Thankless by Aileen Cleave

 

As some readers may be aware, I’m a member of The Written Word Group of Almanzora and each month we are given a word or phrase to  write a short piece about, the only rule being no more than 500 words.  This month the word is Thankless.   That’s a difficult theme.  I had to think very hard to find something in my life that might be thankless.  This is it.

It  is a confession,a baring of the soul, a self-flagellation if you want; certainly a reckoning for being so arrogant to imagine I could make an easy transition from short pieces of one or two thousand words to a novel of some seventy or more.   What was I thinking?

I started off with little more than hope and a misplaced belief that if i wanted to do it, I could and I would.  I had no plan, no model, no sense of chronology,hugely important when writing a novel; I had only the characters and the setting.   And to date, it has pretty much taken over my life.  There are times when I can’t wait to get back to my desk, to put to paper some particular thought.  Yet other times I  am completely overwhelmed at the amount I need to transcribe, at the decades I have to recount, at the emotions I have to convey.  And galloping into view is always the question, does the world need another mediocre novel? Is this a thankless task.   In my dreams many decades ago I was never mediocre.  Now I know I am never going to be a Sally Rooney or Elena Ferrante.  

I have to continue now, now that I have reached 35K words, but the dark,  oft present fear  is that it might all be pants, total rubbish. No matter how often I tell myself that the act of writing should be enough, it simply isn’t.  Every writer since forever has needed the affirmation of his readers to confirm that his outpourings have been met with empathy from at least some quarters.

So, its true, at times I feel down, totally miserable and convinced that what i write is indeed worthless.  Then the miracle happens;  there’s a meeting of my writing group, a circle of like minded, aspirational people.  This is not the Bloomsbury set,  nor Fitzgerald’s Paris, nor Joyce’s Dublin.  This is a small corner of a foreign land  where  Brits meet up to do in their latter years what work and family have prevented them doing   until now or, at least, that’s it in my case.   It is wonderful what inspiration and encouragement is brought about by these monthly meetings.

Some people express themselves through song, dance or music, through painting, sport, gardening, home decor, home improvements,   but there is no doubt that the urge to create in some form is strong. I’m pretty useless at most of the foregoing, so I had better make a success of this writing lark .