Fiona McCann, author of Love & Other Liabilities asks: Is there a right or a wrong way to become a writer?
There are easier and harder ways, for sure! Ways that get you there faster, with less painful detours.
I certainly wish I’d known sooner that I wanted to be a writer. That I could have been one of those people who took Literature or English in college, joined a writing group, learned about story structure and found my writing heroes and ‘voice’ early on.
I had always enjoyed writing as a kid. I remember being the only one in class who didn’t groan when the homework was to write an essay. And I had a notion, even then, that it would be lovely to write a novel some day but with no thought of actually making it a career. I struggled to figure out what I wanted to do after school honestly, feeling no particular pull in any direction. I liked lots of things. But did I love any of them with enough passion to do them forever?
Career Guidance?
A career guidance counsellor suggested either Commerce in UCD or Communications in DIT (as it was then) as good starting points for me. Communications cost less. I chose that. I enjoyed the course and ended up working in an animation company afterwards but, surrounded by creative people though I was, I was essentially doing admin and bookkeeping. I started feeling the lack of a creative outlet and thoughts of writing resurfaced. But then life outside work got busier. I got married, my husband set up his own company and we had two children. And the time and energy required to raise them left little in the tank for anything else.
And then life sent us a curveball when my son, who was three and a half at the time, was diagnosed with Autism. Suddenly we were plunged into a world of uncertainty. The internet, which we were advised not to search (but in the absence of any other information of course did) said that early intervention was crucial. But there was no early intervention to be had. A pilot scheme of 12 ABA (Applied Behavioural Analysis) schools was up and running around the country but their waiting lists were years long.
We were extremely lucky to get a place in a school set up by similarly desperate parents on the other side of Dublin from where we lived. For 18 months I drove up and down the length of the M50 twice a day, to drop my son off in the morning and then collect him again in the afternoon. And for 50% of those journeys, I was on my own with nothing but unproductive worry for company. Worry for his future. Worry if we were doing everything we could in the present. Worry that I had somehow caused this in the past. I was on a treadmill of unproductive worry that had me awake every night staring at the ceiling.
Turn on the Laptop and Start Writing
And then, as an odd sort of coping mechanism I think, my ragged and exhausted brain offered the image of a man looking out the window of an aging department store. Random, right? But insistent all the same. There was the man. There was the store. And I knew this man had problems too, but what were they? His father had died unexpectedly, I decided, leaving him to run the store – something he was wholly unqualified for. Moreover, he’d just learned the store’s finances were extremely shaky. He was going to have to let long-term staff go and the woman he’d just hired, to whom he felt a strong connection, would be first out the door. But for all his problems there were solutions. I knew this because I’d invented him and them! And from that point on, whenever I was on my own, I’d think about this man’s problems instead of my own. And when I’d wake in the dead of night, I’d get up, turn on the laptop, start writing and solve them. And I kept going and eventually, to my surprise, completed an 80,000 word manuscript.
And then, because I was now hooked, I wrote another. And then one more after that which – long story short – I eventually sent to Poolbeg Press who decided to publish it.
There are many and better reasons to become a writer than escaping unproductive worry but it’s what worked for me. But whatever your reason to pick up pen and paper or reach for the laptop, when you realise you just have to write regardless of circumstances – or maybe even because of them – that’s when you know you’ve become a writer.
(PS. My son’s doing great, in spite of all my worrying!)
(c) Fiona McCann
Fiona McCann photograph (c) Tetyana Maryshko
About Love & Other Liabilities by Fiona McCann:
When a financial crisis sends emotionally-hardened accountant Lily Barrett to the West Cork island of Inish Ruin, to put her deceased Nana’s beloved cottage on the market, she’s determined to keep ‘the feels’ to a minimum. No trips down Memory Lane with the islanders who once felt like family. And definitely no reunion with the boy who broke her heart.
But the cottage needs fixing and an elderly bride-to-be has moved in with all her belongings. And Lily’s inherited a dog that terrifies her. While her irrepressible flatmate – who’s tagged along uninvited – is falling for the minibus driver and in no hurry to leave.
But as Lily’s woes mount as fast as her bank balance plummets, can the island work its magic? In a place where well-intentioned meddlers run rife, can Lily really hang on to her secrets? Or get past the terrible hurt that made love such a liability?
Order your copy of Love & Other Liabilities by Fiona McCann online here.
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