B Gerad O'Brien

When I won my first writing competition I was so excited I ran all the way home. I was about eight years old. The Fun Fair was coming to our little town on the West coast of Ireland and, apart from Duffy's Circus that would come in September, this was the highlight of our year. In school we were asked to write an essay on it, and I won the only prize - a book of ten tickets for the fair.

There were eight kids in our family (What? Well, it was normal in those days, all right!) so everyone got a ride on something. Even the Mammy had a go on the dodgems.

So writing was in my blood from a very young age. I loved essays and English literature, but we were a very close family, physically as well as emotionally, which meant that there wasn’t much free space in our little terraced house where I could sneak away to indulge in my hobby.

My grand-uncle Moss Scanlon had a harness maker's shop in Lower William Street in Listowel, a rural town in Kerry that was just a bus ride from Tralee, and we spent some wonderful Summers there. Down the lane opposite the shop was the River Feale and we spent some serious time there, swimming in the cool brown water or just chilling out watching Moss fishing, standing out in the middle of the river, kitted out in waders that came up to his neck.

The shop door was always open, a magnet for all sorts of colourful characters who would wander in for a chat and a bit of jovial banter. One wonderful storyteller who often popped in was John B Keane, and it was a great thrill to actually meet him. I asked him once where he got his ideas from, and he told me that everyone has a story to tell, so be patient and just listen to them.

And I was there, sitting on the counter in the shop, when John B's very first story was read out live on Radio Eireann. I can still remember the buzz of excitement and the sheer pride of the people of Listowel. And the seeds of storytelling were sown in my soul.

 Another source of raw encouragement was Bryan MacMahon, one of Listowel's finest writers and a schoolmaster to boot, who was a very easy person to talk to.     

Anyway, I left school at fourteen and went to work in hotels in Killarney, and I quickly got caught up in the buzz of the tourist industry. I felt no great urgency to write. I dreamed of being a writer, of course. I wanted to be a writer, but somehow life just got in the way.

When I joined the Royal Navy at eighteen I was sent to the Far East, and spent the first three years in Singapore and Hong Kong, and again I was having so much fun I didn't get to write anything, although there were loads of stories bursting to get out.

It was only when I got married and the children came along that I made any serious attempt to put pen to paper, and the result was ONCE ON A COLD AND GREY SEPTEMBER, a novel set in wartime Britain.

 I loved writing it, but the one thing I hated with a passion was actually typing it. After working a ten-hour day, I’d be clattering away into the early hours of the morning on an old Olivetti typewriter and getting on everyone’s nerves. Then I'd scream in frustration when I'd discover that hours of hard work were ruined by some horrendous typo error, and I’d have to start all over again.

Amazingly, I found an agent almost immediately, but she insisted on some major changes. I complied, and spent over a year re-writing it. Unfortunately my agent died suddenly and the agency closed. It took ages to find another agent, but he too demanded even more changes. It became too much for Jennifer and the kids, so my manuscript hibernated in the attic for years.

Then Jennifer bought me a computer for Christmas – with spell check!

This time finding an agent was an agonising, ongoing challenge, and in 2000 I had it published myself by iUniverse, a POD company. (All right, vanity! But I just had to see what it looked like in print.) I must say I’m pleased with the end result, and I’m still approaching agents and publishers with it, though without much success so far.

While my book was languishing in limbo I discovered that writing short stories is amazingly therapeutic. I get a great buzz from taking an idea and developing it, often watching it evolve into something completely different from what it started out as. And I realized too that great ideas are all around us. Little gems are waiting to be harvested everywhere we look. I also found myself listening to what people are saying, and they way they actually say it.

For instance, the Irish are famous for their colourful expressions, always using a dozen words when one would have done, so I built on that and set all my stories in Ireland. The names are changed, of course, because I don’t earn enough money to sustain a major lawsuit. I’ve written hundreds of stories, most of which are still stuffed in drawers somewhere, but I did manage to get more than twenty of them published over the years, in anthologies, e-zines and magazines as well as web sites.

DREAMIN’ DREAMS  - also published by iUniverse - contains all of my published stories, of which I’m very proud. They’re all based on real people who passed through my life at some time or other, or events that actually happened to me. Enhanced, of course, and sometimes exaggerated out of all proportion.

The title came from something my father said years ago, when I got poor grades at school. “What do you expect?” he asked my mother. “He doesn’t do any studying. He just sits there, dreamin’ dreams.”

That’s me on the cover, trying to look pensive as I gaze out at the Blasket Islands off the Kerry coast. Jennifer says it’s me all right, not quite in focus, slightly vague, and blurred around the edges!

Anyway, if you do get the chance to read it, I hope you enjoy it as much as I enjoyed writing it.

And if you are a budding writer, or just thinking about it, remember that the key thing about writing is to have fun doing it.

Yes, take your craft seriously – it’s a God given talent and it’s your duty to share it with the world, but enjoy it too. Only don’t get so immersed in it that you lose track of the people you really care about, the ones you’re proud to show it to first. (And listen to them, as well, even if what they’re saying isn’t what you want to hear!) And keep working at it, even if it’s just 100 words every day, because every time you write something, you’re fine-tuning your skills.