Interview with Irish writer and MFA instructor Aine Greaney
Today on the MFA Director’s Blog we are delighted to feature
an interview with Irish memoirist, novelist, and MFA instructor Áine Greaney. Here, Áine
talks with Sandy Chmiel about balancing multiple identities, teaching a summer
course in health and wellness writing, and the origins of her passionate love
for storytelling. She also shares her
four top tips for writers – one of which just may surprise you.
You’ve mentioned that
you keep a personal journal. How is
putting pen to paper in a journal beneficial to you?
I never know what I’m going to write until I write it, so
journaling opens up the creative possibilities for me. Journaling also has a
great therapeutic benefit in that it lets me put some order on my thoughts and
feelings. In times of crisis, when I cannot write anything else, it’s been my
solace and way of coping. As a writer, journaling also helps me to stay honest
with myself. There really is no pretension, no fooling the blank page.
Can you tell us about
your Health and Wellness Writing course?
Why is this topic so important to you?
I’m very drawn to this topic for a number of reasons. First,
I’ve always liked biology and have been fascinated by the interplay between our
bodies and our minds and, indeed, our individual and collective histories. Second, I see illness and recovery (or not)
as its own perfect narrative. Sometimes there’s a happy ending to the illness
tale; sometimes there isn’t. Finally, I
think I came to study and love this field (narrative medicine) because I hate
how we in the 21st century have come to devalue the beauty and benefit of
narrative. We like bullet points. We love sound bites. We ask people to “bottom-line
it for me,” when these approaches can tell us little or nothing about another
person’s life or feelings or condition. In some cultures, this approach is also
downright insulting. Happily, healthcare
is beginning to re-learn the value of story and to cross-train practitioners in
the sciences and humanities.
Ireland is steeped in
great storytelling traditions. How did growing up there inform your writing
sensibilities?
I grew up with two live-in grandparents, both of whom were
powerful storytellers—as was my father. All three of them loved to tell tales
from their own young days, so the 1930s and ’40s and ’50s were constantly
playing out as a sort of background music to our own young lives. I think this
is why I love to write about the past and why I love to question and examine
and argue with memory. It’s also why I struggle with creating a snappy, forward-moving
narrative or plot. I find it hard to
ignore what happened off-stage, in the “before.” Maybe this is an immigrant thing.
In addition to your
writing and teaching, you have a day job in communications. (In fact, you wrote
an advice book on the topic, Writer with a Day Job.) How do you find balance between these three identities, as well as in
your personal life?
Excuse me while I chuckle here. Oh, you’re asking about
balancing identities, not actual time. O.K., I can deal with that one! Almost everything about our day jobs
requires us to keep the “circus animals all on show” (to paraphrase Yeats
here). By contrast, the writing life is
all about the personal and the introspective. So I meditate a few times per week. I also
walk a lot—a key way to feel happier and better and reclaim the real self. I
also write first thing in the morning—before all that other daytime “stuff”
crowds my brain. All these said, I feel lucky to have a day job that I like and
enjoy. There is a great pleasure in
having a set of projects to manage and getting those projects advanced or
accomplished by the end of the week. There's a business aspect to creative
writing, so I’m grateful for the project management and marketing skills I have
developed at work. Plus, nobody at work sends me editorial rejection letters!
What advice would you
offer to emerging writers?
I have four main pieces of advice:
1. It takes
courage to write. So you better have some or go get some. Push yourself to do
one daring thing each week, to write beyond your comfort zone and your fears.
2. If you’re
serious about being a writer, let it take priority in your life. Or at least
place it among the top three things that matter. You will never advance your
career if you keep letting other things or people eclipse it.
3. Write what you
can. If you can only manage 400 words before work, then that’s what you
do. The 12-hour writing marathon is
great if you can manage it. But most of us can’t. So write what you can—even if
it’s just to doodle some ideas.
4. Run away from
your life. I go on writers’ retreats a
few times per year, and it never fails to jumpstart my love affair with the
written word and gives me that courage I need. Away from distractions, I also
get a lot done.
What are you currently
at work on?
I just became a naturalized U.S. citizen (last week), so I
was busy studying presidents and the number of constitutional amendments. On a related note, I have an immigrant memoir
doing the publishing rounds. I tag it as an “immigration memoir” but more important
to me, it’s a feminist narrative (it has a health and recovery component, too).
So I’m keeping my fingers crossed on that one. Also, I have a number of
personal essays in the works—each of them at a different stage of drafting or
completion.
Is there anything else
you’d like to share?
I think it’s important for us writers to practice good
literary citizenship. The irascible, bad-boy or -girl writer is a cliché at
best. At worst, it’s directly antithetical to what art and the act of creating
are supposed to be all about. Conduct your writing career with kindness,
decency, and professionalism and never compromise these standards for the sake
of a byline or a paycheck.
For more about Áine,
please enjoy this intimate video interview with her, in which she talks about
her philosophy of teaching and her belief in supportive mentors. You can also check out her website for updates about upcoming publications and activities.
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