| MEMORIES | history courses at the Terrace as a foundation. I had done my MA thesis on security policy in Ireland so I knew a bit about that subject. And so much is preserved in the walls and buildings of Dublin Castle that I decided to locate my plot and my principal character, Detective Sergeant Joe Swallow, there in the closing decades of the 19th century. I started throwing sentences and paragraphs into a document on my hard drive. I had no working title for the story. And while I knew how to start it, I had no idea how it might end. I wrote 100 words sometimes over lunchtime or travelling on the DART. Maybe I would write ten words waiting for a kettle to boil. Before I knew it I had a story of sorts – with text to spare. I told nobody at first. Not my wife, my family or my friends. I was terrified of failure, of humiliation. My fingers hovered over the ‘delete’ key a thousand times. And then one day I realised I had a first draft; crude, ragged and inconsistent but a draft, nonetheless I had lunch with the late Caroline Walsh, then Literary Editor of my old newspaper. Nervously, giving nothing away, I told her I had “something” in contemplation. “Send it to Dermot Bolger at New Island,” she said. And I did. When an editor submits his work to other editors it’s a bit like a doctor submitting to other doctors for treatment. It requires humility and trust. But
The New Island designer came up with an evocative, atmospheric cover. Finally, there was a book. Three months on, it hasn’t displaced James Joyce or Dan Brown. But it has done well and it sells steadily. It has been well received by the reviewers. Perhaps the strangest part of the process is the realisation that one has created a cast of characters who are now real in the minds of readers. People ask questions and inquire about them as they might about family members or old friends. They tell you they like such-and-such a character but that they dislike or distrust another. And they delight in spotting what they believe are inconsistencies in behaviour or contradictions in the storyline. A bizarre aspect has been the way that characters take on lives of their own. They refuse to conform to what you have planned for them – like children, only more so. They end up doing things the author has not envisaged. The bad ones can turn out to have some good. The good ones are often less upright than one has imagined. Now the publishers say they want to look at another book of Detective Sergeant Swallow’s adventures. I think I can do it. In fact, I have 50,000 words on the hard drive. I have learned two things. It’s never too late to start something new. And the semicolon isn’t as important as I used to think. ^
The library at Earlsfort Terrace.
Maeve Binchy had started writing creatively in her thirties. John Banville had been a writer before ever he became a literary editor. Poets, like colleague Gerard Smyth, had been working in verse since their teens. the patient should emerge the better. Inconsistencies of spelling and style were unearthed and dealt with ruthlessly. A somewhat jagged tale emerged as a polished, easy-flowing narrative. A title was found – A June of Ordinary Murders.
MEDIA TYPES
Brady’s Contemporaries at UCD KEVIN MYERS Journalist and writer Myers graduated in 1969 with a degree in History. A columnist with the Irish Independent, he is well known for his trenchant prose and right-wing position. HENRY KELLY
Television presenter and radio DJ, Kelly began work as a journalist, becoming Northern Editor of The Irish Times in the 1970s. In 1976, he moved to London and from 1987 to 1996 presented Going for Gold, a popular
30 | UCD CONNECTIONS ALUMNI MAGAZINE
TV quiz show on BBC. OLIVIA O’LEARYJournalist and writer, O’Leary joined RTÉ in 1972 as a current affairs presenter. She was awarded an honorary doctorate in literature by UCD in 2011.