by Maria McCarthy | 28 Oct, 2014 | As Long as it Takes, Books, Short stories, Writing
When I started my MA in creative writing, we had a seminar about research. What I remember most is that the tutor, Scarlett Thomas, suggested we buy a big notebook just for research. I need no encouragement to indulge in a bit of stationery buying; I also have a thing about notebooks being gifts to me, a kind of writer’s superstition, so I expect I asked someone to buy one for me. For me, the best journals for everyday writing, free-writing and drafts are A5, preferably spiral-bound. Research notebooks are A4. They need to be big enough to make plans, write mind-maps, to paste in cuttings from newspapers and so on. But I digress into stationery, when my topic is research.
Research or a notebook obsession?
I like to write a first draft, and check my research later. For my story collection As Long as it Takes, I did a lot of reading, collected all sorts of things to paste into my research book, took note of details that might or might not end up in the stories.
When writing the story ‘More Katharine than Audrey’, I saw a dress on a tailor’s dummy in an antiques market in Harrogate together with some yellow enamel jewellery. It was exactly the kind of dress that my character Noreen would wear to a dance, along with the necklace and earrings. I jotted down the details in my research notebook and had the dress in mind as I wrote. A description of it ended up in the story, but the jewellery didn’t, even though I pictured her wearing the jewellery too. I would like to think that my full imaginary outfit for Noreen comes through in the writing, brings her to life.
When I was working on that story, I showed it to a tutor on an Arvon retreat. Noreen, the protagonist, is in a long-stay hospital, and it doesn’t become clear until the end of the story why she is there. The tutor said I needed to plant some clues in the early part of the story and to research the symptoms and treatment of her illness at the time when the story was set. Fortunately for me, my husband was working as an editor of exams for the Royal College of Physicians, and he did the research for me.
I had to place the details lightly. Rather than have Noreen say ‘There were no antibiotics then so they couldn’t cure me when I first became ill, but there are now, but they don’t work for everyone. And this is what it was like when I first got it.’ I had her say:
And here’s me in Long Grove with Rosina Bryars and the nurses. No gold cure for me. No Peter Finch. But it won’t be long before they find the right combination of drugs for me, as they did for the others.
Pea soup it said in the books: six to eight motions a day, and it looks like pea soup. That’s just how it was when I had the fever. I can’t eat it to this day: that and rhubarb. Mammy used to boil it up to clean the pans; I worried it would strip the lining of my stomach.
You can read ‘More Katharine than Audrey’ here, and a blog piece on how I came to write the story: ‘From Norah to Noreen’. Both are on the Writers’ Hub website.
I’ve come across a couple of instances of research either being too evident or lacking. I read Human Traces by Sebastian Faulks a few years back. The novel is set in the early days of psychiatry. Boy, did Faulks know his subject, but I felt he wanted to let us know all of his research. It was a bit too detailed for my liking. In contrast, I’ve picked up anachronisms and mistakes whilst editing that could have easily been checked with a bit of research on the part of the writer. A reference to Ninja Turtles in a story set in the 1970s; describing frets on a violin’s fingerboard in a poem; characters dressing in fashions that are not correct for the time. This is why editors are important as well as research on the part of the writer. These kind of mistakes leap out of the page for those readers who spot them, and take them out of the world that the writer has created.
I’d be interested to hear others’ ideas on research. Do you research before writing or after? Do you, like me, use notebooks for research or even gather physical objects around you? Do you write character sketches, take your characters shopping to see what they might buy? Whatever you do, remember to use your research with care: wear it well but wear it lightly.
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by Maria McCarthy | 21 Oct, 2014 | As Long as it Takes, Family and forgiveness, Friends' Gallery, Uncategorized
I did not speak to my father for the last few years of his life. Some of the reasons are mine to tell; others do not belong to me, are not for sharing here, and there is that thing about family secrets – who knows, who doesn’t, it’s hard to remember.
‘He was fond of the drink,’ they would say, meaning that he was an alcoholic, not fully acknowledged by us, his family, and not at all by him. His drinking was nobody’s business but his, he said. Anyone who has lived with an alcoholic knows otherwise; their drinking is everyone’s business.
