Fairytale ending for persistent pharmacist

“ABOUT 10 years ago, my wife said to me, ‘Why don’t you write about things that really matter?’ What I took from that was: find something that emotionally matters to you.
“There’s this business of ‘writing what you know’. I take that to mean not so much that you should write about the job that you’re in or the physical infrastructure of your life but what is it exactly that upsets you and excites you and interests you right now? Is it that situation with your mother, brother, workmate? If you can get what really matters to you into your writing, I think it’ll make your writing a lot more vibrant.”
Newmarket-on-Fergus pharmacist Colm Liddy recalls the suggestion that helped change how he writes, which informs his new novel Not Quite a Fairytale. Drawing on some of the author’s own experiences, it charts the romantic complications of John and Evelyn over two decades as youthful idealism is smothered by the grinding reality of adulthood and explores the tensions between settling for what you have and risking it all.
“For most people, your 20s is a time when you’re keeping an eye out for someone – perhaps, the one,” says Colm. “You go through the period of having the wrong boyfriend, the wrong girlfriend or several of them in-a-row. For some, it’s straightforward that they’re not right for you. But then, there’s that other breed where it’s more difficult. Where they’re 87% right and you’ve a hard decision to make: is this the best that it’ll ever be? If I break up with this person, will I ever find someone this good again? Or, should I try one more time and see will I come up better?
“It’s almost mathematical. These frogs are jumping out of the pond. The problem is they only come one at a time. If you could have all your potential girlfriends – ever – all together in one room, it would be easy. But they don’t come like that. Each time, you have to decide to stick or twist.”
Published under the pen name Cee Liddy, this is Colm’s second book to hit the shelves. The first, 40 Fights Between Husbands and Wives (2009), is a collection of comic vignettes revolving around love, betrayal, revenge, reconciliation and the limits of honesty in relationships. It gleefully experiments with form. The story My ex-wife: a user’s manual, for example, is presented in the style of a troubleshooting guide while Ladies! Does your husband spend every evening stuck in a newspaper? uses the shape and tone of a 1930’s newspaper advert.
“I didn’t just write 40 short stories all the same,” he explains. “One of the stories is a crossword: it’s told as an actual crossword in the form of clues down and across. A lot of them are set throughout history – stone age times, medieval times – and in different countries.”
If you want a poster boy for persistence, Colm is it.
“For many years, I’d written numerous short stories, then I’d written failed novels, then I went back to writing short stories again at around the time of my wife’s advice about what really matters,” he says.
The stories that became 40 Fights Between Husbands and Wives followed shortly but that was only the beginning. 
All but one of the publishers he contacted about the manuscript declined or never responded. Then, a full 14 months later, Penguin offered him a deal. Mirroring the theme of his new book, fate played a huge part.
“There’s nothing inevitable that what I wrote was going to be picked up,” he says. “It might never have been unless a particular editor thought it was worth taking a chance. It’s a mixture of talent and luck but without luck, forget it.”
A Newmarket native and a farmer’s son, the 41-year-old studied pharmacy in Trinity and remained in Dublin until returning to Clare 10 years ago. He has been writing since his early 20s and traces the impulse to a family tradition. He has just changed the form.
“My grandfather on one side was a raconteur, a teller of yarns in the pre-TV era. A yarn to me is a long-winded joke with a punch line but which appears to have happened in real life. I’m attracted to that kind of storytelling.”
His interest in storytelling isn’t confined to fiction writing: he also scripts and develops short, live-action films and animations which he publishes on his website and on YouTube.
“The ones I’ve made so far have been one-off productions,” says Colm. “I’m thinking of doing a serial.”
Fittingly, his writing has been strongly influenced by ideas on how films are structured.
“There’s quite a science to how Hollywood films are put together using the classic three-act structure,” he explains. “You can see it as formulaic but I would see it as the architecture that’s under every great story. If you get that right and then hang your story on it, you can see that it works better.”
Meanwhile, he has completed his next novel, one that resonates with a current event but which was written long before the fiasco made headlines.
“It’s set in a Priory Hall-type situation: an apartment block that’s falling apart. It’s a contemporary drama with a lot of comedy thrown in.”
Apart from running a pharmacy, Mr Liddy is married with five children, plays soccer twice a week and co-manages the local U-10 hurling team. How does he balance it all? “I’ve a drive within me to do these sorts of creative things,” he says of his writing, in a mild manner that conceals a steely determination.
“There’s not much money in it. It’s something I enjoy doing. I’ve written four or five books, which may or may not be published. It’s not a matter of bravery or anything. The point is – that’s just how you are. You keep wanting to do it, even in the face of failure. The drive to keep doing it is there.”
Not Quite a Fairytale is published by Penguin. See www.colmliddy.com.