Spinning towards success as a writer

DONAL RYAN remembers crying bitterly following Irish Boxer Barry McGuigan’s world title defeat to underdog Steve Cruz in the scalding desert heat of Las Vegas in 1986.

By John Rainsford

 

It was his father, Donie, who reassured him that the former World Featherweight champion was sure to win the re-match, as his loss was due to heat exhaustion rather than his opponent’s timid blows. It never happened, of course, and Barry McGuigan soon retired from boxing, following the death of his father in 1987.

For the young Donal Ryan, however, the need to set the record straight had far reaching consequences. He was used to going to hurling matches with his father and enjoyed reading the match reports. From these he learned how a writer could recreate an event through words; sometimes making it seem even more exciting than it had been in actuality.

Knowing how to spin events led Ryan to re-write history, allowing his hero Barry McGuigan to emerge victorious from a fictitious re-match. It was nothing more than a school essay, perhaps, but one that demonstrated the power of his penmanship.

“From a young age I always thought of myself as being a writer. I am not even sure why. I just know that it is what I always wanted to be. My parents’ house was always full of books and I read almost constantly before I even started school. Some of my earliest memories are of lying in bed and calling to my mother, Anne, in the kitchen, looking for the spelling of a word and waiting expectantly for her pronunciation and definition.

“I was always amazed by the way those books drew me in. It felt as though their writers had some magical power to create a world inside my head making me stay awake until the sun rose, riveted by the beauty of their words. I loved sport as a child, football and boxing in particular, but I was entirely ungifted, so reading and writing became my main interests by default.”

Donal started to write his latest novel The Spinning Heart in the summer of 2010, just as he had finished writing his first novel, The Thing About December, to be published next year. Both are by The Lilliput Press and Doubleday Ireland.

The former tome was written in 20 linked monologues and is set during the spring and summer of 2010. There are two main narrative strands, about the murder of an elderly man and the abduction of a child, which are continued through each individual character’s story.

Set in an unnamed fictional village in the North Tipperary/East Limerick area, The Spinning Heart is currently attracting a very broad appeal. Indeed, critical feedback has been extremely positive from The Irish Independent, the Irish Times and the Sunday Independent.

Ryan’s characters are easily recognisable to readers in an entertaining and vivid way and the success of these early stories has created an incentive to write even more.

“I am currently, foolishly I think, working on a third and fourth book simultaneously,” he says. “I will have to prioritise one soon, though. I normally write between the hours of 9pm and midnight, although I have been writing very little in the last few months.

“With The Spinning Heart approaching publication and then being launched, I found that my spare time simply evaporated. We have two young children as well (Thomas and Lucy) so writing opportunities are currently only being snatched at.”

Born in Newtown, near Nenagh in North Tipperary, Donal’s family moved to town when he was just eight-years-old. Subsequently, he studied civil engineering in Limerick Institute of Technology (LIT) from 1994 to 1996) when it was known simply as the Regional Technical College.

Later, he worked at various jobs in Limerick City before going to work for the Department of the Environment in Shannon. He lives in Castletroy today, having done a law degree by night at the University of Limerick. Graduating in 2004, he now works for the Department of Jobs, Enterprise and Innovation.

“I never really made a conscious decision to appropriate any facet of life as my subject matter. However, I have always been interested in those things that lead people to draw conclusions about themselves and also construct self-images. This can, of course, lead to an over-abundance of potential material for writing. It is also, maybe, too broad a remit to tackle fully or to explore more deeply.

“I suppose life does not lend itself to truly satisfying conclusions. There is really only the present and how we got here. How we feel about ourselves and about how the moment in which we live, at any given time, is informed by what has gone before and also by those things that have happened to put us where we are. There is also a bigger question concerning how much of our humanity is encoded and pre-programmed by nature.”

Donal insists writing was something he had to do so that he could stop calling himself a writer and actually be one. Finishing the first draft of The Thing About December was a massive relief for him, as he could finally say that he had done it. His mission was over but he was wrong, of course. To this day, he advises people interested in writing to stop thinking about it and actually do it. Make time, sit down and write is how he describes his working maxim.

“My father writes lovely poetry,” he says. “He won an award a few years ago for a poem called The Dark Road, about a popular walking route that rings the west end of Nenagh.  Local musicians have even put some of his poetry to music.

“I think it was from my father, Donie, that I got a love of words, although my mother Anne is a huge reader, as is my sister, Mary. Sometimes I think that between them they have read everything there is to read. Mary should be a literary critic; she cuts straight to the heart of a book – she always seems to just get it.”

Ryan has never thought about being anything other than a writer but, as yet, he has not found it necessary, or desirable, to jettison his day job. Indeed, if writing was not part of the equation, he says he would rather be a Formula One driver.

“I have a lovely family who were always very supportive. My parents gave us all a blueprint for living just by being themselves. My wife, Anne Marie, must also take a lot of the credit for my having finished two books under a publishing deal. I know that it is corny to speak about having a muse, but the cliché is true in my case.

“I have also been incredibly lucky to have been ‘discovered’ by The Lilliput Press who entered a co-publication deal with Doubleday. As a result I now have the attention to detail and personal involvement of the best independent publisher in the business and the marketing knowledge and resources of a global player like Doubleday (now part of Random House). In literary terms (not monetary!) I have, at last, won the lottery.”

“I will be on the main stage at the Dublin Book Festival, at Smock Alley Theatre on this Friday in conversation with Madeleine Keane,” he adds. “I will be joined by the remainder of those shortlisted authors for Newcomer of the Year and again on November 18, in conversation with John Boyne. I hope that I have something to say, then, which people might actually want to hear. It is all a bit nerve-wracking at the moment though. I will also be on Síle Seoige’s radio show on the morning of November 17 and will be on RTÉ’s Today Show over the next few weeks.

“I have recorded interviews with Matt Cooper on Today FM and also with Edel Coffey on RTÉ’s Arena show in the last few weeks. These will be broadcast soon and I have also been invited to speak at next year’s Kate O’Brien Festival. I feel very honoured by that invitation. When the book is released in the UK and Commonwealth in January 2013, I might even have to travel a bit more widely.”