He was the father of five children; I am the middle child. He didn’t know how to relate to us. He didn’t know how to love us. I can name only a handful of good memories of being with him. One where he led me by the hand on the way to Sunday Mass, lifting me as I kicked the piles of autumn leaves in the park, so it felt like I was walking on top of them, my feet not touching the ground. Another, when he and I were alone, awaiting the wedding car after the rest of the family had left.
There were times, many of them, when I wished my mother would leave him, find someone nice. There were times when I thought of him as a monster.
When he died, I was very ill. Too ill to travel to his funeral, too ill to cope with the emotion of it all, and not prepared to hear the stories of what a lovely man he was when I knew otherwise. It wasn’t until seven years after his death that I came to know him, and that process is ongoing, another seven years on.
I wanted to know where he had come from, how he came to be the man he was. I knew little of his childhood in Ireland, only that he had been left by his parents who went to England without him, and that he was raised by his Auntie Molly, amongst her children.
Through good luck, the help of a man in Mitchelstown, Co Cork, who came to be a good friend, and meeting the cousins my dad was raised with, plus an old schoolfriend of his, I pieced together my father’s story. It has been material for poetry, stories and for crying my way through to a kind of forgiveness. There is a lot of talk about forgiveness these days – it does not mean condoning the things a person has done, but coming to terms and letting things go. Perhaps understanding how the early influences in their life, a lack of love, caused them to become the person they grew up to be.
I first visited Mitchelstown, my father’s home town, in 2007. I decided to go alone, the first time I had travelled by myself. I was 47 and it was about time. It was a deeply emotional experience, gruelling in many ways. But I met people who took me to their hearts and do so each time I return. I visited in September 2014, not only a social visit, but to read from my collection of stories As Long as it Takes at the town’s Culture Day celebrations. In an email before my visit, my friend Liam said, ‘Pleased to hear you’re coming home.’
The photos I am adding to my Friends’ Gallery are from my visit to Mitchelstown, September 2014. Me, with my friend Liam Cusack (left) who helped me find my way to Mitchelstown, via a letter I sent to William Trevor who was born in the same year and the same town as my father. Next to Liam is Jim Parker, a schoolfriend of my dad’s and now a friend of mine. Jim ended his career as Chief of Staff of the Irish Army. A local celebrity, I was honoured when Jim travelled to Mitchelstown to hear me read from my book. We are having lunch in O’Callaghan’s, which was formerly a jeweller’s shop owned by Peter and Mary Dold. Mary is one of the cousins my father grew up with.
The second photo is with newly found cousins – Edel, Anne (who is not fond of of having her photo taken) and Liz. They are the daughters of two of my dad’s cousins, Nelly and Mary. I think that makes us third cousins. We had a wonderful afternoon together, piecing together family connections, guessing at the secrets that the older generation reveal only unwillingly, if at all. And making me feel a part of the family.
So is Mitchelstown ‘home’, even though I have never lived there, have only spent a couple of weeks there in total? It surely felt like it that day.
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by Maria McCarthy | 12 Apr, 2014 | As Long as it Takes, Chronic illness
When I updated this website a few months ago, I decided to remove my blog page on living with Chronic Fatigue Syndrome. I don’t want to be defined by my illness – I am a writer who happens to have an illness. The writing is the most important part. But today, I have been struggling. I am perhaps still recovering from an event last Saturday where, ironically, I spoke about writing my way through chronic illness.
At this talk, I spoke of often failing to follow my own good advice on managing the illness. Have I done that this week? Whether or not this is the case, I am just feeling plain fed up of having to manage it at all. As someone said to me this week, someone who also has a debilitating illness, ‘In my own head, I think I can rule the world,’ but we can’t, and it’s bloody frustrating.
The temptation is to do nothing, but doing nothing just makes my back hurt and makes me feel depressed. So I try to do something, and to remember what helps. Today, that was getting out for a little while with my husband, for a coffee and a brief look in a couple of charity shops, but not being tempted to stay out too long. I was rewarded with a cute new pair of blue suede shoes (£5), which will be just right for a couple of new outfits, one of which is a silk dress I bought for a fiver on another such trip. Then, on the way back home, I had a craving for fruit, so nipped into Sainsbury’s for one of those ready-prepared pots of exotic fruit. I don’t usually buy fruit this way, but a quick fruit hit was needed. Sometimes the guilt of hurting the planet by buying things with too much packaging has to be outweighed by helping myself.
