‘I started writing out of love for a friend but it took my love of writing to finish it’

The Fractured Life of Jimmy Dice began with my angry hands and, later, a dedication.

Aged 18, I had a bad case of eczema on my hands – whenever I flexed my fingers, the skin would crack and bleed. I visited an acupuncturist who attributed the affliction to my “unexpressed rage”, then she held my wrists and discovered an oddity: on my right wrist my pulse was very slow and on my left it was very fast. She looked at me as if she was wondering whether I was somehow producing this effect on purpose, and she asked if I ever felt like I was two people inhabiting one body.

After a series of acupuncture sessions, and the repeated application of a gooey seaweed-based salve, my hands healed. I had only the vaguest idea of trying to be a writer, but the acupuncturist’s question lingered in my mind.

At that time, the most precious thing in my life was my friendship with a young French woman. She had such a big heart and we were kindred spirits. I simply felt more alive, and more like my best self, around her than I did with others.

She died in a senseless accident in Paris, her home city. I had known myself to be strong, but losing her broke me on the spot, and I wasn’t equipped to verbalise my sorrow to anyone.

A year later, on the day she would have turned 21, I went to a cafe in Dublin with the intention of committing to paper some memories of her, for my eyes only. It had been just the two of us for most of the time we spent in each other’s company so I was worried I might forget something essential and then it would be gone forever. I expected to fill up a couple of pages, but one bout of writing led to many others and I didn’t stop at writing down some of my memories of her; I wrote down all of them. The release it gave me was tremendous and, within months, I had written more than 200 pages.

I soon reckoned that if I could finish a memoir without really setting out to, I should see if I could write fiction. I got hooked immediately and I vowed to someday get a novel published that I would dedicate to my friend. If it took the rest of my life, so be it.

After completing a pair of learning-curve novels, I thought back to what the acupuncturist had asked me and started to imagine a character who weathers a string of traumas, which are often the unintended consequences of poor decisions, while, unbeknownst to him, his body hosts a witness to his actions – his stillborn twin – who powerlessly longs to be capable of making mistakes.

Writing the first draft of Jimmy Dice was at times a euphoric experience, but it was painful too. The story was hyper-personal and, in the telling, I was hit by waves of delayed grief. The goal of the dedication became paralysing. I felt that if I failed to follow through I would be letting my friend down and so I equated having a bad writing day with being a bad person. The pressure I was putting on myself was causing me to be frequently sick to my stomach and my hands kept shaking.

To pull out of my meltdown, I had to change my way of thinking. I told myself, again and again until it stuck, that I had been a good friend, and that would remain true regardless of whether I ever published, and I vowed to press on with my wish to build a career as a writer but my primary motivation couldn’t continue to be the dedication; my love of writing itself – and I do downright love it – had to take priority.

That first draft was written between 2006 and 2009. I was proud of my efforts, but I hadn’t been ready to bring it off – for one thing, at nearly 200,000 words, I had crammed in an excess of narrative and I couldn’t figure out how to rein the novel in. So I put it aside.

Six years later, I stalled on another novel and, needing a break, I retrieved Jimmy Dice from the drawer, thinking I might tinker around with a few lines. Approaching it fresh, and having spent the intervening time obsessively developing a better writer-brain, I was finally able to clearly identify how I had obscured the story I had been attempting to tell. It was exciting to discover so many missteps because for each of them I conceived potential solutions. Over a feverish 10 weeks, I cut reams of material, ruthlessly throwing characters and scenes overboard, and I rewrote almost every sentence, adding more humour and hope.

I submitted my redraft to a shortlist of agents without lofty expectations – although I believed I had instilled new life into the novel, I was conscious of the possibility that it had expired on the operating table the first time around and I just couldn’t accept it because it meant too much to me. Then I received four offers of representation in five days.

When I went to London for meetings, I tried to appear as if I was taking it all in stride, but it must have been obvious that my head was spinning. I signed with my dream agent, who saw right into the heart of the novel, and she found the perfect editor, whose insights drew out the best in it.

My head is still spinning actually.

The problem of my angry hands has never reoccurred. With the publication of The Fractured Life of Jimmy Dice, the dedication is in print at last and so it will endure.

The Fractured Life of Jimmy Dice is published today by Tinder Press, at £14.99, and is reviewed in The Irish Times this Saturday, January 28th