{"id":586876,"date":"2026-08-08T09:58:14","date_gmt":"2026-08-08T09:58:14","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/586876\/"},"modified":"2026-08-08T09:58:14","modified_gmt":"2026-08-08T09:58:14","slug":"donal-ryan-i-am-a-big-ball-of-anxiety-i-believe-in-myself-as-a-writer-but-nothing-else-the-irish-times","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/586876\/","title":{"rendered":"Donal Ryan: \u2018I am a big ball of anxiety. I believe in myself as a writer, but nothing else\u2019 \u2013 The Irish Times"},"content":{"rendered":"

It\u2019s not often you ask a question and get quoted, word-perfect, a Shakespearean sonnet by way of reply. I am sitting in a Dublin<\/a> city-centre hotel with the novelist<\/a> Donal Ryan<\/a>, and have just asked him what turning 50 in February of this year meant to him.<\/p>\n

\u201cIt doesn\u2019t really mean anything to me, to be honest,\u201d he says. \u201cThere is no point worrying about your age. You can do nothing about it.\u201d<\/p>\n

Then he quotes the first four lines of Sonnet 60, in a low and sure voice. <\/p>\n

Like as the waves make towards the pebbl\u2019d shore,<\/p>\n

So do our minutes hasten to their end;<\/p>\n

Each changing place with that which goes before,<\/p>\n

In sequent toil all forwards do contend.<\/p>\n

\u201cIt just expresses perfectly the march of time. The irrevocability of time. The fact we are all prisoners. Time is a theme in nearly every story I write.\u201d<\/p>\n

Ryan is the author of eight novels and one short story collection. He\u2019s won an impressive armful of prizes for his work. They include six Irish Book Awards, the Orwell Prize for Political Fiction<\/a>, and the Guardian First Book Award. He is proud of them all, but the most meaningful one remains the first award he won.<\/p>\n

\u201cI won Newcomer of the Year at the Irish Book Awards, which I literally could not believe. Madeleine Keane was up on the stage and called out my name. I nearly fell on my way up to the stage out of shock. It was great; it was such a lovely feeling. It shouldn\u2019t matter as much as it does to win an award because writing isn\u2019t a sport.\u201d<\/p>\n

\u2018Growing up in rural Ireland, it\u2019s good advice not to make a show of yourself\u2019<\/p>\n

\u2014 \u00a0Donal Ryan<\/p>\n

Ryan was writing stories as a small boy, and all through his teenage years. Nothing remains of it; dumped in a house clear out. \u201cThey were thrown into a skip by mistake. My parents kept them for years and years, all my so-called juvenilia, all the stuff that you write when you are young and in your teenage years. It\u2019s a terrible shame because it would be great to have it now.\u201d<\/p>\n

After a career in the Civil Service, Ryan has been working as an associate professor of creative writing at the University of Limerick since 2017. He mostly writes his novels in the summer. Working between his converted attic and his university office, first drafts take between 10 and 11 weeks. <\/p>\n

\u201cWhen I\u2019m writing a book, there is part of me thinking I have to get this finished,\u201d he says. \u201cAnd it must be publishable and saleable, because I need the money for it. It is a big part of my income. I wouldn\u2019t be able to throw my hat in and say I\u2019ll go full-time writing because it is too uncertain.\u201d<\/p>\n

Ryan and his wife Anne Marie \u2013 who is also his \u201cagent and manager\u201d \u2013 have two children, Thomas (18) and Lucy (16). <\/p>\n

\u201cHaving two kids who are just coming to the end of their school career,\u201d Ryan cites as a key motivation to earn. \u201cWe have expenses that everybody has. Bills come in the door. Jesus Christ, it\u2019s unbelievable the size of them. Nobody should be getting the bills we are getting now for gas and electricity,\u201d he says. \u201cLife is expensive.\u201d<\/p>\n

\"DonalDonal Ryan: ‘I\u2019m always worried I\u2019m going to upset somebody.’ Photograph: Dara Mac D\u00f3naill <\/p>\n

Ryan admits he is a worrier (although not about turning 50, as he has already said). \u201cI never stop worrying nonstop; about everything. From the minute to the infinite. My grandfather used to worry about the light in the fridge; whether it went off when he closed the door or not. Fridges were new to him when I was a child, and he was obsessed with the idea of that light in the fridge. He would say: \u2018Is that light definitely going off when the fridge door is closed because if it\u2019s not, it\u2019s going to drain electricity?\u2019 He\u2019d look at it like that. That\u2019s the kind of thing he\u2019d be worried about.\u201d<\/p>\n

