I hear famous authors asked, ‘When did you start writing?’. The usual response is ‘I’ve always written as far back as I can remember.’
I won’t be saying that when the question comes my way. In my own life, writing was a sometime consideration, without the passion many writers seem to have in their own endeavors. When I was 23 years old I found myself with a little bit of spare time on my hands. I started to read the classics, joined a classical music record club, took a class in creative writing, and found a book in the library on journaling. My life at the time was upside down. Journaling was promised as a way to make sense of tangled webs. So I started to write in my notebooks, then later on my laptop when personal computers became available. I wrote mostly about my feelings, good and bad, about relationships and aspirations. I’ve tried to write regularly in my journals, daily when possible. My journal has been a best friend to me now for most of my adult life.
Life got busy again and my writing lingered. I did though, keep on journaling. In my early thirties I wrote a few short stories about family memories. I went to my first writing festival and had one of my stories reviewed by the head of the Ohio Arts Council, Bob Fox. He was kind. He said my stories would be valuable to family members, but they wouldn’t cut it commercially. So I tinkered with a few more stories here and there for the personal pleasure of writing. In University I minored in writing and literature. But the writing part was mostly composing short stories and poems, and then working with a professor editing them. I never learned much about the wider world of novel construction and how readers read them. It was in University where a teacher said something to me, like so many of us, that stayed with me to this day. My English Professor asked me to stay after class one day. She’d read a term paper I’d written for her. She asked me if I’d ever considered being a writer. I said, not really, maybe only in passing. Then she said I ought to give it a think.
When I turned 40 years of age, I started to write a lot of free verse poetry. I’d go to open mic readings at least once a month to share some of what I’d written. People seemed to like my poems, but you can never really tell when other poets like something. I find them mostly, odd and aloof (I may be as well). Never the less, around the University town where I lived, I got to be known as ‘Bob Da Poet’. For me writing poetry was often a surreal experience of capturing snapshots of life experiences.
In my forties I took a few more creative writing classes, read a few more books on the craft of writing, and joined a great writing group near my home. I was writing a lot of flash fiction, short 400 to 1,000 word stories. Not doing anything with them, but all the pleasure was in the writing.
Around 2004, I started to send off a few of my stories to some magazine editors, and competitions. No luck, plus I disliked the business aspect of trying to sell my writing. Also, in 2004 I started to come to Ireland on holidays. Each time I came I took a writing class, read at open poetry readings, and tried to meet other writers. I sent off several of my stories and poems to the Listowel Writing Festival that year and attended a poetry class at the festival by Trevor Joyce. No joy again as far as my entries. But it was a pleasure to meet so many writers all in the same place.
In 2006 I moved to Ireland. I’ve taken many more local creative writing classes since then and been in several writing groups. I started to write a memoir and a few fiction novels. But I found myself short on time, and had underestimated the amount of effort and skill a novel requires. In 2015 I finished a year-long certificate course in Creative Writing at Maynooth University. The short story instructor was John McKenna, a successful writer, and radio documentary producer. The novel writing instructor was Suzanne Power, a writer and editor with great enthusiasm. The quality of the students in the course was exceptional. The course brought me back to the goal of writing novels.
So now, I’ve taken an early retirement so that I can learn more about novel writing, and the supports needed to be a competent independent author. I’ll write more about that in the upcoming months. This summer I published a book of my poetry and one of my short stories on KDP, Amazon.
My wife and I live in a large 200 year old renovated Irish cottage on two acres of land. She is a busy Secondary School Principal. So a good part of my time is spent working on the yard, the house, and domestic duties. Then I write, read, and learn. My remaining time is spent with my wife enjoying our rural life, with outings to Kilkenny City and beyond for music, theatre, lectures, and festivals. Ta Da.