Getting into the writing process …
Ana Kinsella‘s first book, Look Here: On The Pleasures Of Observing The City (non-fiction) was published by Daunt Books in 2022. As a journalist, she has written for the Guardian, Frieze, Dazed, n+1, AnOther and others, and her time spent interviewing many Irish actors for magazines has informed her writing of debut novel, out now: Frida Slattery As Herself.
MY DAILY WRITING ROUTINE is characterised by a lack of routine, really. But I know I work best in the morning, so I try to get a few hours done first thing, before I have time to be distracted by other tasks. Once the work is going well, all routine goes out the window and the story starts to take over my whole life: I’ll be cramming in writing time at lunch, on the bus, or late into the evenings in bed.
MY WRITING SPOT is not fixed. In fact, I’ve had many over the years. I finished the first draft of Frida Slattery As Herself in the beautiful environs of the Writer’s Room in MoLI, overlooking the Iveagh Gardens. I edited the manuscript in the solemn reader’s room in the National Library. Last autumn I proofread the finished text in a cabin in the woods in New Hampshire, thanks to an incredible fellowship at MacDowell. But at home in Dublin, I tend to work pretzeled up on the couch or seated at a rickety table upstairs, with my cork noticeboard in front of me bearing any important information about my next project.
But once we get to know each other a little, I start to feel obsessive about finding out more. Soon I’m thinking about [my characters] all the time, when I’m doing the dishes or washing my hair.
MY FAVOURITE PART OF THE WRITING PROCESS is when I’m starting to know for sure who my characters are. At first they’re sort of shrouded in darkness, and perhaps they’re slow to reveal themselves to me. But once we get to know each other a little, I start to feel obsessive about finding out more. Soon I’m thinking about them all the time, when I’m doing the dishes or washing my hair. I realise now that this makes me sound a little odd, like they’re imaginary friends. But they do feel so real to me, and I love that aspect of the process.
THE BOOKS THAT ARE INSPIRING ME RIGHT NOW are all related to James Joyce’s Ulysses. I’m part of a Ulysses reading group and we’re reading the novel over the course of 2026. With every month that goes by, I find myself drawn more and more to books that orbit around Joyce’s Dublin-centric masterpiece – both academic works and also contemporaneous novels, like Virginia Woolf’s Mrs Dalloway.
I’M CURRENTLY WORKING ON a first draft of what I hope will be my next novel. Well, it’s early days, but it’s ticking away on the back burner in my mind and the characters are starting to feel really concrete to me, which is the best sign.
Frida Slattery As Herself by Ana Kinsella is out now (Scribner, €18.95).
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