After a few years of working in the hectic business of advertising in London, Hong Kong and New York, writing for a living came as a sweet relief. Further to the quiet success of my first novel, Becoming Strangers, which was longlisted for the Dublin International Literary Award, I was ready to tackle something entirely different to that modestly charming novel set in Barbados.
As a family we moved from Brooklyn to Provence, and as I started to think about the next novel, unexpectedly Belfast came calling. Soon enough I was one of the few people taking the EasyJet flight from the south of France to Northern Ireland to get away from it all. (All that rosé drinking, playing boules after lunch on a Sunday, the olive groves and swimming pools, it can wear you down.)
The story I wrote tells of the blanket protest from both a Catholic mother’s point of view, with a son in Long Kesh, and from that of a former British soldier, then prison officer on the H blocks, John Dunn. Dunn describes his relationship with Northern Ireland as “the love affair that was bad for him”.
I spent nine months researching, drank a lot of tea and smoked a few cigarettes with those from both sides who had so much experience in common. When I wrote the novel I was entirely immersed in it to the point that when I laid my pen down to write the ending one morning at dawn, I wept.
I say to the writers I teach now that as much as we write novels, they write us. But when they’re done they’re done; like the love affair that’s bad for us, we have to go home to the family. I have always found it hard to speak about the novel which garnered good reviews and kind praise from the Nobel laureate JM Coetzee and from writers like Ali Smith. In fact, in one radio interview, when asked to sum it up in under a minute, I said no, and left the studio. The book left its mark on me, as do all experiences, and life took its turns thereafter and over the years that followed writing alone became writing lonely and I wonder in retrospect whether the warmth of the communities in Belfast and their need to tell their side of the story, didn’t somehow hold me up.
Ten years after that book was published, I felt like an old seafaring junk capsized on the shore. Too many years solo. I wanted a crew, I wanted to travel to new places with other writers as contrary and curious as I was. So I got in touch with the main industry magazine, The Bookseller, to let them know I was going to set sail on a 90-day journey writing a novel and asked them to let writers know there was space on board. Thus it was 40-odd writers got in touch and a new venture was born in 2017. We were writing together, and it was far more exciting and uplifting than any of us could have imagined. Knowing you weren’t alone, and sharing what is a surprisingly consistent process has proven invigorating to thousands of writers since.
The Novelry is now a worldwide writing school. We offer online writing courses with bestselling author tutors writing side-by-side with our recruits and see them through to The End. We have an expert editorial team recently nabbed from the publishing upper circle of Penguin Random House. We work with the world’s leading literary agencies to get our writers published. We have taken debut novelists from an idea through to a publishing contract, and we get a big bang out of each and every Cinderella story.
We love working on stories. It reminds you daily that anything is possible in fiction. Storytelling is the superpower we all possess, whether on the page or in song. Preserving what moves us, what troubles us and delights us, is our stay against mortality. While it’s a vital part of self-actualisation for many, like eating and breathing, it’s also inherently a community-oriented activity though this may not seem obvious at first. After all, when we write we reach out to people in the past and the future. We cannot invent the lives of others without calling on our feelings for others. Our memories and experiences are woven into our stories, and when we write we honour the people who have shaped us for the better.
When I started writing This Human Season, I had just one scene in mind: when John Dunn encounters the Catholic mother’s son Sean for the first time. Sean is, as were most of the IRA soldiers, a very young man of 19. Having a failed relationship with his own grown son, Dunn is not so much provoked by Sean’s challenge to his authority as confounded and touched. He handles this unfathomable connection with a small act of kindness, bringing music to the young men in Long Kesh on Christmas Eve. He plays them the Pink Floyd album The Wall that night.
When we write, we play a song for people, some of whom we know, some we don’t. But the difference between a song and a novel, is that a novel never ends. Neither for us, nor the reader.
Because the investment any writer makes when starting a novel is of such personal value, we work one-to-one with our writers at The Novelry. We guide them with the support of an author tutor, our wonderfully warm community and the courses with videos detailing my novel-writing process and that of other writers step-by-step. The support and structure helps steady the nerves.
All are welcome to the party, storytelling belongs to all of us. Our focus is on storytelling rather than fine prose. Readers, publishers and agents want stories not verse, and they’re actively seeking fresh new voices. So, if you’re reading this and you think you have a book in you, we’d be glad to be your guide. Writing doesn’t have to be lonely, in fact it’s far more enjoyable when you write in good company.
The Novelryoffers mentoring from bestselling authors and editorial advice from leading industry professionals.
