Was your childhood ambition always to be a writer? |
No! Until I was almost in my teens, my ambitions were divided, either to be a ballerina, or (never having ridden a horse) Ireland’s first professional female jockey. I did study ballet, but my toes are double-jointed and I had quite a bit of difficulty en pointe. I couldn’t stick the pain and so ditched that idea.Where the jockey ambition is concerned, from an early age I fashioned makeshift saddles, stirrups and reins from rugs, cardboard and thick string. I would fix this across the armrests of chairs and hone my riding skills. I even became adept at the rising trot.
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What inspired you to start writing? |
In retrospect, what inspired me to start writing was probably all the reading I did. I could read well from the age of four, and from then on, was never without a library book. I read indiscriminately and became so well known in my local library that long before I was strictly eligible, I was given the run of the adult sections.
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How long have you been writing? |
I was a late starter. I have been writing fiction only since 1990, when I was 45 years of age. Before that, apart from school essays, I had never written even a short story. Not even an adolescent poem. I came to fiction from journalism – but again, I only began written journalism when I was well into my thirties.
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What do you enjoy most about writing? |
I don’t want to be facetious about this, and I suppose I should say something profound about personal satisfaction, but writing novels is now my job. It’s my way of paying the bills, it’s what gets me up in the morning to go to work. I am always striving for the (rare) occasions when a particular scene feels so ‘right’ that it seems to write itself. This is the apogee. Yet I suppose, in common with other writers, most of the creative satisfaction comes with feeling that I have done the best I can, within the time allowed, for my characters – and the hope that the latest novel is my best so far. Yet I am never fully satisfied. To me, novels are always a work in progress and can be worked on into infinity. I think this is why publishers insist on giving deadlines: if they didn’t, speaking for myself, a novel would never be finished. When I talk to my colleagues, I find that many of them feel the same.
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Which writers do you admire? |
I admire all novelists, really. It is not until you try to write a novel that you realise how tough and draining the work is. I believe there is an impression out there (I come across it during the question and answer sessions at public appearances) that there are certain rules and formulae to writing a novel; that if only you could crack the code, you could be published and become a millionaire. This is not the case, I’m afraid. With regard to favourites, one of the joys of reading is that the list expands with the discovery of authors I have not read before. I was late discovering Anne Tyler, Jonathan Raban and Thomas McGuane. I also love Barbara Kingsolver, Alice Hoffman and Margaret Atwood. Although frequently asked by newspaper reporters to nominate my favourite book of all time, this changes with mood and experience (although Wuthering Heights, which plays a part in Tell Me Your Secret would be way up there. If I could choose an author, rather than a single volume, it would have to be the novels of Thomas Hardy.
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