People do not change, they are merely revealed.
Imagine that you are dying. If you had a terminal disease would you finish this book? Why not? The thing that annoys this 10-weeks-to-live self is the thing that is wrong with the book. So change it. Stop arguing with yourself. Change it. See? Easy. And no one had to die.
Recently I read the stories I wrote in my early 20s, to put in a volume. And here is this brittle young woman, writing about marriage as, not the worst thing, but the most boring thing that could happen to a person. Now I think I was wrong. I like to be proven wrong.
I can't think of anything you might say about Irish people that is absolutely true.
Ireland is a series of stories that have been told to us, starting with the Irish Celtic national revival. I never believed in 'Old Ireland.' It has been made all of kitsch by the diaspora, looking back and deciding what Ireland is. Yes, it is green. Yes, it is friendly. I can't think of anything else for definite.
I'm very keenly aware that there aren't very many women writing literary fiction in Ireland and so that gives me a sense that what I say matters, in some small way.
The writing day can be, in some ways, too short, but it's actually a long series of hours, for months at a time, and there is a stillness there.
There are certain books that should be taken away from young writers; that should be prised out of their clutching fingers and locked away until they are all grown up and ready to read them without being smitten.
