Rosita Sweetman on becoming a writer – again

Just over a year ago, my 1972 novel, Fathers Come First, was republished by The Lilliput Press as a “modern classic”.

Yay! as the young ones say. And, woo hoo!

Rather appropriately, I was on my way to the recycling centre when Antony Farrell rang. Large black bag in one hand, two very excited puppies in the other, when I heard those six most precious words in the lexicon of scribblers: “We’re going to publish your novel”, I walked smack into a lamppost. Boing!

Still, being republished made me feel I was actually a writer; not just a woman who didn’t have hairdresser-done hair. Praise the Lord, as the chaplain in the popular song about Pearl Harbour famously said – and pass the ammunition.

The thing is, a writer’s ammunition – thoughts and words – tends to go a bit mouldy if she, the writer, is not being published; she tends to go a bit mouldy too since “being” a writer involves a great deal of sitting alone in a completely silent room, your hair on sideways, in grotsome clothes, ancient hairy jumper combo’d with ancient hairy leggings, attempting to transmogrify your interior into a pressure cooker on the edge of exploding and, quick!, catching the alchemised drops and, quick! quick!, whacking them down onto the page or screen before the gold dissolves back to dross.

Brilliant stuff when the magic is working; hell and damnation when it’s not.

Sadly, my own gold had gone a bit drossy; when people asked, I said I was a writer, but I wasn’t really, mostly I was just messing around in the paddling pools. My desk was a mess of manuscripts (to be edited), books (to be read), shopping lists (to be shopped) and IKEA catalogues (to be scrutinised in the loo). I say “my desk” but it wasn’t actually a desk at all, it was a table in the living room, marooned and badly organised in the midst of the daily to and fro.

Gradually, without even being aware of it, I’d sort of given up on the big stuff.

Fathers Come First and Lilliput changed all that.

First there was the launch in the beautiful Origin gallery (thank you Lilliput, thank you Noelle Campbell Sharpe, thank you darling Chupi for the delicious eats), then there was the amazing speech by (the then) editor of the Sunday Independent, Anne Harris, then there was the supper party given by Mary Kenny in her gorgeous apartment close to the Shelbourne.

Then there were the interviews. Initially, I’d been in the paddling pools so long, my image – and my confidence – were very, very ancient and hairy. Anne Harris held my hand throughout the launch (like a good big sister); before her interview, clever girl Victoria Mary Clarke offered a whiskey; and Sophie McCormick sat in a darkened booth in RTÉ for 50 minutes with me, waiting for my (frozen with terror) slot on Woman’s Hour.

Then there were all the people who bought the book, and, mirabile dictum, read it. Not only that, they loved it! (Thank you, Luke and Esme). Wow. My deepest dread was that it would seem passé, incomprehensible to the beautiful young, but actually the young loved it the best (particularly the end).

Then there was my wonderful agent, Ger Nichol, who believed and believed in me – even when I was just farting around in the paddling pool.

Friends were so nice. Much, much nicer, more generous and more thoughtful than I had ever been. And, over the year, terror gradually gave way to a modicum of confidence. I was a writer.

I was given a beautiful desk belonging to Aunt Bid (thank you, Michele Sweetman), found a silent space, and got myself to it, every day. And, just to copperfasten the new get-up-and-go regime, during the summer, my UPC connection was suddenly removed; initially by mistake, but after a weekend without YouTube and Facebook I took the plunge into (mostly) FB free living.

So this is what headspace feels like?

In the past 12 months I’ve completed two novellas, Cinders, and Chronic Love, had six poems (an old delight newly awakened) published; two with Ezra Pound’s beautiful Agenda magazine in England, and four with And Agamemnon Dead edited by Peter O Neill; had the wonderful Emma in Lilliput rediscover and fall in love with my 1974 book about sexuality in Ireland, On Our Backs, (to be re-published by Lilliput this year); and, to top it all I’ve become a reviewer of this parish for Browser, or everything you need to know about the latest publications in 180 zinging words.

Clearly that lamppost I whacked into 18 months ago was cleverer than it looked. Clearly it was trying to tell me something: wake up girl! There’s still ever so much work to be done. And ever so much fun to be had, doing it.

Thank you all.

Praise the Lord, and pass the ammunition indeed.