Today we’re delighted to be joined by book critic and acclaimed author Sarah Gilmartin, who talks to us about dealing with rejection, finding a good reader, and the importance of celebrating the small wins as well as the big
Did you always want to be a writer?
I’d done a lot of drama when I was younger and wanted to study it at Trinity but I didn’t get through the interview stage so I chose English literature and German instead. I always loved reading.
The idea of writing or ‘being a writer’ didn’t seem to be so readily available back then. I don’t remember creative writing modules as an undergraduate at college, but maybe they just weren’t on my radar.
After Trinity I went into journalism because I wanted to do a job that involved writing and from there I’ve slowly made my back to literature.
Can you tell us a little about the writers’ group you joined while living in San Diego and how it led you to begin writing short stories?
I went travelling with my boyfriend in 2010 because all the jobs in media suddenly vanished with the recession. Part of the trip involved a stint in San Diego for a number of months.
I saw a flyer for a writing group that met for an hour on Thursday afternoons and just rocked up one day. They were a great group of people, really welcoming.
The set-up was simple and effective: the organiser pulled a prompt from a bag and everyone wrote for 45 minutes and you could read your bit out at the end if you wanted to. No comments or feedback, just a friendly space to get the words out of your head, onto the page and into the open. It’s where I started my first short story.
Your debut novel Dinner Party: A Tragedy was published in 2021 to critical acclaim and was shortlisted for best newcomer at the Irish Book Awards and Kate O’Brien Award. Did you experience much rejection before getting published? If so, how did you stay motivated?
I had another novel before Dinner Party that didn’t sell – a story about four girls in a fictional boarding school in west Clare that looked at the consequences of online bullying.
My agent sent it out widely in the UK and Ireland so there was a lot of rejection, which was hard at the time but I guess instructive overall.
Most (all?) writers are going to experience some type of rejection at various stages of their career so the quicker you get used to it, the better.
My favourite line on rejection comes from my mother, who once read a story in the local paper about Donal Ryan’s rejections before his publishing deal and subsequent successes.
She phoned me to give me the heartening news that I should keep on trying because Donal Ryan had written 47 novels before he had one accepted. Which would be incredible stamina, if it were true.
[ Read here how Donal Ryan got his book deal after 47 rejections.]
You’ve spoken before about the Claire Keegan writing course you attended that proved pivotal in your writing career. Can you tell us a little about this experience?
Claire Keegan is a brilliant writer and teacher. She approaches the mechanics of writing – structure and syntax in particular – in a very methodical and visual way. I’d never come across it before and found it so helpful.
The classes helped me organise my writing, the words on the page, and my thoughts about writing. They made me slow down as a reader.
If it doesn’t sound too lofty, I think her workshops are also in part about life and living well and human decency in as much as they are about literature.
After the Claire Keegan course, you enrolled for UCD’s MFA in Creative Writing. Did the MFA help you on your journey to publication?
Absolutely. I was lucky to be part of a small group of like-minded people for my MFA – writers at a similar age and stage in their careers who offered a support network and really thoughtful feedback on drafts. People who got the gig.
I did mine in 2018/2019, the first year Anne Enright was teaching on the programme. She brought such energy to classes and gave terrific guidance on the work.
A year-long programme like that legitimises your writing by the time and money you put into it. And there was a weekly deadline of 1,200 words, which was helpful and horrific in equal measure.
Can you tell us how your deal with Pushkin Press came about? How did you feel when you realised you were going to be a published author? Did you do anything in particular to celebrate?
My agent Sallyanne Sweeney submitted Dinner Party to publishers in February 2020, just before the world went mad, so there was quite a delay before we got the offer from Pushkin that autumn.
After this there was a flurry of late interest, which was funny after the long silence, but ultimately I was happy to go with Pushkin as I’d read a lot of their debuts for my job as a reviewer and knew they were a quality imprint with a consistently high standard.
Dining outside in restaurants had come back so to celebrate, myself and my husband went for a meal in a chilly alleyway off Baggot Street, which was a lot more fun than it sounds.
How did the experience of writing your second novel Service differ from writing your debut?
I started Service in January 2020. It began in quite a burst – I was surfing in Costa Rica and injured myself so a planned trip of five weeks travelling around the country turned into a much shorter one, a lot of it spent indoors.
To take my mind off things I started writing and the initial 20,000 or so words of that first draft came very quickly. It took about two years of writing and redrafting before I was ready to show it to my publisher.
Do you have a set writing routine? Do you have any rituals that help to inspire your writing?
I write best in the morning, before looking at work emails or news websites or social media. If I get 500 words a day done I’m happy. For me, a lot of writing a novel involves things that don’t seem as if you’re writing a novel at all.
There’s a lot of daydreaming. I play things out in my head when I’m walking around. Sometimes I talk to myself out loud – airpods are a godsend in this regard. I no longer look possessed, people just think I’m on the phone.
Has your work as a book reviewer for The Irish Times helped you as a fiction writer?
I’ve done it for 10 years now so it’s given me an idea of the range and quality out there, which can be a good and bad thing to know.
I’ve also learnt things about time: keep things moving forward as much as possible. A lot of time-hopping on the page can be annoying or confusing for a reader.
It’s made me think about structure too, how it can be used to shape a story in more ways than one.
But writing and criticism are different animals. The latter is more analytical, detached, a cool eye assessing the technical aspects of a book (prose style, tone, POV etc) and perhaps things such as historical context, genre, comparisons.
If you approach a novel or a short story like that, with emphasis on the mechanics of the piece, it can be very hard, in my experience, to get it off the ground.
Finally, what advice would you give to aspiring authors trying to crack the world of publishing, but who might be getting disheartened?
Find a good reader, someone who understands fiction and can articulate their thoughts and feedback in a way that’s constructive. Ideally a writer or aspiring writer, and not someone you’re married to.
Understand that it can be a long old game so try and appreciate the wins, however small they might feel – even things like a rejection letter where an editor is saying no to a particular piece/book but might praise other aspects of your writing.
Someone said to me recently: control the controllables, which I think for a writer is the work, the craft of shaping words on a page. All the rest of it is noise.
Sarah Gilmartin’s latest novel Service can be bought here.