Ryan might not worry about whether the light in his own fridge goes off when closed, but he does confess to worrying about many other things. His teenage son going out at night in Limerick. \u201cI am a big ball of complete and utter anxiety whenever he is in town,\u201d he says. \u201cI\u2019d worry about things like our house being timber-framed and is that a fire hazard? I\u2019d worry about chargers being left in and causing a fire at night. I have to check and double check and triple check all the sockets at night.\u201d Then he says. \u201cThis is all very normal stuff. I think everyone is the same really.\u201d <\/p>\n

He also worries about media interviews, which is unfortunate, as we are in the middle of one when he tells me this. <\/p>\n

\u201cBetween now and the time this is printed in The Irish Times, I will be nervous and depressed and regretful, thinking I shouldn\u2019t ever be a published writer.\u201d Then he says that for him, doing media interviews is \u201calmost a profanity\u201d.<\/p>\n

What about all the awards, all the success, I ask. Surely he believes in his own considerable talents at this stage of his career? What is he worrying about? <\/p>\n

\u201cI believe in myself as a writer, but nothing else,\u201d he says. \u201cI wouldn\u2019t be front or centre at parties. I\u2019d try to avoid making a show of myself, to be honest. The idea of my name and my photo being in the paper to me is just \u2013 I\u2019d prefer anything else in the world. Growing up in rural Ireland, it\u2019s good advice not to make a show of yourself. <\/p>\n

[\u00a0From the archive: \u2018To be honest, the reason I became a writer was to impress my wife\u2019Opens in new window<\/a>\u00a0]<\/p>\n

\u201cAnd being in a newspaper is literally making a show of yourself. You\u2019re putting your face in a newspaper. You\u2019re saying stuff. It\u2019s part of the contract when you\u2019re published that you have to do publicity, but I\u2019d prefer to do anything else. It\u2019s the idea of strangers looking at me, do you know what I mean?\u201d<\/p>\n

I honestly don\u2019t know what Ryan means. Why do you care what other people think, I ask. <\/p>\n

\u201cI don\u2019t really. I just feel exposed. It\u2019s not the kind of person I am,\u201d he says. \u201cI\u2019m always worried I\u2019m going to upset somebody. You can train yourself to be more confident than you are. But I don\u2019t think you can change the essence of yourself at a cellular level.\u201d<\/p>\n

One thing Ryan surely should not worry about is his latest novel, Where Are The Kings, which is published next Thursday. It\u2019s the story of only child Jack, who is 12 when his mother dies by suicide, and whose troubled father subsequently goes to spend time in an institution. Jack goes to live with his maternal grandparents and their family. <\/p>\n

Told from Jack\u2019s unreliable narrator perspective over a period of a few years, it\u2019s a beautifully written \u2013 and frequently funny \u2013 exploration of grief and the struggle by so many to understand an inexplicable death, particularly by the child left behind.<\/p>\n

\"DonalDonal Ryan: ‘I believe in myself as a writer, but nothing else.’ Photograph: Dara Mac D\u00f3naill <\/p>\n

At one point, Ryan writes: \u201cMam was guillotined from Jack, leaving him headless and dead with no pain left. As good an analogy as any.\u201d It is indeed the finest of analogies for the traumatic loss of a parent. <\/p>\n

As for what is next, Ryan is currently taking a break from writing. \u201cIt\u2019s the first summer in a good few years where I haven\u2019t had a very focused project that I was trying to get finished by the end of the summer,\u201d he says with obvious relief. <\/p>\n

\u201cMy wife bought me a hammock as a kind of a joke, so I can relax. You know, one of those ones in a frame. It\u2019s just the most amazingly comfortable thing I\u2019ve ever lain in in my life. Lying in the hammock and looking up at the sky and knowing I don\u2019t actually have to get back to my desk, that there is nothing pressing, it is bloody brilliant.\u201d <\/p>\n

Where Are The Kings by Donal Ryan is published by Doubleday.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"It\u2019s not often you ask a question and get quoted, word-perfect, a Shakespearean sonnet by way of reply.…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":586877,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[8],"tags":[121447,93,61,60,709,21674,101139],"class_list":["post-586876","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-entertainment","tag-donal-ryan","tag-entertainment","tag-ie","tag-ireland","tag-magazine","tag-rural-ireland","tag-university-of-limerick-ul"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/586876","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=586876"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/586876\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/586877"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=586876"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=586876"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=586876"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}