Writing.ie has published an article I wrote about the fiasco that was my attempt to get writing last week, whilst out west for the Galway International Arts Festival. Go on. You know you want to read it. Go on. Seriously. Your week would be incomplete without it.
If you don’t, you might never know why, ever since, I suffer from tinnitus, and walk with a pronounced limp. Or why the book I was working on, although set in the west of Ireland, is suffused with a pronounced sense of ennui, and really doesn’t care what you think about it.
Link to article here.
Tara Sparling writes 
An accountancy rave? There’s a book there. If you can find it.
LikeLike
Great idea! But what genre? Double-entry fiction? Mathematical satire? Fantasy??
LikeLike
Have you ever met an accountant? What genre is Alice in Wonderland?
LikeLike
Not only do I come from a long line of accountants, I also work with them on a daily basis… and I can categorically state that the only time I’ve ever seen really creative accounting is in the movies. Most of them just don’t have the imagination 😉
LikeLike
Oops. Reminds me of the time I said if God had meant women to play rugby He’d have put their tits somewhere else and the woman I was talking to said, “My daughter…”…well, you can fill in the rest yourself.
LikeLike
You mustn’t think that I would ever consciously defend accountants, either individually or as a group. Now THAT would be insulting!
LikeLike
Thanks for the laugh! We can’t always choose the best spot for our novels to percolate through our fingers. My first novel was written at the cash register of our family gallery, in-between customers. Lots of those in-betweens made it more like a cemetery than I would have preferred, but eventually it was published (2009), the store was closed, and I moved my day-job home to write full-time. Oddly enough, those books were also set in Western Ireland, up in Mayo…
LikeLike
Now there’s a writing arc I wouldn’t mind following! Although I foresee myself chained to an office desk for quite some time yet. I love the story of the guy who worked as an night security guard, where he was expected to man a desk and do nothing, and used his time to write a book which ended up garnering the biggest book deal of that particular year. I can’t remember his name sadly, but he got double pay for genuinely honest work, so who cares!
LikeLike
Reblogged this on theowlladyblog.
LikeLike
Thanks for the reblog.
LikeLike
But you wrote that, so you were creative. Just not creative in a, ‘see that woman over there with the faraway eyes, sucking her pencil? She’s writing the next greatest English novel, which features a Parisian cafe in Donegal where the local presbyterians go to let their hair down with Madama Zza Zza, a now arthritic tightrope walker and one time CIA spy.’
LikeLike
Hey, Elaine. Let me know when this is published–sounds like a great read.
LikeLike
Does, doesn’t it? I must nip off to a cafe…
LikeLike
Yes, Elaine, I would like to see the first chapter myself – by 6pm this evening would be fine, thanks. I particularly want to see how presbyterians let their hair down. You write it, and I’ll make a documentary about it.
I suppose on the creativity end, Galway did contribute the inspiration for something, if not an environment to write it in… I may have been confusing creativity with productivity. Rookie mistake!
LikeLike
No no. Productivity is creativity. Anything you get down on paper (sorry, showing my age, on a screen) counts. If you produce, you’ve created. Especially when somebody wants to know what you’ve been doing all afternoon.
LikeLike
You know what? I’ve written it. dunno what happened to me, but it really took hold. First draft finished. But I have to hone and polish now. I loved writing it. Have no idea how it came out of the end of my pen. but, hey. Don’t know whether to post it, or enter it in a story competition.
LikeLike
This is thoroughly EXCELLENT. I’m super impressed, even if you didn’t make the 6pm deadline (what were you doing all day, incidentally?)
You have a couple of choices here… if it’s bleak and depressing enough, it will win all the short story competitions. If not, make your last name sound more Swedish, open a Swiss bank account and wait for the money to come pouring in 😉
LikeLike
Right. I’ve posted it. I suppose it’s not quite what you’d expect, but it just came out. Got fed up wondering if it was any good or not. So pressed the button.
LikeLike