MAKING A LIVING MAKING STUFF UP
Catherine Ryan Howard is a working novelist. It is her “real” job. Here, she writes about what that takes, and the surprising places she finds inspiration for her compelling stories.
The reality of life as a novelist
I have my dream job: I kill people for a living. I’m a crime writer. I keep a photo on my desk of eight-yearold me sitting on an ugly swirl of 1980s carpet, testing out the typewriter that Santa has just delivered. I wrote my first book when I was 17, a terrible effort about studying for the Leaving Cert, instead of studying for my actual Leaving Cert. I subsequently lasted three weeks at university, one of which was Freshers so technically it was two, before commencing what I call my Lost Years, when I worked various minimum-wage jobs and felt my dreams drift beyond my reach. These were followed by my Adventure Years, when I still worked minimum-wage jobs but abroad, ultimately ending up in Walt Disney World, Florida. It was there, high on pixie dust, that I finally started dreaming again – only now I called my dreams goals and became determined to achieve them.
Having returned to Ireland in 2008 (great timing, I know), I self-published a memoir about Disney, Mousetrapped, and started doing freelance work for a publishing house. But self-publishing was only ever going to be a distant second best to my dreams of getting traditionally published, so I continued submitting novels-in-progress to agents and editors. Soon, obsessively checking my email for a lifechanging “yes” from one of them began to take its toll.
I decided to give college another try and enrolled in Trinity as an English undergrad at 32. This necessitated leaving Cork to rent a studio apartment in Dublin the size of three parking spaces, which was the only thing I could afford that didn’t scream “future crime-scene”. Just six weeks into my four-year degree, I got an agent and, six months after that, I got my first book deal.
Distress Signals was inspired by an article Jon Ronson wrote for The Guardian which made mention of a group called International Cruise Victims. I’d never been on a cruise, but thought they were all cabarets, buffets and sunbathing on the lido deck. Victims of what, exactly? I started Googling and quickly came to the conclusion that a cruise ship would be the ideal place to get away with murder.
I’ve mined real life for novel ideas ever since. The Liar’s Girl was sparked by an article about Thomas Quick, once thought to be Sweden’s most prolific serial killer. Rewind was inspired by a rash of stories about guests finding hidden cameras in their Airbnb rentals. When I read Michelle McNamara’s I’ll Be Gone in the Dark just days after its subject, the Golden State Killer, was finally arrested, I became obsessed with the question of whether or not he’d read it too.
The Nothing Man is half a fictitious true-crime memoir and half the killer’s reaction to it as he reads.
My latest, 56 Days, is a thriller set in lockdown that I wrote while I was in lockdown – alone, in the aforementioned studio apartment the size of three parking spaces that by April 2020, was feeling more like one telephone box. When I heard the UK’s deputy health minister tell new couples they should either break-up or shack-up in order to observe the “no mixing between households” rule, it gave me a story idea about a couple who choose the latter, but all is not what it seems.
People marvel that I managed to write a book in lockdown, but they shouldn’t. I’m child-free and single, and there’s only so much Netflix you can (re)watch and LEGO you can build. And I had to. This may be my dream job, but it’s still a job. Pandemic or no, I still had to pay my rent – and for all that lockdown LEGO.
In Ireland, we love to fetishise the povertystricken scribe, the true artiste who persists through the torture of creation despite no financial compensation. But I’m a full-time writer with no asterisk – no bread-winning partner, no “real” job. To want to get paid is often perceived as sellingout, tacky, less than. You’re just an Irish writer, not Irish Writing. But I’d argue that writers who don’t want to get paid don’t love writing as much as I do, because I love it so much I want to do it all the time. If I don’t make money, I won’t be able to. And the money comes from people buying your novels. Why on earth would you write a novel you don’t want people to read? Save the trees and yourself the bother. Keep a diary instead.
In this job, there’s no such thing as a typical day at the desk. Today, I’m writing this and tomorrow, I’ll be away from it, at a photo shoot. at sounds very glamorous altogether, so let me counter it by saying that the day after that, I’ll be back here, unwashed and in my PJs until well into the afternoon, tackling Book 6. (Bra optional.) I don’t write every day because I’m a master procrastinator; if I ever write a productivity guide, it’ll be called Don’t Start Until It’s Already Too Late. When a deadline gets close enough for me to feel its breath on my neck, I batch-cook, stock up on Nespresso capsules and start pulling 10-hour-long days at my desk.
I still obsessively check my email, but now it’s to nd out if I’ve been shortlisted for an award or o ered a new translation deal, or if someone wants to option one of my books for TV. But I’m far more likely to be on social media learning that those things have happened to someone else. One of the biggest misconceptions people have about our industry is that every book has an equal chance of doing well, that success is dependent on whether or not people like your book. Um, no. First they need to know it exists, which requires a big marketing budget and a hefty publicity push. Hundreds of new books are published every ursday; competition is fierce. e lead-up to publication is either you being told that yes, you’re getting e ing (yay!) or you sitting at home slowly coming to the realisation that you were never even in the running for it. Many days are soaked in disappointment spiked with envy. Gin helps.
To paraphrase my friend Hazel (Gaynor, a fellow author), publication isn’t just another date in the calendar. It’s the culmination of all your hopes and dreams for the blank document you somehow managed to turn into a slice of the whole world. It can be an emotional rollercoaster, but it’s still my dream come true. Writing is a hard way to make an easy living, but there’s no other job I’d rather do.