Would you like to learn the craft of writing?

Date Published: 07-Feb-2013

Loving what you do for a living is one of life’s greatest gifts. Before I took up writing professionally I worked in a plethora of corporate jobs, many of which sapped my soul and made me wonder whether life was worth the effort.

Fortunately, I never felt like that when I was employed by non-profit organisations, mainly because the work I was doing made sense.

Whether I was training a teenage football team, looking after a gentle professor with Alzheimer’s or facing the challenge of helping a severely autistic boy, I rarely felt that my efforts had been wasted. At worst, I’d earned a crust and done no harm. Sometimes I might even have made a positive contribution to other peoples’ lives.

In all those jobs I felt like a visitor in someone else’s world. Yet sitting here at my keyboard in a typically ungainly position, with my ankles badly twisted underneath my desk, I feel completely comfortable.

Some of you already know what I’m on about. If you love your work then you know how lucky I feel. Of course sometimes, just like anything one has to do, it can be a pain in the derrière. Occasionally my ideas become as blocked up as an eight-years-old’s nose, or I’ve got the ‘flu and can barely sit upright, let alone make my deadline. But somehow I always make that deadline, because I’ve got the best gig in the world and I won’t waste it.

From the age of 15 I wrote every single day, keeping a diary until the age of 21 that contained as much fiction as fact. As a precocious teenager I thought it might be interesting for an ‘older me’ to look back and see what I was like in adolescence.

In truth, the six volumes constitute a terrifying journey into petulance, paranoia and sexual fantasy, but their making instilled within me the discipline of a lifetime: to sit and write each day.

Since then I’ve completed four novels, had over a million words published in Ireland and the UK, and had three plays performed. A few months after I arrived in Galway my one-woman show Aileen Stays In won Punchbag Theatre’s Month of Sundays competition.

As well as this colyoom, I had a column in the Irish Examiner for over two years and several features published in the Irish Times, Irish Post and other media.

So why am I telling you all this? Have I become such a pathetic praise junkie that I need to brag at you from your newspaper?

Far from it. The reason I’m sharing my credentials is that I’m excited and delighted to announce that I’ll be leading a residential weekend writing course in the historic and beautiful village of Killala.

So if you ever wanted to be a writer and you fancy a Spring weekend break in an unspoiled fishing village, you can combine the two this April, by enrolling in The Craft of Writing Weekend.

For more, read this week’s Galway City Tribune.