In focus: the career and many writings of Eoin McNamee

We’re driving up the west coast of Scotland. Bleak urban terrains. We’re on a piece of dual carriageway, two lanes going nowhere at sixty miles an hour. A woman walks down the white line against the flow of traffic, wing mirrors almost touching her on either side. She’s wearing a yellow towelling dressing gown, fluffy slippers. White pyjamas underneath with reindeer on them. She has dirty blonde hair and high cheekbones. There is a bruise on her temple and she’s smoking a cigarette. She’s there and gone in a moment. Marie touches my knee. She doesn’t even look at me. ‘Don’t,’ she says softly, ‘Don’t.’

Thinking like a writer. You’re looking for possibilities of transformation. Something that changes your way of looking at the world. Something you see, something from memory. When I come away from a piece of writing I don’t want to feel I know more about the world. I want to feel that I know less, dumbstruck with mystery.

I’m uneasy when I hear people talking about Creative Writing. To create means to bring something into existence. Its offputting for people who are learning to write. What part of your mind is responsible for all this creation? Think of yourself as a witness instead. Look carefully at the things the world puts in front of you.

Hemingway said always include the weather. He meant not just the actual weather; rain, sun, snow - but the texture of the world around you. What it looks like, what it sounds like, what it smells and feels like. Find out what things are made of. Find proper names. Is it warm or cold? Where is the light coming from? What is the pattern on the girl’s pyjamas? Is the bruise on her forehead old or new? As you bring your own perception to bear on the world it will reward you, if that is the right word. Your sentences and paragraphs begin to acquire shape and authority. The words you don’t need fall away.

The same thing goes for people’s voices. Dialogue isn’t an artifice that is separate from the rest of language. You learn how to write speech by listening to others speak. Really listen; don’t reach for what you think they should sound like, listen to the words they use and how they use them. Listen for the rhythm, the rise and fall, the things that make speech sound authentic.

I’m not sure if you can teach writing. You don’t teach light. You don’t teach air. But you can guide people towards the world as seen through a writer’s eyes. It’s not everything about writing, but it is the foundation. The American writer James Salter said ‘The thing that is marvellous is literature, which is like the sea, and the exaltation of being near it, whether you are a powerful swimmer or wading by the shore.’ The bad news is that every time you sit down to write you are starting at the beginning. The good news is that we all start at the same point each time, and are going the same direction.

The girl in pyjamas became part of a story called Walking North, Walking Home. An unlikely couple encounter her on the roadway at the start of a long and disappointing journey. They meet her on the way back many hours later. She has never stopped walking. It is snowing and her hair is stiff and ghostly with cold. ‘Her head was high and the light of ruin and of glory shone in her eyes.’ She had become her own story walking through the world. Witnessed, transformed.