Writers in the Regions: Masterclass: Experience Counts with Mary O’Donnell (Leitrim)

The Irish Writers Centre presents a two-hour lecture style masterclass with Mary O’Donnell at The Dock, Leitrim. This masterclass is part of Writers in the Regions, our in-person masterclass series aimed at broadening our reach into the vibrant writing communities around the country and bringing expertise and experience to writers at different stages of their writing journey. 

About the Masterclass: Finish Your Novel Highlights 

I’m always very happy to share my experience with other writers or people interested in writing. One thing I realise, and that I occasionally repeat to myself when the going gets tough, is I got to do what I wanted! I got to write and publish! Some of the people attending my masterclass will be people who always dreamed, or perhaps began to dream later, about how to do the thing they really want to do: to write, perhaps, to invent, and to re-invent experience.

I’d like to share some of my ideas on the value of experience, how it is the one element in our existence that nobody can take away, no matter how you might disregard it or think it insignificant. Experience counts. It’s not like a shopping list. You can’t go out and pick it up like a packet of biscuits. It’s not to be found like that, because experience resides in each of you. Often, writers are actually mining their own experience—even if their stories seem completely ‘invented’. And they are indeed invented. But we can invent nothing without that bulwark of experience lurking there, that protects you, and your imagination.

My message will be: trust your imagination enough to invest a little time in it, in grabbing silence, in insisting on this thing, this voice, that may be pleading for you to respond in language!

Mary O’Donnell is a prolific and well-known novelist and poet. Her latest novel ‘Sweep the Cobwebs off the Sky’ has just been published by Époque Press UK, and her tenth poetry collection ‘Tenderness’ appears with Wake Forest University Press in September. She is a member since 2001 of the artists’ affiliation Aosdána. www.maryodonnell.com

The Dock is Leitrim’s flagship arts centre, housed in a landmark, riverside venue in Carrick-on-Shannon, Ireland. They present an artistic programme that spans dance, music, theatre, visual arts and more. They host an arts education and outreach programme that provides people of all ages and backgrounds with opportunities to engage in a meaningful way with artists and communities.