Honestly? I’d spent the morning preparing myself for disappointment - I take these things far too much to heart. So: picnicking with my partner by the dam, without my phone, soaking in the trees and sunshine. When I got home I armed myself with a consolation pint of double-choc ice-cream and – wincing pre-emptively – checked my email. I think I actually shouted out loud when it sank in. Then I rang every member of my family back in Ireland. (And still ate the ice-cream, of course.)

 

 

 

Many years ago, I spent a winter’s weekend on a South African farm, as the guest of a truly lovely family: kind, thoughtful, creative. But their relationship with the labourers who worked the farm was a shock. Part of me never came to terms with those contradictions – how a good person can also do cruel things, how people can be so thoroughly trapped by history. On both sides, there were strict roles being played out, and to break out of those roles risked fundamentally altering the rules of that world.

 

It took years to feel ready to write about it. When I did, when the pieces turning over in my head started to slot together, Jacob and Moses came to me almost fully-formed. As sometimes happens, it felt less like I was creating than I was discovering a story that already existed – I was just drawing it down onto the page. I wrote a good thousand words in one morning, then ran up against the specifics of the burn process. So I set the story aside to do a little research, speak to a few farmers. It was two, three months before I came back to the story. Then I shared it with some friends and family, and from the questions they asked I found there were even more layers to bring in. 

 

I knew from the start it was important that Jacob be likeable – certainly more so than his fellow farmers. He is human, in the best and worst ways. But this is really Moses’ story, though you only hear his story through others, which was something that had to be handled carefully. I wanted the reader to be uncomfortable, to ask: what would I be like, in this situation? Would I be any better than Jacob? It’s something I still ask myself. 

 

 

 

Absolutely it’s a positive thing. Starting out writing can often be a lonely, disheartening road to travel. It’s hard to know if what you’re writing is any good, and harder still to know how to improve. Other people might be better at managing this; for me, it has been a deep and painful battle. There’s been a lot of gnawing doubt. I love writing, but it is difficult. Doing almost anything else is easier. (Of course, that’s also what makes it ultimately so rewarding.) Being awarded the GBP Prize has been a lovely affirmation, at a time I needed it very much. It’s given me more certainty that this is the path I want to be walking. It’s also, hopefully, a springboard to more opportunities for learning and making valuable connections.

 

 

 

I started writing stories at about eight. I loved story-telling, loved conjuring something out of thin air. At the end of my teens I stopped, and – apart from a brief fling in college – didn’t touch fiction until three years ago, when I was almost thirty. Looking back now, I can’t for the life of me understand why. I think I was afraid. Writing wasn’t really a career, so instead I did my degree, then my masters, then started working… until I literally came to my senses one day on a road in Northern Spain and realised I had abandoned the one thing I always knew to be a part of me. 

 

So I cleared one day a week and began writing. I didn’t know any better, I just jumped straight in and began on a novel. The short stories were at first just a break from that, a chance to play with different ideas. It was a challenge to realise that I wasn’t particularly good at short stories, that I had to work really hard. I had always been a voracious reader, but almost exclusively of novels. So I started seeking out and reading short stories. Alice Munro blew my tiny mind. So did ‘Foster’, by Claire Keegan. I didn’t know what they were doing, but I knew it was incredible. 

 

 

 

Yes and no. Novels and short stories are such completely different animals – both with their own challenges. A novel you have to hold in your head all at once, this large and interconnected world. And I’ve yet to finish a novel to my satisfaction. But the beauty is you have so much more space to move in. You breathe it and build on it. 

 

I instinctively find short stories harder, because each word counts. There’s no room for error. And the ending is critical. If you can’t bring it to a close, the rest falls flat. I still don’t feel confident about short stories. Every time I start out with an idea, I’m not sure it will evolve into anything of worth. A lot of ideas just run dead after a few lines. But then something sparks, and you hope it will take you where you need to go.

 

 

 

Oh boy. Often it involves a great deal of procrastination – it’s astounding how attractive housework can become in these situations. I’m lucky enough to have an office (cum-spare room) to work in, with a door to close. Fridays and either Saturday or Sunday are my writing days, but the amount of time on those days that I actually spend writing varies.

 

I don’t really have a routine. It can be anything – I can give myself an hour to look through some short story ideas (I keep a file) and see if any jump out, or pick up on a partially-written one and try to move it forward. Usually if I get in an hour or two of intense work I’ll take a break, and maybe switch to polishing something or looking for submission windows (another form of procrastination). 

 

When I’m working on a novel I’m much more disciplined – I set a daily word count and don’t let myself off the hook until I’ve reached it. I’m a fairly slow writer, so that might only be a thousand or so words a day, but it all adds up. If I reach a block, I walk or go to the gym or footle about in the garden, to free up the thinking process. I can be quite heartless about turning down invitations and friends when I need to, but I also take heart from the lovely Paula Reed Nancarrow: “Anyone who turns down a spontaneous country drive on a beautiful day does not deserve to write poetry.”

 

 

 

The aforementioned Alice Munro - there are so many hidden things beneath her lines. Also the clean-mouthed clarity of Cate Kennedy, the quiet viciousness of Nadine Gordimer. I love some newer writers too - Danielle McLaughlin, Molia Dumbleton, T. Coraghessan Boyle, Billy O'Callaghan, Colin Barrett. There are so many good Irish short story writers at the moment, it’s hard to choose. 

 

Truthfully though, I feel like a bit of a fraud here – I’ve never taken a literature class, and I came to so many canonical writers relatively late. For example, Hemingway! I fell for Hemingway in my late twenties, by which stage one really ought to know better. And Raymond Carver – how could I have not read Carver until last year? But there you are. 

 

 

 

How long have you got? Arundhati Roy (her fiction and non-fiction), Jean Rhys, Barbara Kingsolver, Peter Høeg (especially Borderliners), Kazuo Ishiguro, John Fowles, Alice Walker, Donna Tartt, anything by Teju Cole, Iain Banks, Ann Patchett, Colum McCann, Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie, Lauren Beukes, Zakes Mda, Mervyn Peake, Kate Atkinson, Cormac McCarthy, Ray Bradbury (short and long), Audrey Niffenegger, Jonathan Safran Foer, Ali Smith… this is only a very partial list. Some I love for specific books, others for their whole body of work, but all because they moved me and made me excited about how words can be used. They all do something different, and sometimes I love them precisely because they write in a way or a style that I cannot. 

 

I was raised on Stephen King, and want someday to return to horror. I (somewhat guiltily) adore a lot of YA too – J K Rowling is a genius, and The Book Thief stole my heart. 

 

 

 

The editorial support. There wasn’t even a hesitation. For me, this is sincerely the opportunity of a lifetime. Because I want to learn, and improve, and I have a draft novel that I believe in but which I need to put some serious manners on. I haven’t had any formal writing training, so I am always looking for ways to develop the craft. My real weakness at the moment is editing, so I’m hoping this is a process that can help me, and that I will come out the end a better, stronger writer.