In the Guardian, Roddy Doyle
talks about how he came to write his novel, “Paddy Clarke Ha Ha Ha.” He says
that he was a teacher and then a new father. “But the other definition I’d only
been getting the hang of, novelist, was being nudged aside, becoming a hobby or
a memory. So I started Paddy Clarke to prove to myself that I could—that it was
permitted. That there was still room in my life for writing.”
At this point he’d already
written “The Commitments,” “The Snapper” and “The Van,” so it might seem
surprising that his image of himself as a novelist was so shaky.
The new book came together
at odd moments: “The story was assembled from bits of memory - the smell of the
desk at school, the private world under the sitting room table - and it arrived
in small chunks. An hour one night, or 20 minutes at lunchtime in school - I'd
grab the time and write something, often just a sentence or two. I had no plot,
just Paddy. I began to see things through his eyes. Adult hands were big,
wrinkles were fascinating, ladders were great, disgusting was brilliant,
grown-ups were often stupid.”
Another surprise: “There was
no plot yet, but that didn't worry me. I thought of Fellini's Amarcord, and how
it meanders through a year, spring to the following spring. The year is the
plot; anything stricter would destroy that film - and it's my favourite film.
So I just kept writing.” Eventually the plot appeared.
The book won the Booker
Prize in 1993.
There they are, the two “secrets”—find
the time and just write.
(for help in getting started writing your book, see my book, "Your Writing Coach," published by Nicholas Brealey and available from Amazon and other online and offline retailers.)
