Because no-one else can write it quite like you
“I don’t want to find out if this is real consumption, perhaps it’s going to gallop—who knows?—and I shan’t have my work written. That’s what matters. How unbearable it would be to die—leave ‘scraps,’ ‘bits’ . . . nothing real finished.”
When Katherine Mansfield wrote this, she did not have know that yes, sadly she did have “real consumption”, or tuberculosis/TB as we now know it, and it would definitely make a difference to finishing all her written work.
She would never get her chance to write the novel she’d wanted to do. But her “scaps” and “bits” in the form of her diary and random notes were collected together and published after her death by her husband, John Middleton Murry.
This has meant that countless writers can see how Kathryn just kept writing despite her ongoing health struggles. I find her determination to keep writing is an inspiration to me whenever I feel my own problems, whether they be about my health, money or global difficulties, bring me down.
Mansfield died aged 34 from her TB. What she could have written if she’d had more time we will never know. Going from a great writer who died too young, I now want to talk about one who had 60 more years than Mansfield and used that extra time to create great literary works.
“This is the mystery about writing: it comes out of afflictions, out of the gouged times, when the heart is cut open.”
That quote is from the Irish writer, Edna O’Brien who died recently at 94 years old.
O’Brien was best known for her first novel, ‘The Country Girls’ published in 1960. The novel was seen as ‘shocking’ for the times because it discussed the lives of two young women and their lives after leaving the restrictive environment of a convent school. It welded together the themes of sex, religion and patriarchy from a young, female gaze.
This was seen as not acceptable by the conservative mindset of Ireland at that time and the book was banned by the Irish Censorship Board and burnt by a priest.
It seems that for the rest of her long life, and in her many forms of writing—novels, short-stories, plays, poetry and memoir—O’Brien continued to write about her main themes—love, pain and exile. I think this quote from her sums this up:
“I am obsessed by love, by the need of it and the near impossibility of it …”
Attempting to keep writing your own ‘truth’ and the ‘themes’ you feel most galvanised by is what I believe all writers should work towards. It’s not easy! But let your own literary heroes inspire you.
yasminwrites.com 
I saw the notice of O’Brien’s death and felt disappointed that I’d yet to try her work – I’d always (but probably misguidedly) regarded her as “a women’s writer” but thank goodness I’ve been slowly demolishing both the prejudice and that misconception. Certainly a recent revisit of Mansfield’s short stories has reminded me of the cul-de-sac that attitude had taken me.
LikeLiked by 1 person