Street, and I spent so much time staring around me when I was supposed to be writing that I ended up setting part of a chapter in there.

Do you think it will be a factor in future work?
Where the character is located is hugely important to me – voice and setting would be the two main things I need in my head before I start. Once I can hear the character and see where he or she is situated, it all falls into place from that. That makes the rest of it sound easy, and it's not – it's just that I'm more character-driven than plot-driven, so maybe the setting is more important if I don't have a very structured plot to fall back on.
The novel I'm currently working on is set in Hamburg, but this happened totally by chance. After I finished Eggshells, I had the the characters of the second novel in my head, but no location. I felt I was all Dublined out, but I didn't know where to set the next book. Then I went to stay with a friend in Hamburg, and I was drawn to an old part of the city, so I decided to set the current book there. Again, I'm working from notebooks of stuff I saw and heard in Hamburg, but I'm doing the actual writing in Dublin.

Vivian Lawlor places huge importance on names. How did you come by hers?
You're right – names are massively important to Vivian, but I wrote the entire novel without a name for Vivian or even a title. When I started Eggshells, I had another untitled document open on my laptop, so this one was called “Untitled 2” and that's how it remained until just before submission. I didn't have a name for Vivian in the first couple of drafts; I was using the first person, and also Vivian isn't hugely sociable, so her name doesn't come up in conversation a lot. I gave her the same name as her older sister, and maybe that partly explains Vivian's obsession with names; she isn't unique within her family.
The main characters in the book I'm working on now still aren't named – they're “G” and “R” and I may not even stick with those initials.

The voice of Vivian is original and convincing. How did that voice come to you? Was getting under her skin something you enjoyed, and how was it to leave her behind?
Ah thanks! I have no idea where that voice came from. I mean, there are parts of me in her, but she has a completely unfiltered approach to life which was very refreshing to write. Most of us reign in our thoughts, but Vivian says everything that comes into her head and acts on it. I really enjoyed writing her, and seeing the world through her eyes – but there was a sadness to it as well. Vivian is quite lonely and is desperately trying to connect with the world, and when she fails, I felt for her.
I also got used to looking at Dublin through her eyes, and even now, it's hard to stop myself noticing street signs or graffiti that Vivian would enjoy. I was happy to leave her behind, though, I felt I was done. Maybe because I was writing in the first person, it got fairly intense reinterpreting my own version of the city as Vivian's.

We know a lot about Vivian’s immediate inner life, and we can guess some of the things she doesn’t tell us by her encounters (which can be very funny), yet there is little information about her personal history. This worked really well; I enjoyed how much you decided to leave out. The balance between what we know and what we don’t, are perfectly judged. Did you decide from the beginning to leave these gaps, or did they evolve naturally from following her voice? How do you feel about writing advice that emphasises plot, hooks and so on? 
 It wasn't a conscious decision from the beginning to leave out the details of her personal history. I started with the voice, and the story grew from there. I had no idea what was going to happen next or what kind of an ending Vivian faced. As the story developed, I realised there was some unhappiness in her background, but I wanted her to refuse to acknowledge or deal with it, and just sort of muddle through in her own way. I found that more interesting to write than painstakingly going through every childhood trauma. I think it becomes clear from the few details she offers throughout the book what has happened in the past, but I didn't want it to become a therapy novel with lots of gut-spilling and weeping and heart to hearts - that's not Vivian's way.
I think writing tips that emphasise plot and hooks can be really useful for people who write more plot-driven books. I suppose you write what you like to read, and I'm drawn to character-driven books so I don't prioritise hooks and cliffhangers. When it comes to TV and movies, however, I'm a total plot junkie and a sucker for cliffhangers, and I have to stop myself binge-watching whole series back-to-back.
It was fascinating to meet with some of the other Novel Fair winners after reading their work, and to find out about their writing processes. Some were motivated first and foremost by plot and had mapped out the exact plot of their novel before they began. That's completely different to the way I write – I haven't a clue where my character is headed - but I don't think either approach is better.

Any advice for writers working on their first novel?
 Keep at it. I had very little confidence that I could write a novel, let alone one that was publishable, so it's important to persevere in spite of what the negative voice in your head is saying.
And don't wait for the right mood or the right weather or the right pencil; just write.
And know that some days your writing will be complete muck and you'll have to delete almost every word – that's when it feels like two steps forward, three steps back – but in general, as long as you keep pushing forward, you're doing grand.
The other thing I'd say is to read hugely. Don't just read books by white men writing in English; read beautifully written books by writers from different genders, ages, races, languages. There is a world of fiction in translation that is pure magic.


About the author:

Caitriona Lally studied English Literature in Trinity College Dublin.  She has had a colourful employment history, working as an abstract writer and a copywriter alongside working as a home help in New York and an English teacher in Japan. She has travelled extensively around Europe,  Asia,  the Middle East, and South America. Her essay about Grangegorman appeared in a recent issue of We Are Dublin.  Eggshells was selected as one of 12 finalists in the Irish Writers Centre Novel Fair 2014

To Purchase - Liberties Press or Amazon

Writers Block

I was asked recently about writers block - something I don't believe in. It's always been linked, in my mind, to the notion of writers as airy fairy artistes wafting around in a delicate nervous state waiting to be snuggled into submission by inspiration. I believe instead in the notion of writers as workers, crafters, drafters... a carpenter doesn't get carpenters block, stand with saw in hand in front of a kitchen unit and weep 'I just can't Majorie, I just can't... maybe tomorrow it will come to me...'

But - some pieces of writing are more challenging than others, some times its harder than usual to juggle writing with life. Or you just become tired and burnt out trying- the life of an emerging writer can be full of rejections. The answer may be to write a little less, and live a little more for a while. Or to write from a different angle or pov. Or to write in a different form, a poem, a play, a monologue, a flash - but the answer is never, in my case anyway, to stop writing. Writing will give you more writing.  Free writing is a practise that can work really well.... if you're feeling stuck, give it a try :)

 You just do it. Pick up the pen. Go. And you time yourself. You do writing practice. Don’t cross out. Trust your own mind, be specific—not car, but Cadillac. Lose control. Say what you really want to say, not what you think you should say. We mostly live in discursive thinking, but in writing practice, if you keep your hand moving, you eventually settle below discursive thinking to wild mind, the place where you really see, think, and feel. That’s the place you want to get to in order to write.

Natalie Goldberg