Eilis Barrett decided to be a writer at 12 and is releasing her debut novel at 16

Eilis Barrett has just released her debut novel, having decided at age 12 that writing would be her career, writes Rita deBrun

EILIS Barrett. That’s a new name on the Irish writing scene and one about which you’ll be hearing a lot. It’s the name of a young writer so fine that at the age of 15 she landed her first book deal. Set in a dystopian universe, her debut novel Oasis was released last week.

A coming-of-age escapade, it’s extraordinarily engaging. But then, so too is the young lady herself.

Hailing from Longford, she moved to Ballinasloe, Co Galway, after her parents separated when she was eight. Home-schooled along with her three brothers, she is, at 16, dazzlingly bright and articulate and a credit to herself and her mother Bernadette, who facilitated the education that doubtless nurtured her creative process.

“Because of the immersive nature of home-schooling I don’t think there has ever been a time when I was forced to shut down the imaginative side of my brain,” says Eilis.

“So that had a lot of room to move at its own pace. That suited me as I keep the things I need to figure out, in the back of my mind. Then I go about my day, without consciously dwelling on them and they just sort of fit together in my mind; slip together in my head somehow. That’s the way I think things through. That’s my creative process, and it’s a very imprecise science for sure.”

Imprecise as it may be, it works for her as she’s one skilled wordsmith. Indeed, so dedicated is she to her craft that she decided, at age 12, to make writing her career.

“At that age I started giving myself deadlines and I began treating my writing like it was an important thing. To write a novel; to have the dedication to write one, you really have to act like writing is your job long before it is. You have to do that long before you have any contacts or book deals or anything like that.”

She was thorough in her approach. “I began by researching the industry and the publishing process and by reading books and blog posts and watching YouTube tutorials about writing. I also read widely, and when I did I studied each book so as to learn something more about my craft.”

Did she enter competitions? “No. I was never super into short stories and although I did write a few I preferred long-form fiction. Because my writing snowballs, the few ‘short-stories’ I wrote ended up being thousands of words long. That happened because I like to delve deep into characters and plots and stuff.”

What’s the best piece of writing advice she ever got?

“That you can learn just as much, if not more, from a bad book as you can from a good one. That’s true because if I hate a book, I don’t just throw it aside. Instead I ask: Why do you hate this book? Is it because the pacing is out of whack? Is it because the characters are unrelatable? And if they are why are they? What would you do if you were editing this book to make these characters more relatable or to make this plot work better? By doing that, I kind of taught myself how to write.”

She admits she is highly disciplined. “ I think I wouldn’t be where I am today if I wasn’t. Even though I wasn’t expecting to be published so early on, there was some part of me that was preparing for that; so much so that having put in the work, I was ready for it when it happened.”

It’s not all work for Eilis though. To relax, she hangs out with a wide selection of friends and with her two donkeys, her turtle, and her dog.

She also plays piano. “I find that soothing, especially if I’m wound up from writing. I dabbled with classes for a while but they didn’t suit me so I taught myself instead. While piano relaxes me it also brings out the over-achiever in me.Because of that, I want to be super, super good at it, and so I work really, really hard at it.”

She’s no slouch on the martial arts front either.

“In karate I was a brown belt. But karate is a slow process with set rules about how fast you can rank-up. Because I was learning stuff faster than I was allowed to progress, there were periods of time when I’d sit feeling empty, wondering if there was any chance of moving on to something new. That’s why I switched to Muay Thai.”

But of course, like any child growing up, she did play make-believe games, albeit not of the usual kind.

“My brother Andrew and I played ‘storyline games’. So complex were they that they sometimes went on for years. For them, we’d create new worlds and draw maps and decide on the culture and the language and what that might sound like. It was in-depth stuff.”

This of course was an excellent source of training for the writer. “From those old childhood games I learned about plot, pace, setting, world-building, major and secondary characters and character development. Through play, I became familiar with the foundations of story-telling and this at a time when I wasn’t even aware that it would be something that I would need in the future.

Oasis launches in April and is published by Gill Books