“Enda O'Doherty is an extraordinary man with an extraordinary story to share. In ‘I'm Fine! Thoughts on Life, Addiction, Love and Health’, co-written with journalist Dermot Keyes, he brings us on a journey from his youth and alcohol-soaked adulthood, through the birth of Enda 2.0 - sober and with a passion for helping others - to his new life as an endurance athlete and inspirational motivational speaker.
“Over a dozen years into sobriety and revelling in his new life, Enda has undergone a physical and emotional re-awakening as an endurance athlete, which has, incredibly, included carrying a washing machine from Belfast to Waterford in 2015 (covering nine marathon distances in eight days), and hauling his appliance to within a few hours of the summit of Mount Kilimanjaro in 2017, both in aid of charity. ‘I'm Fine!’ traces the highs and lows of a life fully lived, the debt he owes to his family, how he has positively exploited his addictive personality, and his passion for teaching, while also disclosing his own survival toolkit on how to make tomorrow better than today.
“Fuelled by 29 years as a teacher, and six years as a motivational speaker, this deeply personal adventure demonstrates the power of the human spirit along with Enda's efforts to promote positive mental health. Reflective, entertaining and inspiring, Enda's story is one worth reading if wringing every drop out of life is on your To-Do list.”
For little other than my own amusement, I began using the hashtag #PleaseSirOrMadamWillYouReadMyBook on my Twitter account on July 31st 2018.
I was seven months into my work on a potential book with De La Salle College teacher, motivational speaker and endurance athlete Enda O’Doherty, the Wicklow native and long-adopted Waterfordian and I felt good about the way it was coming together. That evening, I Tweeted: “Started the 10th chapter of the book today. Feels good. Whether it reads well is another matter entirely!”
Piecing together the story of someone else’s life and attempting to capture the interviewee’s voice was quite a contrast from the day job (still The Munster Express at that time) but it was a gig I took to with immediate relish.
Whether Enda’s story would ever be published was completely out of my hands and was never really a huge consideration for me. As the person charged with assembling the story, these were my goals: to interview Enda as often as we both deemed necessary, to then write the book, finish and polish it as best as anyone can when it come to one’s own copy.
Writing this book was made all the easier by the fact that Enda and I, who struck up a rapport during his first washing machine-carrying fundraising walk from Belfast to Waterford in 2015, got on so well. Enda had a good story to tell and much to my delight, Enda thought I’d be the best person for the job he wanted doing. More widely known journalists had approached Enda about a book but he opted instead to take a punt on me. That vote of confidence made me determined to do as good a job as I could. I immediately owed that much to Enda.
By early August, I’d reached the 40,000-word mark and within six weeks I’d added 10,000 further words – I’d already suggested to Enda that we shouldn’t go beyond the 75,000 mark. I’d also handwritten – into my Moleskine book - over 40,000 words while interviewing Enda, our primary meeting place being De La Salle College in a first-floor meeting room looking over the People’s Park.
While the pupils filed into school via the narrow roads that surround the school, Enda and I talked; well, Enda talked: one question could lead to the sort of reply movie director Christopher McQuarrie (‘Mission: Impossible’) has become renowned for among the film media. And like McQuarrie, there was rarely a superfluous word uttered by Enda. It made my job so much easier even if it did pose a problem for me in terms of what I’d have to leave out!
On September 28th, I Tweeted: “65,600 words and 33 interviews later, and I have completed the first draft of the book. A very satisfying feeling. The next step now begins!” By October 20th, I’d re-read, proof read and edited all 21 chapters and began the process of sending cover letters and a selection of chapters to one publisher. Nothing of note happened for quite some time, which was of no great surprise to me. We had decided not to employ an agent; I in particular wanted the book to stand on its own merits and given that the likelihood of making any sort of money from a debut publication never felt likely to me, I wasn’t keen on sticking a few grand in someone else’s pocket. And if that meant we had to wait a little longer for some good news, so be it.
By the beginning of April 2019, complete drafts of the book had been sent to several
publishers and all we could do was hope that at least one of them would bite. Come June 6th (2019), the day my Munster Express career came to an end ahead of my move to the Waterford News & Star, an offer came our way and initially I was overjoyed. But then Enda and I read and re-read what had been put to us. It was too good to be true, so we said thanks but no thanks and just kept on hoping. By January 17th of this year, with no publisher secured, I Tweeted: “I genuinely don’t know if the book will ever exist beyond my own print outs. I’m partly resigned to it never being published but who knows what may come of it yet.”
In late May, as we were all hunkered down in lockdown, Enda (a terrier who never accepts defeat or no for an answer) called me and said we might have a publisher. It prompted me to suggest we should add on a Covid-19-related chapter to make the book feel as contemporary as we could make it. The day after I began writing the new chapter, a seven-page contract was drawn up by Orpen Press under the Red Stripe Press imprint. Enda and I sat physically distant by his front door and allowed ourselves two big grins. We’d met on at least 45 occasions over two and a half years and probably spoken on the phone 40 to 50 times on top of that. The book we’d worked on, at long last – Enda’s story - had a committed and enthusiastic publisher. What a feeling.
Whoever else in the world will be interested in the fruits of our labour will get to see what we’ve invested so much of ourselves and our time in come October 26th. Come what may, I feel like I’ve won already. And I’m the one who got this far without carrying the washing machine!
‘I’m Fine! Thoughts on Life, Addiction, Love and Health’, published by Orpen Press, will be available on October 26th in bookstores and online
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