Claire Mulligan writes for Culture about her journey from RTÉ Short Story Competition third place winner to debut novelist with children's adventure The Hunt For David Berman, now in bookshops.
Sometimes there are seemingly small steps that, when combined, bring you a very long way from your place of beginning. I have always written snippets - lists of words I happen to like, diaries I managed to keep, if only for a short time, vague outlines of short stories with characters or plots loosely drawn, a mere impression with not enough detail and not enough hours in the day to fill them in. More lists - surnames of people or perhaps those depicted in huge lettering over shopfronts, townlands, lines from poems, brief moments in time reflecting where I was or what I was reading or thinking about but all, even in their smallness, leading in one direction.
I remember the afternoon when I sat outside in the garden and wrote the story that went on to win third place in the RTÉ Short Story Competition. That story was a fictionalised account of real life as I had experienced it, and the words flowed easily, not because I was suddenly and effortlessly a brilliant writer but because I had a story to tell, one that had been bubbling away in the darkest parts of myself for some time and now needed to come out. Writing for radio has a special quality to it. The written word has to do something metamorphic - it has to change from having meaning on paper to having meaning in the ear of the listener, wherever they may be or whatever they might be doing in their day. It was the first time I had entered that writing competition, any writing competition in fact, and I remember being nervous as I posted the pages off in their plain brown envelope.
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Listen to Claire Mulligan's RTÉ Short Story Competition winner ''Have you seen her legs?' and other stories from Fat Land'
After the competition and having the pleasure of hearing my story read on radio I became more confident and was more inclined to share what I'd written. I spent more time dreaming and thinking of stories, people or situations my fictional characters might find themselves in. I walked the dogs each morning along the old familiar laneway at the back of the house and slowly on these walks the beginnings of another story came. I wrote when I got the chance, moments of quiet in the day when the children were at school or late in the evening when the house was finally wrapped in sleep. I wrote more and more and as this story unfolded it began to change from story length to book length.
The Hunt for David Berman is a children’s adventure set along the wild Scottish coastline during World War 2. It tells the story of David, a Kinder transport child who has had to flee Nazi-occupied Berlin, leaving his family behind, and Robert who has been evacuated from London and is now staying with his grandparents at their farm in Scotland. The two boys find friendship through their shared experiences of loss of family and home,but they also face danger in the form of a Nazi secret agent who has been sent to retrieve a stolen Enigma codebook hidden in David’s luggage. Some of those fragments in old notebooks - surnames and place names, recollections from childhood, snatches of past conversations have made it into my book, all small steps leading in one direction.
The Hunt for David Berman by Claire Mulligan is published by The Moth - read an extract here.
