Q&A with Aoibheann McCann
“Take My Breath Away” by Aoibheann McCann quite literally took our breaths away when we read it for the first time! This is a special story written entirely in dialect, an carries whole lives within its few pages. We are thrilled to be home to this story, and are equally as thrilled to be sharing a Q&A between McCann and one of our fiction editors, Laura Jensen.
The very first thing you notice about this story is that it is written in dialect. Before even jumping into the narrative, I was instantly drawn in by the richness and authenticity of the writing. It truly felt like I was sitting next to the narrator having a conversation. Can you speak a little bit about the experience of writing this way?
The narrator speaks in the dialect of my native Inishowen, Co. Donegal. I have often used snatches of this dialect in dialogue but never in the main body of a piece. I love reading in dialect so I have always wanted to do it more myself. I tapped into the way I used to speak, and also used an Ulster Dictionary in the final editing.
Was it difficult given all the schooling we get to write in such a specific, academic manner, or did you find it easy?
Yes and no. I do have a degree in English and my mother is a grammar fanatic, but I spent my childhood immersed in that language, though never in written form.
What was your thought process behind writing in dialect?
Ultimately, that is just how the voice of the narrator came to me. I left Inishowen 35 years ago and only go back for a few days once or twice a year. When I left and moved to London/Dublin/Galway, I had to drop a lot of the Inishowen vocabulary as people didn’t understand what I was talking about. Sometimes I feel that I have lost some part of my expression because of this, and so writing this story was a way of reclaiming that.
Can you speak a little bit on what inspired this piece for you?
I was at a writing workshop and one of the prompts was an old photo of two young women in headscarves laughing. I wrote a short piece in response, and afterwards it connected with another image that was living in my head.
Was there a specific image or idea that came to mind that began the whole process?
I had an image of a woman cowering in a corner with a man standing over her. I knew she was from Inishowen but though I tried, I couldn’t tap into her voice. After the prompt writing, I realised that this was the narrator’s friend, and that she had to be the one to tell the story because the woman in the corner was dead.
Memory, especially in the wake of death, plays such a role here. The narrator is flung into this state of remembrance, and we get an in-depth history of her relationship with an old friend, one she has not been close to for quite some time. The details of these memories are incredible, I had to double check that this was a fiction submission and not nonfiction! How do you go about writing characters whose lives feel so big and real? Do you pull a lot from your own memory or do you find yourself contemplating on these characters and building them more “from scratch”?
I can’t say it is deliberate, it is just the way stories come to me. In my writing process I seem to enter into the world of the story and it dictates the first draft. Sometimes the characters even speak to me as I am falling asleep and tell me things about themselves that I try desperately to remember the next day.
An aspect of your writing that I particularly adore is your specificity and attention to detail. In the factory tour scene, you give such exact information – the KitKats, Walkman, Fruit of the Loom t-shirts, Perspex lights. It’s like a cinematic recall of this space. Is this story reminiscent of your other writing?
Yes, I think so. I tend to see a story through my characters’ eyes and try to describe what they see. The world of this story is, of course, reminiscent of seventies and eighties Inishowen, so a lot of the small detail comes from memory. We did get a tour of the Fruit of the Loom factory in third year!
Are there specific topics/places that continue to encourage this level of detail, things you keep coming back to?
I come back to the seventies, eighties and nineties a lot, and my stories tend to be set in places I have lived. ‘The Troubles’ as experienced from the other side of the border is a frequent topic, as is domestic violence.
I love to get a little insight from authors about the title of their piece. “Take My Breath Away” ends up having quite the double meaning in this story, as the title of a song and the fate of a character. Can you share a bit on why you chose this title?
The song was in the charts when I was a young teenager and I remember thinking it described exactly how I felt about whoever I had a crush on at the time. In the context of the domestic violence of the story and the timeline it was a perfect fit.
Do you have any projects in the works or any other new releases you would like to share about?
I have just finished the first draft of a new novel set in Galway in the early nineties and am working on the second draft slowly. I have a collection of short stories coming out soon, its working title is ‘The Writing on the Wall’ but the publisher might have other ideas (my 2018 novel ‘Marina’ had the working title ‘Hippocampus’).