I laid down on the sofa as soon as we got home, and asked my husband to get the lunch, battling my usual urge to soldier on, unpack the shopping, unload the washing machine etc. We had good food, when junk food would have given me a quick rush and then a crash, so I was thinking well. And then, a sleep under a duvet on the sofa, the cat curled up at my side, followed by writing this post.
All those things have helped – getting out, being in company, not overdoing it, small treats, asking for help, eating well, rest, but most of all the writing of this post. There, I’ve shared it. It’s out of my head and onto the page, and now I don’t feel so bad.
Another thing that has cheered me is Pauline Masurel’s review of As Long as it Takes for The Short Review, which you can read here.
I shall go back to resting now – promise!
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by Maria McCarthy | 6 Mar, 2014 | As Long as it Takes, Books, Friends' Gallery, Uncategorized
A month on from the publication of As Long as it Takes, and it’s been a whirlwind of events, press attention ( the Sittingbourne News Extra, no less), signing and stuffing books in envelopes and taking them to the post box. Oh, the glamour! Read the news article, by Andy Gray, on how I came to write the book: here.
I have been delighted by the responses to the book and to my readings. Here is one:
The world you build is complete with its own unique atmosphere, partly, I think, as a result of the some of the same characters recurring at different ages throughout the book. I also found that I could completely relate to the feeling of living in a place that can never be home.
I found the last story, ‘Combing out the Tangles,’ utterly heart breaking; in fact, all the stories are written with a restraint that adds to their emotional power.
And another, from a former creative writing tutor, Patricia Debney:
There’s so much sex in it, Maria! And so much nylon underwear!
This was in response to my comments about the fates conspiring against me for the book launch at the University of Kent. There was wind, rain, and closure of the M2 due to a sink hole appearing in the central reservation. People were cancelling; it was doubtful whether I could get there, since all the M2 traffic had been diverted past my front door. Setting up a tea trolley by the side of the A2 seemed a good idea, as that traffic was going nowhere fast.
I said to Patricia that God was punishing me for writing about my family. Her response was that it was to do with all the sex in the book. Before you get too excited, the sex is mostly of the disappointing teenage variety, and there was a lot of nylon underwear in the ’70s.
There’s a lovely blog piece from Sonia Overall about the launch. She describes it as ‘more Tipperary tavern than literary salon’, due to the musical input of my talented brother, Jamie McCarthy, who sang and played violin as well as riffing with me about the Irish Catholic childhood that we shared. Read it here.
From a university to a shopping centre in Sittingbourne – the next event was at the Swale Arts Forum pART project, a temporary shop displaying the work of local artists and inviting people to take part in art. Until last Saturday, I had never performed at a shopping centre, and it was a totally different experience from the university. I like to mix things up a little, so the event had music as well as my story readings and guest poets, as well as an open mic. Some people came especially for the event; others walked in out of curiosity. By the end, we had a Police Community Support Officer in attendance (drawn in by Andy Wiggins‘ singing) and 94 year old Florrie who recited a poem by heart at the open mic.
And so to my favourite comment of the afternoon from an elderly woman who popped in with her shopping trolley just as I was reading. She was reacting to a reading from my story ‘A Coffee and a Smoke’, about Maura, who has one child after another – the lot of the Catholic woman in the 1950s and ’60s. She said that it was like that in her family, that her father worked away and whenever he came home, her mother ended up with another baby. And then she said:
Alan Titchmarsh writes stories like that.
Until that point, likening my poetry to that of Pam Ayres had been my least favourite comparison.
Val Tyler, Barry Fentiman-Hall, Fiona Sinclair, SM Jenkin, Maria, Mark Holihan, Andy Wiggins and Sienna-Janae Hoilhan
I have been adding many photos to my Friends’ Gallery – too many to share here. The group photo shows many of my friends who took part at the pART project.
