From Academic Writing To Podcasting And Fiction

This year I published my first fiction book, but it’s a long way from being my writing debut. In 2010 I submitted my PhD thesis, and around that time I wandered into a career as a research developer and proposal writer. These days, as well as writing fiction, I work with researchers to help them develop and write up ideas to apply for competitive funding grants.

For the last 6 months of my PhD I had a sign over my desk saying “There is no later!” beside a chart of how many words I needed to write per week to actually finish before I ran out of time and money. My time writing my PhD was a huge learning period. When you write shorter pieces of work, you can mask a lot of your writing tendencies, but in a longer work, you really do have to tackle them. A process that I’m sure is familiar to novel writers!

My research discipline was political theory, which is heavily writing focused. Precision and clarity of expression are core components. It’s like a crucible, if you can be in a crucible for five years. I worked closely with my supervisor and other advisors and my ideas and writing were scrutinised backwards and forwards. By the time I got to the end, I was burnt out from the pressure and the enormity of the project. But I think it profoundly improved my writing.

I also write for competitive research grant applications. These intense writing experiences have definitely contributed to my fiction. I came to deeply understand that generally writing is an iterative process, except for those times when you are lucky enough to flow. Flow is great, but you can’t depend on it. Mostly writing is getting it done under less than perfect circumstances. I also, eventually, let go of any expectation of perfection. Grant writing is an incredible experience. I had the opportunity to work with others, write collaboratively, and seek reviews and feedback proactively. If you’ve any chance of surviving in this world, you learn to take the feedback in constructive ways and learn to differentiate types of feedback.

It only took about 10 years but I’m now pretty matter of fact about my writing. And I’ve been rejected by funders so many times, that the 12 or so rejections for After the World didn’t really faze me. I’ve also been successful enough times to have confidence in my writing.

Writing for pleasure was something I had to rediscover after finishing the PhD grind. I joined the writers group that was a subset of a book club. I protested against joining them for quite some time, as the sense of writing pressure from my PhD had stayed with me, and I was hugely reluctant to commit to anything where we talked about writing any number of words per day or week. And when I did come to a meeting (by accident!) they were gentle with me, and very encouraging. Kate declared that it was fortune had brought me to her house on that day.

My writers group has a bit of flux in membership, but I was there with two other writers pretty consistently – Kate Mulholland and Cathy Clarke. We all approach writing differently and for me there was enormous value in that. As well as being each other’s beta readers, we could talk about our different solutions to the various challenges you face when writing. And possibly more importantly, we just enjoy each other, so writers group is always something to look forward to.

In 2015 we decided to do a podcast together. The idea behind Irish Writers Podcast was to show the process, the real things faced by writers on their way to being published.

We all had a sense of how rarely we saw behind the scenes, and then only after someone had been successful. We knew of course that there must be many bumps on the road on the way to the final work, so we decided to be brave and vulnerable and talk about our works in progress, before we knew if they would be anything. I know for certain that without Kate and Cathy I would not have written my book. I wouldn’t have stayed on the road, and it wouldn’t have been so much fun without them.

Irish Writers Podcast also gives me a great excuse to talk to other writers about their process and their books and screenplays. I always got a lot out of those conversations, and the sense of how published pieces of work are often just the tip of a writing iceberg.

After the World is definitely a product of all these experiences, and the support of all these people, and still somehow a standalone thing, different to anything else I’ve written.

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Máire Brophy lives in Dublin, Ireland. By day, she works with researchers to help develop and express their ideas, and by night she mostly sleeps. In between she’s often found playing Dungeons and Dragons, eating cake and watching movies. She is currently considering learning to play golf. Máire cohosts Irish Writers Podcast – a podcast about writing – and tweets @mairebro. You can find out more information on her website mairebrophy.com. And don’t worry no-one else pronounces her name correctly either.

Her debut book After the World was published by Strange Fictions Press on 8th May 2018.

After the World by Máire Brophy

After the war is lost, all that remains is to survive. And when you know what you’ve done, you can’t hope for anything more.
Bereft in a hostile world, an orc general struggles to come to terms with his role in the destruction of his people. Running and hiding from the humans and elves that hunt him down, he searches for other orc survivors.
When two human wizards finally pin him down in an abandoned orcish mountain fortress, he must use his wits and cunning to prevail, redeeming himself and the magic of his people.

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Category: Contemporary Women Writers, On Writing