Getting Started Non Fiction
Narrative Nonfiction: Making Facts Dance, Patricia Byrne
Five years ago I was reminded of a story that I had vaguely heard of growing up. It was about an ancestor, my great granduncle who served as a monk on Achill Island in the late nineteenth century and wrote copiously in his journals and notebooks. When I read his account of an explosive relationship between an island landowner Agnes MacDonnell and her volatile tenant James Lynchehaun, I knew that I had to retell the story. The result is my book The Veiled Woman of Achill: Island Outrage & A Playboy Drama published by The Collins Press this week.
Choosing the Genre
As I immersed myself in researching this island story I was faced with the decision of what genre to adopt. I could have opted for a strict historical account with each of my sources carefully recorded in footnotes, and I had rich material to work with: my great granduncle’s notebooks; national folklore material about the dramatic Achill events; court case records; newspaper accounts of the time. Indeed, my first strategy was to go this route as I painstakingly reviewed and numbered each item of relevant information. Along the way I published articles in historical journals on slices of my research. However, I knew in my bones that this was not the style I wanted to adopt for my eventual book.
Read more: Narrative Nonfiction: Making Facts Dance, Patricia Byrne
Setting Goals & Making Time with Sheila Kiely
So firstly a quick biography. I’m a working mother of six children and I’ve just had my cookbook ‘Gimme the Recipe’ published with Mercier Press. (I also write a food blog at www.gimmetherecipe.com.) I like to write in my spare time and there usually isn’t much of that going around as you can imagine and perhaps you are in a similar situation yourself.
Sometimes when you write it can be a bit like day-dreaming. You lose yourself in an almost parallel existence where you set the parameters, draw the scenes and dictate everything until that jolted moment when the door swings open and a child presents you with a maths book, a pencil and an expression that cannot be ignored.
Writing is undoubtedly a selfish past-time and coping with the need to write and the demands of family life means striving for a balance and setting priorities. When you do make your escape and allow yourself to step through that sliding door to where you dream, it is a place for just you and your words to float as you write.
If you are writing for the love of writing then you don’t need to hear what I have to say because you can just write freely and let your words twist and turn at will and you have no need to concern yourself with time, place or even purpose. This type of writing has no set direction, it is an un-fettered escapade often stalled and interrupted and when resumed may run off on a completely different course from where it began.
Tips for Writing Non-fiction from Carol Tallon
I deeply suspect that, if asked, most published writers would admit to getting it right the first time ‘by accident’. It requires certain perseverance with a dose of planetary alignment to get your book published.
From my own personal experience, I have learned that writing non-fiction is a process. This can be a positive and a negative. It is positive because, once you find the process that works for you, writing will become as natural as getting dressed in the morning. On the negative, it can take a while to streamline this process and it will take a few false starts to really get stuck in. Below are a few points that I wish I could have known in advance:
1. Turn up, keeping turning up and don’t forget to breathe!
While this may not sound original or particularly enlightening, struggling writers should focus on this as a first step. Turn up and keep turning up until it no longer requires any conscious effort. You might not be in the mood to sit at the computer, and you may even feel that it is a waste of time if your mind is blank, turn up anyway. The ego of a writer is a great thing as it means we will not tolerate a void, regardless of whether that void is in our mind, in conversation or on the screen in front of us. Our aim will be to fill that void. It’s a compulsion. Give into it. Over time, with discipline, your words and ideas will be transformed into concepts that can be shared with the world.
Defamation: Staying out of Trouble When Writing Non-fiction with Rachel Fehily
Most defamation cases are brought by litigants who have been defamed by newspapers. Authors can also be targets for defamation proceedings and publishers don’t like to be sued for defamation so it pays to know what you can and cannot say!
Litigation is expensive and can ruin the reputation of the author and the publisher. The law of defamation is different in different countries but for the purposes of Ireland the following is a brief overview of the law that I hope will point you in the right direction:
What is defamation?
Defamation law was updated in 2009 - the use of the terms “libel” and “slander” have been replaced by the word “defamation.” “Defamation” means the publication by any means of a defamatory statement. It can be published orally or in writing, by visual images, on the television, radio, internet or electronic communication.
A defamatory statement is a statement that tends to injure a person’s reputation in the eyes of reasonable members of society.
Read more: Defamation: Staying out of Trouble When Writing Non-fiction with Rachel Fehily
The Seven Rules of Writing
Barrister and author Rachel Fehily brings you a wry look at the essentials of writing - take note!
1. Domesticity is the Enemy
I write at home and it’s a disaster. I have a computer set up on a desk in the house and I pretend to myself that I can access it whenever I feel like it and fit in my writing around my legal work and child rearing duties.
Yeah right.
So I get up in the morning with the intention to write but before I get near the computer I can’t help but notice list of chores crying out for attention: the magical never ending pile of laundry, the permanently dirty dog bowl, an unemptied dishwasher and dust on the top of the doors (does anyone ever clean the top of their doors?).
Then the phone rings and the dog whines and demands a walk.
If I do decide to try and sneak in a bit of writing when the kids are around you can bet they’ll want to start using the computer as soon as I sit down. Big dilemma – which is more important, their homework or my magnum opus? No contest really.
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