Being among the children helped me get back on track
MAUREEN, the local librarian, invited me to come in and speak to the pupils of Crossmolina National School.
Because I don’t write children’s books, I always feel under-qualified talking to them. Especially after I learned that the last writer to visit was Shane Hegarty, the fantastically successful children’s author.
Lacking literary kudos, I decided to compensate by dressing the part and dug out my jazzy maroon hat. I love that hat. It used to be my trademark lady-novelist accessory, but I can’t wear it any more because my boss at NUI Galway is the award-winning writer Mike McCormack, and he wears a similar (albeit, to my mind, much inferior) hat. Since scooping loads of awards for his brilliant novel, Solar Bones, Mike has been widely photographed in his black felt trilby and is instantly recognisable on campus.
One or two students commented on our double-hatting and, because he is more famous than me, I sensed an assumption that I was trying to emulate him. I stuck it out for a while but people kept commenting, ‘You have a hat like Mike’, and eventually, with dignified fury, I put it away.
I still live in hope that Mike will invest his recent prize money in a modest-but-manly On The Waterfront beanie. In the meantime, I must save my trilby for the children of Crossmolina National School who haven’t a clue who Mike McCormack is — yet.
Under the instruction of their teacher, the children filed into the small library and sat cross-legged on the floor. I talked to them about how I went from being a weird kid with ADHD to a successful writer.
‘Have you met any writers before?’ I asked. ‘Shane Hegarty’ they all shouted. ‘What books do you write?’ one of them asked.
‘Historical novels,’ I replied. ‘Romance.’
They looked at me blankly. I decided to show them my tech-trick and set my laptop up at the back wall. They all stood up and gathered around me as I dictated on to my laptop in big type. ’Writing stories is just talking,’ I told them. The crowd of boys and girls stared silently at the screen, mesmerised by the process of words making marks on the blank page.
They ranged in age from 10 to 12 years old. Many of them, I was alarmed to note, are the same height as me. Their uniforms are customised, diverse. Some wore woollen jumpers with the school logo; others, tracksuits. Some of the girls wore navy trousers like the boys and others had old-fashioned plaid skirts.
As one gets older, it is almost tempting to think of all children is being the same, especially in a situation like this, when your experience of them will be fleeting. But as a writer it is my job to look and see and understand people as individual characters.
I look around the room as I talk, still typing, and describe what I can see in them: some of the girls are wearing earrings; some are not. Some have blue eyes; some brown. The boys all have short hair, but some have the side shorn; some of their fringes are slightly longer than others. A number of children are wearing glasses but no pair of glasses is the same.
EACH of them, even in the conformity of a school uniform, even in their silent attentiveness to their teachers and the strange lady-writer, has found a way of expressing their uniqueness. It is the writer’s job to see that in people and then write about it.
As children, what they all have in common is imagination and that is the thing I can share with them. It is my job to keep my imagination alive. That becomes harder the older you get; real life becomes more compelling the less of it you have left and imaginative storytelling skills can become elusive.
I hope that these children will leave here treasuring their imaginations and aspiring to a life of storytelling, whether they become writers or not. I came here to give them something of myself but found that the privilege of being among children put me back on track with my own imagination.
Another bonus when a cheeky lad marched up to me and announced: ‘Miss — I like your hat.’
He called me ‘Miss’ and he noticed the hat. Job done.