Writing

It is probably fairly obvious at this stage, I love to write. I wasn't one of those children who was always writing, or inventing stories, but I did love to read. I would often read though the night. The Bobbsey Twins, The Famous Five, The Secret Seven, Chalet School, Nancy Drew and finally I got my hands on my older brother's books and read all of the Biggles series.  One summer my mother forbade me to read during the day, because she couldn't get me to go outside to play. I was always very pale and I suppose she thought it was unhealthy for me to be inside all day. She was probably correct though I used that paleness to my advantage to get off school quite frequently.

In my teens I did enjoy writing letters, I had two pen friends and wrote to them regularly - I wish I had those letters now! that would be fascinating. Somewhere around 10 or 12 years old, I did start a sort of journalistic writing. Looking back now, I know it was the start of using writing as a therapy. We (my siblings and I) were subjected to increasingly more regular violent incidents perpetrated by my father. After each episode, when he had run out of steam and stormed out of the house, I sat down and wrote a full, blow by blow account of it. I always gave these to my mother and I know she put them in a file - now that would be something to have today. Today they would probably be sufficient evidence for divorce and even criminal charges. Back then in Ireland, there was no divorce and a man could pretty much do what he wanted with his wife and children. Mind you, he never lifted a hand to my mother - he was too afraid of her mother. Or, that is what we thought anyway.

Since then I have always written as a therapy - a perfect example of the fact I still do it is this blog. Take for instance this entry. 

I did write and publish a compilation of that therapy. See Peeling The Onion. But, I have always wanted to do more than that, to write a novel. So here I am, still scribbling in my blog to avoid doing more work on my novel.

First I did every Masterclass on writing; then I blogged about that. Finally, I did start on my book. At least, I wrote what I considered to be an outline. I am very lucky that my sister is a writer. She was a story teller for as long as I can remember. Our younger brother suffered from continuous ear infections and she would sit with him and tell him stories to distract him from his pain. I sat and listened enthralled. She made them up as she went along, apparently with no effort. She had a short story published in a magazine, it was a writing competition and she was a winner. During her working life she wrote for magazines and worked as an advertising copywriter for a large cosmetics company, actually they sold more than cosmetics. She is also a first class editor and about the only person I know that I would be prepared to give a first draft of a first outline to and ask for feedback. She pointed me in the right direction and I was off! No, seriously, I am writing my novel at the same time as playing on my blog.

My daughter in law is also a writer, she writes screenplays and she also has a blog; she is incredibly talented. In particular, as you would expect from a screenplay writer, she excels at character development. I am hoping that I have enough of my revised outline completed to take advantage of her upcoming visit to get her expert input also.

While both of my parents were writers, they were not that kind of writer - I mean, they didn't write fiction. They were both academics on the staff of University College Dublin. My mother's books were readable, she was an historian. But they were most definitely academic; her lectures were captivating, she brought historical characters back to life. I used to say she lived in the past and just made short trips back to the present when essential. 

My father used pencil and paper; my mother used a typewriter. My father's books where - well, I couldn't read them, some were in the Irish language which I never mastered and others dealt with his second love which was phonetics. 

When my children were little I used to earn extra money typing theses for masters students and once did one for a girl doing her masters in phonetics - it was incredibly boring! Anyway, as I was saying, both my parents were writers, they were always sitting at a desk (in their separate homes eventually) covered in papers. So, writing was a very normal occupation to all of us. I don't use a typewriter nor pen (or pencil) and paper. I use my computer - which comes with all of it's associated distractions.

Now, I really must get back to my novel!