Young mum does it by the book for her novel success

If you want a job done ask a busy person, is a wise saying that might have been designed for writer Nuala Ní Chonchúir.

The Ballinasloe-based mother of three children, ranging in age from teenager to toddler, has just had her debut novel, You published by New Island Press to great critical acclaim. That in itself is an achievement. But finding time to actually write the compelling novel, which is set in Dublin in 1980 and told through a child’s voice, presented the greatest challenge of all.

The current economic downturn means that Nuala’s husband, who works in IT, has to travel to work in Dublin every day. That means he’s gone before daybreak and doesn’t get home until late in the evening. So, in effect, Nuala looks after the school runs, cooks the dinner, puts the two younger children to bed and organises the house. All that in addition to setting aside precious time for writing.

Not that she’s complaining. In fact, her sympathy is for her husband, because of the unsocial hours he has to keep and the effort that’s required just so he can reach his Dublin workplace.

Her own office is at home, in the corner of the dining room where she snatches a few hours three mornings a week while her youngest child, Juno is in the crèche.

“I have 10 hours a week to write, so I really guard those hours. If I commit to something, I really commit to it and I’m not in the business of procrastination,” she says.

“I have a desk in my dining room, but I’m able to write anywhere, in bed or in the car if my husband is driving.

“At the moment I am writing a novel and I am at the point where I just want to write. I don’t want to socialise, I don’t want to mind kids, I don’t want to do anything else,” she laughs.

The new work is set in Scotland, where Nuala lived during 1991, keeping a diary, which is something she always does when she travels.

“Because I was 22 at the time, there’s a lot of rubbish in it, but some of it brings me back to that place,” she says, adding that she and her workmates used to drive around the Highlands in their spare time. Nuala intends to return to Scotland with her husband and kids this summer, to immerse herself in the language of the place for her second novel.

That attention to detail is a mark of how seriously she takes her craft, so it’s no surprise that Nuala was widely praised by critics for her use of Dublin vernacular in You, and for “being alive to the language of her characters”.

Before the novel was published late last year, Nuala had already produced three collections of short fiction, three poetry collections – one in an anthology – and edited several literary magazines. You gained her new recognition and, as she says herself, “brought me to a new level”.

The Dublin writer has lived in Galway since 1996, when she moved here work with the short-lived Punchbag Theatre Company. She had studied early and modern Irish in Trinity College for her BA degree, continuing on to DCU where she did a Masters in Translation Studies.

“I loved that Galway was a city where there is Irish and it’s a living, breathing language,” she says of her reasons for moving West.Nuala worked with Punchbag for over a year, then went on to the Gaillimh le Gaeilge organisation where she put her translation skills to good use.

After that, she worked in a bookshop, then in the University library and then in the Western Writers’ Centre.

For more, read this week's Galway City Tribune.