Maggie O’Farrell

So I started stammering as quite a young child.

And when I was little, it manifested as the kind of classic repeated syllable.

And for a while, I think as a child, I remember thinking, maybe no one else can hear this because...

My family didn't react.

But then, of course, it wasn't long until someone at school made fun of me and I thought, oh, OK, no, they can't hear it.

And by the time I was a teenager, somehow it had kind of morphed into this complete blockage.

So if someone asked me a question, I would almost I think I was so I didn't want that repeated syllable to happen.

So I just kind of locked my throat in.

And so I would go completely silent and not be able to speak at all.

And, you know, I think all stammerers have a collection of sounds that are problematic for them and them alone.

Yeah, there's usually a kind of problem letter or a pronunciation or a diphthong or a collection of letters that's problematic.

One of mine was M, which is very tricky.

Yeah, thanks for that.

So actually, what you learn to do at a very young age is you learn about the flexibility of language.

So if somebody around that time had asked me, what's your name?

Because I couldn't launch off on an mm sound, I would launch off on a different sound and I would just try to rush into it.

So I would say, you can call me Maggie and hope that I was able just to vault over the problematic mm.

You know, I don't think I would be a writer unless I was also a stammerer.

It gives you a huge sensitivity to language.

And I think anyone, any child who does stammer or stutter is able to come up generally with maybe seven or eight synonyms for a word in almost instantaneously.