The next event is at Jittermugs coffee shop, Preston St, Faversham, on St Patrick’s Day, 17 March, 3.00 – 5.00 pm. I shall be signing books and reading stories on request. There will be some St Patrick’s Day goodies to eat and drink.
Florrie recites her poem at the open mic
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by Maria McCarthy | 7 Feb, 2014 | As Long as it Takes, Books, Friends' Gallery, Resolutions, Uncategorized
The first review of As Long as it Takes has been published on London Grip. Fiona Sinclair’s review is headed that she finds the stories “harrowing but hopeful”. Sounds like my life story! Seriously, though, I am delighted that Fiona has read the stories in such depth and has absolutely ‘got’ the themes of these Irish women’s lives. She ends the review:
Whilst this is a collection of short stories focusing particularly on the lives of Irish women, their struggles are in fact universal. This is a celebration of women with indomitable spirits who are devoted to their families and above all are survivors.
For those of you that don’t want just “harrowing”, there is quite a lot of humour in these stories, but they will make you think and make you cry – or so I have been told by the first readers of the book. Read Fiona Sinclair’s full review on London Grip
I am awaiting more of the kind of questions I was asked when I read one of the stories, ‘A Tea Party’, at Seasonally Effected in Rochester: “Is that you; did that happen?” The story is in the voice of a child who tries to make sense of meeting her father’s misstress by acting it out in the form of a tea party with her toys. Was that me? I was given a tea set by an Irish uncle; it was the best present I had ever had. I did used to buy sugar mice from a sweet shop called Stebbings, and suck all the sugar until only the string tail was left. I was one of five children, like the narrator of the story. But the children in these stories are not my brothers and sisters. The parents in the stories are not my parents. My father did many things but, to my knowledge, he did not have an affair.
So, if people ask if these stories are true, I’ll say, ‘Yes, I had a Saturday job working on the sweet counter at Woolworth’s’, or ‘I did look with envy on my best friend’s Russian Dolls’, or ‘I did have a holiday romance with a boy in Ireland’, but the rest is imagination.
Here’s another for the Friends’ Gallery, my mission to get photos taken with as many of my friends as possible in 2014. This is me with Sam Pengelly, my hairdresser. I believe that a woman’s relationship with her hairdresser is an intimate one – Sam and I know quite a lot about each other. We laugh a lot together. And when I once burst into tears when Sam asked how I was, she held my hand and said, ‘I’m not just your hairdresser, I’m your friend.’ Sam more than qualifies for my Friends’ Gallery.
Maria and Sam
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by Maria McCarthy | 20 Jan, 2014 | As Long as it Takes, Books, Friends' Gallery, Resolutions
As Long as it Takes has now been uploaded to the printers, and I await the first shipment of books. Meanwhile, I’ve been organising some events to promote the book, beginning with the launch at the University of Kent on Wednesday 12 February (see Events page). This is where the stories began, when I was studying for an MA in creative writing, with a pair of stories linked by character and theme. My tutor Patricia Debney said that I had something that could run, and sure enough these two stories grew into fourteen, creating a community of Irish migrant women living in England and their daughters. Each of the stories stands alone, but as Susan Wicks writes:
…characters recur and situations illuminate one another, so that when we read them together we find ourselves inside the story of a whole community of Irish immigrants, suddenly faced, as the protagonists are, with the tellingly displaced expectations and longings of a generation of women and their legacy to the generations that succeeded them.
As well as the Kent University launch, there are further events at the Swale Arts Forum pART shop, Sittingbourne at 2.00 p.m. on 1 March and at the Jolly Sailor, Canterbury, at 6.30 p.m. on Sunday 13 April, where I shall be the guest of Save As Writers. Go the Events page for more details.
Not a resolution, a mission – two more pictures for my Friends’ Gallery, a mission to get photos taken with my friends in 2014. On the right, I am with newlyweds Sam and Barry Fentiman-Hall of ME4 Writers whose latest publication is City Without a Head.
To the left, I am with Sarah March, writer, Kundalini yoga teacher and sister-sheddie. I met Sarah on Facebook, and she made a suggestion that we could hold literary events in our sheds. And we did, holding two shed happenings with poetry, stories, music and films projected on the shed walls.
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