Short stories, poems, plays, creative facilitation
I’m hosting a session in Westport’s Rolling Sun Book Festival on Sunday, 22 October, entitled So You Want To Write?
I’ll be joined by West Mayo Writers Group who’ll read from and talk about their writing.
It’s in the Clew Bay Hotel at 11.30am and admission is free.
The festival starts on Thursday, 19 October.
Check out the full programme here.
What’s these days called ‘some personal news’ – I was delighted to have been chosen for a Mayo County Council Arts Service Artist Bursary Award for 2023.
This bursary allowed me to avail of some mentoring from the Irish Writers Centre. The mentor I chose – Mary-Jane Holmes – proved to be a real gem as she got to the heart of some of the things that most challenge me as a writer.
Publishing my debut collection of short stories – Second Chance & Other Stories (Mayo Books Press) – last year brought many benefits, not least of which was observations, feedbacks, comparisons, challenges and so forth.
I have been working for some time on what I call ‘expanding the scope’ of my writing – adding a second voice or thread to give a story an additional layer without compromising the brevity and clarity that I believe to be essential elements of the short story / novella medium.
Mary-Jane’s mentoring is helping greatly with this, as does the continued support of my existing, much-put-upon support / therapy / keep-a-man-half-right group of readers. I have also started a Creative Writing Masters (part-time, two years) at Univeristy of Limerick, where Donal Ryan and Fí Scarlett are tutors – more on this anon.
In this collection of 15 stories by Liam Horan, published in October 2022 by Mayo Books Press, the concerns of someone moving through the rough and the smooth of middle age come to the surface – the loss of central figures in your life, the effort to place in context your existence thus far, the nostalgia for days that can’t return and the looming shadow of your own mortality.
Horan’s engaging characters range from the mild to the provocative. They nudge you with their messages of self-realisation, optimism and quiet acceptance as they navigate real-life dilemmas: the Spanish man returning to the Irish city where he met the love of his life, the journalist retracing old steps after the death of a long-lost friend, the woman breaking free of a coercive partner to rediscover her self-worth, the sports star redefining her relationship with her sport and herself, the father for whom the break-up of his daughter’s marriage sunders his fulfilling friendship with his son-in-law and the widower venturing out into the world again.
It is a collection that deals with change. In prose that is thoughtful and measured, and in west of Ireland settings, the journeys the characters make are both real and metaphorical.
This story is included in the collection Second Chance & Other Stories, published October 2022. Read it below or listen here:
Louis found his father propped up in his chair in the day room where they hung the children’s paintings of farms and grandparents and siblings and cows and sheep and football pitches and choo-choo trains. Board games were stacked up on a table in the far corner, beside Get Well Soon and Thinking of You cards. A spray of illuvial bands draped lazily from a hook a little to the right of the TV, on a bracket high up on the wall.
He was engrossed in a programme, volume at full. Louis heard him say “Africa” in response to a question. Green and beige rugs were wrapped tightly around his legs. The sunken holder on the chair had a cup in it – that’d be tea. Plenty of milk, the way he liked it. Two sugars. And the tea gone cold, probably. The presenter bellowed “so, what would you do with €50,000?” Continue reading “Hope by Liam Horan”
Thanks to Joan Geraghty and the team at The Mayo Advertiser for featuring me – and plugging my book-signings on Dec. 22 and 23 – in this week’s edition.
“One theme commonly recurs through this fine collection of work: that of seeing beyond the present and into the weeks and years ahead. We all suffer knockdowns, none more than through the last few difficult years. At times it takes courage to stand straight. In Second Chance and Other Stories we have real, believable heroes who set out not to save the world, but to save themselves and their friends and to make a distinctly human connection even with total strangers” – Michael Kingdon, Connaught Telegraph. Read full review HERE
“Each story is a delightful read that immerses you and leaves you wanting more, before plunging you into the next one. The book deals with loss to central figures in your life, nostalgia, battles with existential crisis and our mortality” – Tomás Keating, Western People. Read full review and interview HERE
Three steps:
(Copy it, you may need to paste it in Step 3 below. Or, if you prefer, write it down and type it in if you’re asked to at Step 3 below)
2: Join the meeting by clicking HERE – or by copying and pasting this info into your browser: https://bit.ly/2SYNjbf
3: When you do that, you may be asked to enter the passcode. Paste or type it and away you go. Your coach will meet you in the meeting at the appointed time.
Any difficulties, contact Liam on liam@liamhoran.info
Your work is very personal to you. Nobody will be forced to share their work in our group. However, we would encourage it – critique and be critiqued, both exercises can be very worthwhile.
Offer feedback, don’t force it. It’s not your story. Respect the writer’s overall aim for the piece.
Receive feedback silently, taking notes. Mull on the feedback. If asked a specific question, answer it. Feedback is a gift. Sometimes it can hurt. But try to sit tight and think about the value that may be in it. Use feedback that you feel has merit.
There is no right or wrong way. The only wrong is not to explore the potential in your story. Work at it until you get it just the right place.
Sometimes you’ve got to tell. But showing is the preferred option. Showing paints pictures, allows the reader into the scene, lets them feel the emotions. It’s more powerful and memorable. Shaelin Bishop (great mentor – search on YouTube for loads of great videos) has a good video on this topic HERE.
This VIDEO is related – emotion in writing.
I also like to talk about Describe, Don’t Report. I will elaborate on this.
Here’s another really good VIDEO
Why is a great question to ask. Why is the main character acting this way? Why is a peripheral character acting this way?
Write your first draft – some call it a zero draft – as if no-one will ever read it. Release the handbrake. Let the engineers run wild. We can tweak and tighten later, but in the zero draft, write what you want to write simply because you want to write it.
This is not advice everyone will value. Some people like to get each sentence right before moving to the next one. If that’s your style, that’s great. However, others may find ‘write fast, edit slow’ to be useful advice. Get the idea out of your head and down onto the paper. Once it’s there, you can work on it, come back to it, tweak it, tear parts out, bring parts in and so on.
People ask me if I write to tell stories. No, I tell them, I write to find stories. (That’s my own quote actually – sad to be quoting myself, but I’m sort of proud of it).
Why do you write?
As writers, we can tend towards the episodic – the nice scene, the well-written words to capture something. However, to keep people reading, we must thinking about asserting pressure on the story. We can call this tension or conflict. What is happening on page 1 that makes the reader want to go to page 2; what happens in chapter 1 that makes them want to go to chapter 2?
This short VIDEO may help. Search online for similar videos.
Change? Curiosity? Exploration? Movement?
London Writers Salon (8am and 9pm)
Irish Writers Centre have a mentoring programme (encourage someone to buy a mentor for your birthday…)