Reading Ireland 2024: The Maeve Binchy Writers' Club

 'Writing fiction is an extraordinary freedom; to sit down and create characters, scenes, moods, feelings, ideas, beliefs, with comic, tragi-comic, light-hearted, serious, entertaining intention must be one of the hallmarks of our human individuality.' (Gerald Dawe)

And yet how many of us intend to write something but never quite get round to it? We procrastinate, we make up excuses, we wait for the 'right time' - and most of all, we are victims of the inner critic, that voice that tells us that anything we write will be rubbish, so why would anyone want to publish. let alone read, it anyway?  And back we go to scrolling Instagram.

Maeve Binchy, who died in 2012, was one of Ireland's best known authors She worked as a teacher and then a journalist for The Irish Times before taking up full time writing. She published sixteen novels in her lifetime, plus numerous short stories, a play and a novella.  A seventeenth novel was published posthumously.

Her books are always about people living their everyday lives, whether in Dublin or rural Ireland, and she had the gift of writing as she spoke, so that to read them feels more like listening to a friend. Maeve was a generous, kind woman and her writing reflects this; she understands human foibles and failings, and treats her characters with compassion. In The Maeve Binchy Writers' Club she once again shows her generosity, offering advice and understanding to readers who want to write but don't know where to start, or how to carry on. What's more, she not only waived her fee for the book, she persuaded ten other Irish writers, agents, publishers and editors to do the same.*

The book is based on a writing course that ran at the National College of Ireland. Maeve wanted to give the novice writers a companion as they worked, so each week she wrote a short letter to them, jollying them along and urging them not to give up. Fifteen of those letters are reproduced here, and after each letter comes a page or two on a specific topic, from Finding Your Voice to Murder, Mystery and Suspense, The Role of the Editor and Writing for Radio. For some weeks of the course, an expert in the field was a guest speaker, and ten of their contributions are included - so we have Marian Keyes on The Road to Success, Ivy Bannister on Eight Steps to a Short Story and Julie Parsons on Writing Thrillers and Having Fun.

All you need to do to start, Maeve says, is carve five hours a week out of your schedule. When she was working she didn't want to give up her busy social life, and she knew she'd be too tired to write late at night, so she forced herself to get up at 5 in the morning three times a week to write for three hours before she left for the office. She did not have a study, nor even a dedicated desk; instead she kept her writing equipment on a trolley under the stairs so that she could wheel it to the table and start writing immediately. She hated being up that early, she consumed gallons of black coffee to wake herself up - but she wanted above all to write, and she knew this was the only way. 

Find your five hours, she says.  And yes I know that Maeve did not have children - but when my children were little, I got up at 6 three times a week to go swimming. It's possible if you want it enough. (Now of course I wish I'd been writing instead of wading through the Aberdonian snow to that freezing pool.)

Every week, says Maeve, write your ten pages. Don't let anything distract you,

Maeve Binchy - image: Wikipedia

'no phone calls, no answering doors, no requests from children to come and play. These are delightful distractions which you may well feel that a Good Proper Person should give in to, but you must be ruthless.'

She's also honest about her own mistakes and failings. She can't write thrillers, she always forgets to add any personal descriptions ('I know what they look like!') and frequently omits to get a character from A to B. That, she says, is why you need an editor. 

And she's just as good at procrastination as the rest of us,

'How much easier it is to write a bossy letter urging you to Sustain Progress and to Keep At It than to do these things myself! This morning I should be tackling chapter seven of something, in the sure and certain knowledge that chapter six was endless and droned on and on until it would drive anyone demented. All my confidence and enthusiasm about the story have gone. I would as soon go out and help the people drilling the street outside our hall door than get down to writing...'

But nevertheless, she perseveres, 

'because I have this notion of myself that I am reliable and want to live up to it. I'll finish the damn thing even it kills me. It's all a matter of discipline, I tell myself firmly, as if this will solve everything. Actually I'm not at all disciplined, and despite my self-delusion I'm not even very reliable....(but) I promise to have it delivered by a certain day, and delivered it will be.'

But what about when you have written your novel or your short story, fired it off to the publisher...and back (eventually) comes the rejection? Another great thing about this book is that not only Maeve but also other contributors tell us again and again how often they too have been rejected. Maeve's first book, the wonderful Light a Penny Candle, was sent back five times. She once described rejections as,

'A slap in the face...it's like if you don't go to a dance you can never be rejected but you'll never get to dance either.'  (BBC News 31 July 2012)

But as the Writers' Club so often emphasises, we're all in it together. Maeve has mixed views on whether or not actual writers' groups are beneficial, but two things they do provide, she says, are (1) discipline, and (2) support when you need it most.

And to prove her point, she ends the book with one of her own short stories. It's called The Writing Class.

I have dozens of books about writing on my shelves, many of which are hefty and somewhat intimidating tomes. For me the things that make The Maeve Binchy Writers' Club stand out are its readability, its brevity, its practical and sensible approach, and above all Maeve's warm and friendly presence.

*The Maeve Binchy Writers' Club was written for the National College of Ireland, which was originally set up to improve workforce/management relations when they were particularly fraught. Now the college instead helps people who would not otherwise move into tertiary education. As its then President, Dr Paul Mooney, says in his postscript to the book, statistics show that there are huge discrepancies between affluent and deprived areas in the number of people entering tertiary education; the college seeks to address that gulf.

The Maeve Binchy Writers' Club is published by the Orion Publishing Group. 

Maeve's website is here.