The Moonlight Gardening Club Q&A with Rosie Hannigan aka Amy Gaffney

When I attended the UL Winter School in Doolin back in 2018 and 2019, I met some remarkable people. All at very different stages with their writing, the one thing that united everyone was a dedication to craft. Among them was the wonderful Amy Gaffney, who recently published her debut novel, writing as Rosie Hannigan. Set in a small Irish village, The Moonlight Gardening Club is an uplifting tale about a lonely widow and a struggling single mother. It’s about love, second chances and forgiveness. And gardening.

I caught up with Amy to find out how she’s finding the publishing journey so far, and to chat about her process. She had some very interesting things to say in particular about how the way many of us write nowadays – tapping away on computers rather than writing out longhand – can make it seem like we’re making less progress than we realise. Which can be demoralising. Read on to find out why!

Amy, congratulations on the publication of The Moonlight Gardening Club! You studied creative writing at UCD, how did it change your writing or approach to writing?

I loved the MA course at UCD, and had come into it immediately upon finishing my BA in English. The course completely pushed me to explore beyond what I thought I could write. Before the course, I’d only ever imagined writing novels, never short stories and never poetry. Those forms were both alien to me as I was first and foremost a novel reader. Yet once introduced to them properly, I completely fell in love with them [and successfully so! Amy’s short story Mother May I was shortlisted for the Irish Book Awards Short Story of the Year Award 2019].

A huge part of the course was creating work, of course, and it showed that producing a huge amount of work in a short space of time is possible. Maybe not on a continual week-in, week-out basis, but for the duration of the course it certainly was. There was a dawning that stamina and consistency was key, reading other works and challenging your reading comfort zones were too. All of these revelations certainly had an impact on my approach to writing. It left an element of fearlessness and excitement that I think is essential when approaching a first draft of any piece of writing. It also left me with the urge to be braver and more cutthroat about editing my work. I’m still working on that part.

You also write poetry. Does either form call to you more or are you equally comfortable with both?

I love writing – in all forms. They all come with different challenges, different elements and structures, yet they have so much in common. Writing poetry, at first, always held the memory of the poems we studied in school, so I was stuck, for a while, with the notion that poetry was about urns or daffodils or snowy woods. I genuinely didn’t think poetry was for me, and I never attempted to write any poetry until I had to take a compulsory poetry class during my BA. I remember reading Carol Ann Duffy’s Little Red Cap and suddenly it all made more sense, and I wanted to write poetry – thank you to Danielle Clarke for such a wonderful class, for opening my eyes! It was such a strange feeling!

However, it wasn’t until my MA that I really started writing poetry, and I still fought with the freedom it gives a writer. One day my tutor, Paul Perry, asked me why I was afraid of the narrative in my work, and that loosened the cords. After that, I let it all out – in the first drafts, at least – and it was after that that I was first published [Amy’s poem Tonsillitis was selected for Hennessy New Irish Writing and her work has been published in journals and anthologies including Washing Windows Too, edited by Alan Hayes and Nuala O’Connor].

Novel writing is, I think, my favourite way to write. It’s exciting, all-encompassing, exhausting, fun and terrifying. Part of the joy, which often brings me to tears because of the lives and humanity I discover, is doing the research for a character. Discovering what makes them tick, or how they will react to a situation, is as real to me as meeting a  real flesh-and-blood person in the street. Learning how people survive, or not, is humbling, and often I can’t adequately express or show that research and my absolute amazement of what it is to be human in my writing. But I try my best to impart to the reader all that makes us human, the ups and the downs, the joy and the pain, because that’s what’s most important.

That determination to keep writing and producing new work is admirable. But what do you do when the dreaded imposter syndrome comes aknocking – what helps you to get through it?

Imposter syndrome – I’m torn because part of me doesn’t want to believe in it. Yet after having my work published, I’m feeling a little tender and quite overwhelmed by the whole adventure. There’s a lot at play when you think about imposter syndrome: mostly there’s the fear – can I write a book that the people who loved the first book will like? Can I find an interesting way into a new story? Is there anything original left to write about? How can I engage with form to make this work? Have I researched enough? What if I inadvertently offend someone? How can I write something honestly when I haven’t had first-hand experience of it – will they see through me? All I can do is my best with whatever ability I have at the time of the creation of the work, and understand that I’m not everyone’s cup of tea. Everyone has opinions and ideas, and that’s okay. Then I get back to writing and trying, to experimenting with form, with ideas, with worlds that don’t exist.

Write longhand or type on a laptop?

