This much I know: Sheila O’Flanagan

There was never a time when I wasn’t writing something.

Even when I was very small I enjoyed making up stories and providing new endings to the books I read. Obviously I had no idea if my dream to be a published writer would ever come true.

I write in two places, at home in Dublin and in my house in Spain. In Dublin, where I do the core writing, I usually write for a few hours in the morning and again in the afternoon. In Spain, where I do a lot of editing, I write in the afternoons.

While I was still working, my full-time job had long hours and so I often wouldn’t start writing until late in the evening. I’d keep going until the early hours of the morning. But sometimes I’d bring my laptop into the office and close myself away in my lunch hour to write.

My advice to would-be writers is write what you want to write. Sometimes people get caught up in wanting to be the new JK Rowling or Maeve Binchy or Dan Brown and they try to make their writing fit a style that doesn’t fit with their own voice. That’s a mistake.

My first job was working in my dad’s grocery store. Outside the family business I began by working at St James’s hospital canteen.

My earliest memory is of getting my photograph taken in a studio at about the age of three with my mum and grandmother.

I used to work in the financial services sector. Looking at the lead-up to the recession, I feel the concept of rewarding good performance led to short-term thinking in which CEOs put immediate share price gains (and consequent bonuses for themselves) ahead of healthy long-term growth. When this eventually passes, it will happen again. Humans have a great capacity to forget.

After school, I did a one year commercial and business course which I didn’t finish because I was offered a job in the Central Bank. However learning to touch type on the course was the most useful thing ever I did.

I don’t really believe in fate. I think we are all where we are because of everything we’ve done in our lives up to this point.

Having had a rigid working day for around 25 years I no longer have a rigid daily routine. I think it’s important to be more flexible now but if I have nothing specific to do I always feel a bit guilty not to be writing.

The best advice I ever received is to get over it. Sometimes easier said than done, but regrets are a waste of energy.

We live in an imperfect society. No matter what you try to change, someone will always hate the idea. But I’d like to amend the taxation system so that it was structured in a way that taxes were paid locally, regionally and nationally.

If I won the Lotto, I’d share it out among the people I love and organisations I support, buy an Aston Martin, do a round-the-world trip — and then get back to writing.

My biggest pleasure is reading outside. Either beneath the apple tree in my garden in Dublin, or on the terrace of my home in Spain. I enjoy playing badminton, I like travelling, I’m a director of the Irish Sports Council and, of course, I’m always reading. My guilty pleasure is reading Hello magazine at the hairdressers.

The advent of e-readers and e-publishing, the ability for new writers to upload books directly to Amazon, and the explosion of social media have all impacted on the writing scene. Not all of it is good, sometimes you can’t help feeling that there’s a race to the bottom in terms of quantity over quality. The fact that there are so many avenues available for writers is positive.

My worst habit is impatience. I try to hide it.

So far life has taught me never to take anything for granted.

Award winning author Sheila O’Flanagan’s latest book, A Season to Remember, is out now.