Roisin Meaney: 'There always comes a moment when I'm writing where I will get totally bogged down'

Roisin Meaney for This Much I Know 24 July 2021.

It never occurred to me to be a writer growing up, although I was a total bookworm. We have so many family photos of me with a book tucked under my arm. I would just put it away for the photo and pull it out again. I actually went into teaching when I finished school because my mother had been a primary teacher. She was a brilliant teacher and the kids loved her.

I loved young kids too so without thinking too deeply, I went straight to training college and taught for the best part of 20 years before the thought of writing a book popped into my head. I loved teaching but I just wanted a break of some kind and then in the 1990s my cousin said: “You're always winning things in competitions.” I have been winning things in sentence-finishing competitions since I was 18 when I won a Ford Fiesta from the back of a Cornflakes box. I got hooked and kept winning things — holidays and so on — but it was only finishing sentences so it never occurred to me to look for a job in advertising like he suggested.

I got a job as a copywriter in London and that’s how I started writing. I loved the work but I felt like a square peg trying to fit into a round hole. The words of advertising were alien to me. They were posh and glamorous and I wasn't either of those things, but that’s where the seed was sown. I ended up going back into teaching but I approached the INTO and asked if they would like me to write for their magazine. A decade later, my first book was published.

I was actually over 40 at the time. I had slowly begun to wonder if I could write a book and thought: “All these books are out there. So it's possible to write a book, it's not impossible. Maybe I should just try.” I went off to San Francisco and moved in with my brother for a year and I wrote The Daisy Pickers.

A new publishing house just starting out in Ireland held a competition for people to submit three chapters and the prize was a book deal and I ended up winning. I didn't think seriously about giving up teaching. It was permanent and pensionable and I was getting my salary every two weeks. 

But then the publisher folded so I had to get myself an agent. She eventually got me a new deal, I took the plunge and took early retirement, and they’ve just published my 19th book. I’m so grateful, but you're only as good as your last book, so I try not to get complacent.

I face a challenge with writing all my books because there always comes a part where I will get totally bogged down in the middle and cannot see where it's going. I panic and email my editor but she knows now to just remind me that it happens every time. But I do live in a kind of terror that one day I won’t get past that.

My proudest achievement is when one of my books went to number-one. I was so thrilled. I would love to be remembered for being kind though because I think that’s the most important thing anybody can be.

My greatest quality is probably being on time. My editor always says I’m one of her most well-behaved authors. I try to get 20,000 words down every month when I have a deadline to make sure I make the date. I hate being late, especially if I'm meeting somebody.

I'm not married and I don’t have another half. I've been alone for a long time now and I actually love it. I think I'm a solitary soul. I don't feel hard done by. I’m lucky to have a few good friends that I know I can always ask if I'm stuck for something. They would never ever let me down. My mother is the person I turn to most though. She's 92 years old and is sharp as a tack. She's incredible.

The best advice I’ve ever gotten was to read dialogue aloud when writing. It makes such a difference because you can hear if there's any false note and you know immediately if it's off. I think every writer should be told to do that.

If I took a completely different fork in the road I would have loved to be a baker. My first book featured a girl who left her safe job and took a big leap and became a baker. When my mother read it, she said “that's you". Looking back, she was right, because shortly after that I took the giant leap myself to write. The biggest decision I ever had to make was to choose between teaching and writing — and I do think I chose the right one. Maybe if it goes belly up I'll turn to the baking though.

• The Book Club by Roisin Meaney is out now.