Author Teresa Doran describes the evolution of her novel Running Home, from an attendance at a writing course and on to publication . . .
“Describe a child, whose parent has just been killed in an accident, through the eyes of an elder sibling, but do not mention the parent or that they have died.”
When I unfolded the slip of paper I had randomly picked from the small box, these words I remember, practically verbatim, was my given prompt. My brain clouded over. My mind went numb.
“I’ll give you ten minutes.”
Irish Writers Centre
This was Siobhan Parkinson, the then Writer in Residence at the Irish Writers Centre in Dublin and our mentor for a free, eight week course in writing for children, held on consecutive Saturday mornings in the early weeks of the year 2000.
There were about ten of us in that upstairs room and we had all been selected on merit – our applications requiring a submission of our own writing. For some years I had been reviewing children’s books for ‘Books Ireland’ and had made a start at a couple of children’s books myself. That year, the new millennium, I made a promise to myself that I would actually finish something. I was therefore delighted my submission was successful and honoured to be one of the chosen ones, and so grateful to be given the chance to improve myself as a writer. (Imposter syndrome – before I knew there was even a term for it).
So there I was on this particular Saturday in February, in the company of an elite and proficient group, all of whom, as I looked around in my state of brain paralysis, were feverishly scribbling away. I glanced over at my twelve-year old son, engrossed in a book and oblivious to my mental panic. Without a weekend childminder and too young to be left alone, the understanding was that his sitting quiet would be rewarded with a McDonald’s on the way home. Siobhan, who had kindly allowed and welcomed his presence, (after all he was our target audience!) was also quietly reading. The minutes ticked by and still my page remained blank.
Effie
Then suddenly, I saw her. A little girl, with blonde hair and a blue dress, the hem of which she clutched in a fist, the material staining dark blue as she sucked her thumb feverishly. Her blue eyes were big and wet like bubbles as she stared at something uncompromisingly terrible. She didn’t notice me, her big sister Cait, watching from a half open door. Her name was Effie.
I wrote like a demon for the remaining five minutes, put my pen down and listened as we each read our pieces, ready to offer praise and encouragement. Mine was the last, and I started to read:
“She wanted to hug her, but she was afraid. Afraid that if she put her arms around her sister – if she touched her in any way – she would break. She looked so fragile – the veins in her pale cheeks gave her face a porcelain blueness.”
Amazingly its opening paragraph remained, practically word for word, the same piece I’d written in a breathless frenzy, that chilly February morning in the Irish Writers’ Centre. The phrase ‘you could hear a pin drop’ was never more apt as I finished reading my piece.
“Silently Effie pushed her hand out towards her. Simultaneously Cait’s own hand crept down to find that of her sister. Their fingers touched, then palm clutched palm and the screaming started.”
A Collective Gasp
The room seemed to give a collective gasp and I was desperate to find out what happened next. Over the following weeks Cait and Effie were like the daughters I never had as they told me their story and I wrote it down at any and every opportunity.
Siobhan had extended her mentorship to give each of us a chance to present us with a manuscript of ‘With the Sharks Swimming” for evaluation later that year. Spurred on by her encouragement, I submitted it to an Irish publisher. I had meetings. For the best part of a year it was ‘under consideration’. Unfortunately the ‘murder/suicide’ on page one proved to be too much of a stumbling block. I felt unable to compromise and it was eventually turned down.
Running Home
Then Siobhan contacted me to say that a new UK publishing house had approached her, looking to break into the Irish market, and suggested I send them my manuscript. This I did and a few days later, Barry Cunningham, founder of this new publishing company, Chickenhouse was on the phone to me, telling me that he’d read my book over the weekend and now wanted to meet me. (Cloud nine moment).
He flew over and we met in Ireland, in my home town. He told me he had no problem with the book’s beginning, but wanted me to change the ending. This I did. Manuscript approved and a contract was signed. We had another meeting upstairs in The Winding Stair in Dublin to go over edits and then suddenly – whoo hoo – my book was on its way to print and a post-publication dinner in a swanky Dublin restaurant held in my honour.
Running Home, as it was now titled, was published in hardback at the end of 2002, with the paperback edition coming out the following year.
(c) Teresa Doran
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