When failure is a winning formula
….And we’re back! Ah, I know Lads, that you don’t give a rat’s ass – and that there is so much bad news around these days, that another bit makes no difference – but still!
Anyway, here I am; and I do believe that you are entitled to an explanation as to where I’ve been.
For 11 years I never missed a week of submitting an article for YCBS in this newspaper. Then I sold my business and decided that for the first time in my life, there wasn’t going to be any more deadlines. I was just going to roam the fields, talk to my Dexters and not have to think about anything. But that is not all of the truth – and here for the first time, I reveal my dirty little secret. This is a story of failure…
I decided to write another book and without any other writing distractions. This, my fifth book, was going to be the ‘best seller!’.
There are three little stories to follow – and all are connected.
My book was a novel; set in the townland of Drumelvin, a hundred years ago, during the war of independence and the civil war. It was a work of ‘faction’ – a cross between fact and fiction. I did my homework first; researching local history, events and folklore. The first 30,000 words worked like a dream. I couldn’t believe how good I was! I sent chapters one, three and five to publishers and none of them turned it down. But one suggested that the story would be easier for the reader if I didn’t have so many characters.
Back to page one and I euthanised five people and this is where my nightmare began. I then found I had too many clever plots for the limited cast. On we trudged; a change here and a deletion there. The margins of the A4 notebook were decorated in red biro, blue biro and heavy black marker. The deeper into the manuscript you went, the more yellow ‘sticky notes’ you found… soon to be followed by pink, green and red ones – all supposed to keep the story on track. Remember, that this writer has the memory retention of a goldfish. I parked the project several times and naturally, every time I went back to it everything was a little bit worse. I wasn’t happy with it. This went on for a couple of years.
Hold that thought, please and proceed to the second story.
I have mighty admiration for the entrepreneurial skills of the Collins family. (And lovely people to boot.) Tony and Peter’s father once gave me a present of a then magical calculator, which sits on my desk to this day. We always felt so proud to see ‘Mullingar Pewter’ and ‘Genesis Fine Art’ on display at airport shops all over the world.
In the 1990s I asked Tony to design a ‘Squash Player’ as a Genesis trophy for the winner of the Mullingar Squash Open. As the tournament neared, Tony asked me to call. I thought the piece was beautiful, but he told me he wasn’t happy with it. Next day he smashed it into smithereens – rather than have something leave the factory that wasn’t ‘just right.’
The connection between that story and the one to follow is that Tony and Jackie’s daughter, Lisa, came to Spain and worked with us in ‘Paddy’s Point’ for a summer when she was a student.
Ronnie Coogan was also an artist and a perfectionist, who did things with wood. We brought Ronnie to Spain to carve out the back-bar of the pub. He worked from nothing but planks of timber. The Spanish workmen never saw anything like this eccentric, contrary genius working with his hands. They came off the building sites to spend their lunch-breaks watching an Irish craftsman at work at his makeshift workbench.
The back-bar was made in sections. I helped at lifting the last piece into place. It fitted too easily and there was a slight gap. “I’m a half inch out,” said Ronnie – with icy calmness. “It’s OK,” sez I; “nobody will ever notice.” Ronnie, without saying another word, gave me the most withering look of contempt… and I was lucky to get out of the way of the flailing sledge-hammer, as he made matchwood out of two days’ labour!
That is the genius of Tony and Ronnie: ‘Alright’ was never good enough.
After Christmas, one night I sat in front of our large Stanley stove in the kitchen, where the last embers of the day were still glowing. Mrs Youcantbeserious had gone to bed. I sat there thinking – and the story of Drumelvin weighed heavily on my shoulders. For some reason, Tony and Ronnie came into my mind. What would they do? And then I knew…
I opened the door of the stove. I went into the office and from the shelves I took every Drumelvin page – printed and handwritten; all the notes; every iota of research and every last ‘sticky-note’.
I packed every piece of my work into the firebox, closed the ‘damper’ and watched it slowly burn.
I know now why my two friends destroyed their work. I know… and it’s a great feeling!
Don’t Forget
Think of doubt as an invitation to think.