What I find interesting about writing these days is that quite a lot of it is done on a device that allows the writer to delete their work almost as soon as they’ve written it. The history of a piece of work, the development, the mistakes, the changes, the scribbles and the ideas are no longer included, are often deleted so a first draft no longer looks quite like a first draft. It can create a strange sensation that the notion of a first draft no longer exists, even though it is always said that we should allow the first draft to be free and messy and to just let it all flow out onto the page. In reality, the delete key on a keyboard changes our perception of the work as the errors are (mostly) deleted long before anyone gets to read the work. I find myself wondering, if we could see the work involved in writing – the corrections, alterations, edits – would we, writers, feel less of an imposter when the work is there to be witnessed? How does the removal of what we perceive as an error affect how we think of our work? I have deleted the extra letter ‘t’ at the end of the word ‘though’ throughout this piece – this is one of the errors I constantly make!

When the feeling that I’m an imposter arises in me, it’s usually when I’m in need of help – in a million different ways. I’m not good at asking for help, but I’m working on it.

Are you a plotter or a pantser? Has your approach changed from project to project, and if so in what way?

I started out as a pantser – as long as I had an ending in sight it all seemed fine. However, I wrote The Moonlight Gardening Club using plot points and found it to be a wonderful way of writing. It kept me on track with regards to word count, but it was also extremely useful on those days when I’d sit down and feel a little lost – I could look up at the wall where I’d stuck the plot points and know exactly what I needed to describe, or what was to happen next. So I think I’m a little of both!

You’re a very lively and positive force on Twitter. How important a role has social media played in your writing life (if at all) and how would you advise beginners to navigate their way?

I joined Twitter specifically to connect with and learn about other writers and writing. I’ve been lucky to have had very few negative experiences, the creative people I’ve engaged with there have all been very encouraging and polite, helpful and friendly. Some have become real-life friends too. Twitter is where I found out that I could attend book launches, where I discovered book festivals and events, and where I was able to establish myself as a writer from the very start, so it’s been a very important part of my writing journey.

To anyone starting out on Twitter, I’d say that it’s important to establish your own boundaries and guidelines for how you wish to use the app. You don’t need to follow everyone back, and you don’t need to engage with every tweet. Be respectful of those who welcome you and remember it’s not just an online space – it’s actually a very real space, inhabited by very real people – and nothing you tweet can ever truly disappear! Don’t be too shy, ask what things mean if you don’t know.

Where do you like to write? Do you have to have any mad writing rituals?

I write at my desk, but I can write anywhere. I’m not a fan of clutter, but my desk, which is in what once was the spare bedroom, is a mess and I think it helps.

Inspiration can strike in the most unexpected places

I’d love to say I have a mad ritual, but I don’t! Unless you count that whenever I’m on the back of my husband’s motorbike I always find a line of poetry comes to me. My main habit is writing daily during school time. I find I work best if I write from September to May or June, then I’m hopeless for the summer as all I want to do is read the books I haven’t read while working. I can’t read while I’m writing as I find it distracting.

Top five books – GO!

This is too hard! I’ll try, but it’s hard to choose! The Secret History by Donna Tartt (Adore! Adore!), The Joy Luck Club by Amy Tan, Wideacre (it’s the first of a trilogy so I’m cheating a little here!) by Phillipa Gregory, The Venetian Mask by Rosalind Laker and Dracula by Bram Stoker.

Who are your major writing influences?

Marian Keyes, Maeve Binchy, Louisa May Alcott, Enid Blyton, Stephen King, Patricia Scanlan, Donna Tartt, Gillian Flynn, Vladimir Nabokov, Margaret Atwood, Bernadine Evaristo.

And finally, what are you currently working on?

I’ve just finished writing Book Two, which was part of the two-book deal I had with Avon Books. It’s also under the Rosie Hannigan pen name, and is set to come out early 2024. I’m also rewriting another novel, currently titled Flamingos at the Castle, which is a darker story inspired and influenced by the works of Du Maurier, King, Nabokov, Flynn. It’s a dark, modern-day romance, where two people in their forties meet through Tinder. One is from a poor background and one lives in a castle. My unnamed narrator will do anything for love, but is it love she’s really after, or is it money? My protagonist lives in a castle, and all he wants is for her to be happy. But what is the cost involved in the pursuit of love and happiness?

Rosie Hannigan is the pen name of Amy Gaffney, who lives in Kildare and is a graduate of UCD’s Creative Writing MA. In 2021, she was shortlisted for the Penguin Michael Joseph Christmas Love Story Competition. Her poetry has been published in Poetry Ireland Review and the Irish Times Hennessy New Irish Writing, among others. Amy’s short story Mother May I was shortlisted for the Irish Book Awards in 2019, in the Short Story of the Year category.

The Moonlight Gardening Club is published by Avon Books and is available in paperback from most bookshops and on e-book.

Photos: Ylanite/Pixabay; Ralphs_Photos/Pixabay; freephotocc/Pixabay