I have always had a yen to write, though I don’t know where the urge came from. Among my writer friends we all agree that we write because we “have to”. To us, as one writer said, writing is like eating. But when, after secondary school, my muse told me it was time to start writing if I was going to be serious about it, I had no idea what to write about. In school, in those far-off days, we wrote stilted essays on boring subjects set by tyrannical teachers. So my first efforts at post-school writing were stilted essays on boring subjects.
I had read lots of novels of course, but never considered writing one myself – not believing I had the imagination for dreaming up stories. Then one day – before the era of writers’ conferences or MBAs – I spotted an advertisement for a correspondence course in creative writing. Immediately I sent for it and paid my money. Unfortunately, the course was as yawn-producing as writing in school had been. So I put aside the notion of writing creatively for about 30 years while I pursued other dreams.
What eventually brought me back to writing was that old bugaboo of the human spirit, intimations of mortality. I was in my late forties and locked into a job that, while satisfying family financial needs, failed to quell my inner demons that sought some kind of immortality. Probably, though I didn’t realise it, I was going through a mid-life crisis.
Anyway, the writing muse reared its head again, telling me it was now or never. So I decided to write philosophical essays, having acquired a degree in that esoteric discipline. But after a few attempts to translate my well-reasoned thoughts into intelligible, and entertaining, words I found the result so dreary that I doubted it would stir the interest of any reader.
Then, recalling bits of lively conversations from student days when fellow budding philosophers and I used to discuss the meanings of metaphysics and other arcane topics, I began to include imagined dialogue in an attempt to make my essays a little more appetising. Mirabile dictu! I found I had a flair for dialogue. It was a short step from there to writing fiction. Once that idea took hold there was no longer any shortage of themes: I began by fictionalising the characters and events I had come across in my life.
Though I reside in America, all my works have been set in Ireland and, even if Irish publishers have never been interested in them, I found their American, English, and German counterparts eventually receptive.
My first novel was a collection of interrelated stories about people and events I remember from growing up in rural Mayo. In the second I launched into creative invention with a mystery story about an ex-nun who wanted a child but not a husband-mother superior; it was my most successful novel to date, both critically and commercially.
The third dealt with surrogate motherhood, a subject much discussed in America at the time but not till recently of public interest in Ireland. I submitted that manuscript to an Irish publisher who on rejecting it said they were only interested in subjects that pertained to women. The novel was later published in England and America; it deals with the legal aspects of surrogacy that Irish legislators are just now grappling with.
I published several other books more recently: a comic novel dealing with the old rural custom of female dowries as a prerequisite to marriage; a historical novel about Michael Davitt’s Land War; a collection of short stories set in Ireland, Brazil and America; and a memoir dealing with my religious experiences.
I have also completed, but not yet published: a historical novel set in nineteenth-century Ireland; a romantic novel; a novel dealing with the clerical sex scandal and its cover-up; and a novel dealing with a priest falsely accused of sexual misconduct. In addition, I have written two plays: one dealing with the clerical sex scandals and cover-up; the other based on the antics of the notorious Irish land agent of the nineteenth century, Captain Charles Boycott. I have also written two screenplays based on my works of fiction.
As an encouragement to other late-blooming writers, I should add that my first novel was published when I was 62. At that time I had been writing and getting rejections for about 16 years. And I keep on writing – in what is now termed the golden years but used to be called old age – because it makes me happy and I find I have still much to write about.
