How did you become a writer?

I’m not sure anyone ‘becomes’ a writer. I tend towards the idea that you have the writing seeded in your nature, a sensitivity to language, rhythm,image, metaphor, and in my case story. After that it is about practice, time, following the path that is in fact your own nature. I suppose that is the becoming. In which case, I am still, and will hopefully continue, becoming a writer. 

Name your writing influences (writers, books, teachers, etc.).

I think everything and everyone that inspires or moves you are part of your influence, in that they all make you want to do better. I had no writing teachers as such, except books. And of these I could list a thousand, beginning with Dickens and continuing through Faulkner and into Gabriel Garcia Marquez. But these are only milestones, there are many others. 

When and where do you write? 

I only write in the mornings, and in any room really here in our old farmhouse in Kiltumper in the west of Ireland. 

What are you working on now? 

With my wife, Christine, we have just finished a non fiction account about a year in our garden. IN KILTUMPER, The Way We Are Living. In some despair about the state of the Earth with a capital E we focused on the earth with a small e that we are in charge of. I am moving into the foothills of a new novel now.

Have you ever suffered from writer’s block? 

No. 

What’s the best writing advice you’ve ever received?

Sit down. Stay in the chair. Don’t wait for the inspiration. It is waiting for you. Sit down. 

What’s your advice to new writers?

Doubt is part of all writing. It’s okay.

Bio: Born and educated in Dublin in 1958. First story ‘Love’ published forty years ago. Since then, nine novels, three plays, and four books of non fiction with Christine Breen. Most recent novel is ‘This is Happiness.’