Baby you can drive my car or write in it?

A Galway resident and Mayo native, Geraldine Mills stopped by our classroom this week to give us her advice on living the life of a writer in Ireland today.

Geraldine became an observer at a young age. Collecting voices,words and speech patterns as a child has resulted in a plethora of material for her to pull from now that she is growing increasingly famous in the Irish (and American) writing field. She has just returned from a weeks teaching at the University of Connecticut.
Geraldine was educated in the field of Science and although she carried a passion for reading and writing, she made a very conscious decision to put her family first whilst her children were young and they were living in Dublin.

It was during this time that Geraldine enrolled in a few creative writing courses with Pat McCabe (former writer in residence at NUIG) and she was hooked. As she still ahd children to taxi to and from school, horse riding lessons etc. she began writing in her car. The fact that she spent so much time in her car driving her children to and from their activities ensured that she would write every day and boy did it pay off. She is quite credited in Ireland with a long list of competition prizes and publications under her belt!

Although not entirely surviving on the income generated from her publications, she works two days a week with Aids West and this keeps her feet on the ground and the bills paid.

Geraldine invited us to the launch of her third book of poetry, launched at the Galway Library but wouldn't you know I had a lot of homework to do!

What I liked most about the message Geraldine delivered to our class was the following:

'If it is the most important thing to do - then KEEP DOING it!'

That is all the WiseWords I have for today,

WiseMóna