The Maeve Binchy Writers' Club opened six months ago - this week students graduated, manuscripts in hand. Ruadhán Mac Cormaic hears some of their stories
'I've gone all the way with Maeve", declared the red badges carried proudly by those who gathered for the graduation ceremony of the Maeve Binchy Writers' Club this week. The course, based on the premise that there's a book in all of us, and that six months of intensive work should be sufficient to see it through, was designed by Maeve Binchy and the National College of Ireland and launched last September. Its aim was to guide anyone who aspired to write a book through the process, from concept to final draft, with the help of an 18-week programme of seminars and workshops attended by guest speakers from Ireland's literary sphere. Tutors included authors, publishers and literary agents.
Of the original 254 people who joined the course in September, 108 completed a manuscript to the required standard and received a token "royalty payment" of €50 from Binchy. Most of those who completed their work (67 per cent) had never written a manuscript before. Women outnumbered men by a ratio of almost four to one and, for most, this was their first attempt at writing.
Fergal Nally (67), a retired doctor from Dublin, wrote his first words of fiction when the course got underway and crossed the final Ts on his 127,000-word manuscript in time for the graduation night.
"The idea had been there for some time," he says. "But the course allowed me to actually get down to it in a big way. I started six months ago and now it's finished, so the writing was fast and furious. I don't think I would have written the book had I not come here. It's about medical research, and mainly the use of animals in medical research. I was all for this idea until I started writing the book. But halfway through, the whole thing started to turn on its head, and the principal character gradually turns against it, reflecting the change in my own view. It was a very interesting experience for me."
Similarly, the only writing that Jim Yates had undertaken previously was letters to the newspapers. Yates (56), originally from Newcastle, England, but living in Dublin, had been playing with the idea for his novel, Oh! Père Lachaise, for two years.
The book follows the fate of Oscar Wilde after his demise in a seedy Parisian hotel. From his resting place at Père- Lachaise cemetery, Wilde finds himself transported not to paradise, but to a division of purgatory, where he meets kindred souls in the composer Frédéric Chopin and the writer Honoré de Balzac.
"I started it two years ago, but I've used the course to push it along and polish it off," he says. "I was always hoping to finish the book at around this time, so the timing was just right for me. We had a very good group who carried one another along; often we'd exchange chapters when we'd finished them. I've sent it off to the publishers, so we'll see how it goes."
In her closing speech to the students, Binchy praised the discipline of those who had attended the seminars every Wednesday night during the cold winter months, while she was "snug at home watching The Bill".
For Orla Bourke, a mother of four from Dublin, classes and writing were balanced with the demands of a new baby.
"It was very difficult finding an hour here and there, but I'm very determined," she says. "It was a brilliant course, because you got to see that writers are really just ordinary people. It took some of the terror away from it all. I started writing in earnest after Christmas and I'm on chapter three at the moment."
Like all the participants, Bourke thinks the course would not have been the same without Binchy's contribution, in the form of a weekly "Letter from Maeve" that was distributed before each seminar.
"It was excellent," she says. "Maeve Binchy lent, on the one hand, a very human touch, but on the other hand, she has this iron-will professionalism that exudes from her. I felt I was in very competent hands."
Paddy Hayes (57), a marketing executive, says Binchy's role was one of the most appealing aspects of the course.
"She has an extraordinary personality and warmth, and comes with a great reputation" he says. Hayes had been working for five years on a Cold War espionage thriller, which shifts between London, Washington and Moscow. He completed the final draft last month, and has already started on his next novel.
For others, however, graduation night came around too quickly. Helen O'Flynn (53), originally from Laois, was recovering from a serious car accident when she heard Marian Finucane talking about the course on the radio.
"Friends of mine had always been telling me that I should write a book, and when I heard about the course I said: 'If I don't attend this, I'll never do it. So I got a computer for myself in October and started writing. Unfortunately, it didn't go very well due to some personal difficulties during the year, but I found that it was a great form of escapism. I thoroughly enjoyed it. I'll pick it up again within the next couple of weeks. I have so much to tell."