Is There Anybody There? - Guest Blog by Rosy Thornton

Writing – any writing – is an exercise in communication. Writing fiction, in particular, is a peculiarly intimate kind of communication. The writer creates a private world which she wants others to share and enjoy; she puts down on paper, through the medium of story, some of her most personal thoughts and feelings about life, relationships and the things that are truly important, because she feels she has ideas to impart. And then…?

For the unpublished writer, the hoped-for dialogue is all in the future; the lack of anywhere to obtain feedback and validation is a perennial and much-vented problem. But when I am published, you tell yourself, all that will change. At last people will read what I have to say. I will get to communicate.

So, your book is eventually published, your words go winging out into the world. And… nothing happens. There is no dialogue – only the same buzzing monologue there always was inside your head. After a time you receive figures of sales, and of library borrowings, and you stare at them and tell yourself that, yes, some real people must actually have read your book. But what did they think of it? Did they get past chapter three? Did they agree with you?

HELLO, you want to shout, IS THERE ANYBODY THERE?

Then one day you receive your first piece of ‘fanmail’. Now, I shouldn’t want to give the impression here that I am some kind of popular writer or anything. With three novels published, my mailbag has contained to date – from persons to whom I am unrelated – precisely five letters. But each one has been a pearl, a diamond, a precious drop of glistening response from out of the otherwise echoing void.

What I have loved about my (five) readers’ letters has been their diversity – and also the way in which, in every case, something I wrote spoke very personally to somebody somewhere whom I don’t know and will almost certainly never meet.

My first novel ends with Ipswich’s first gay wedding, on the day that the Civil Partnership Act came into force. I received an e-mail from one of the staff who was on duty at Ipswich Register Office on the day in question, and actually presided at the town’s first civil partnership ceremony. She said she felt as if the book had been written especially for her.

My second novel is set in a fictional Cambridge college. A gentleman who was at my own college many years ago wrote me a letter (signing himself gloriously with the words ‘matric. 1957’ beneath his name) to tell me how interesting it was to hear what the place was like these days – what with there being women about now, and everything.

A widowed grandmother in Western Australia got in touch to say how much she had enjoyed my book. Just one sentence, in particular, out of the many thousands I had written, had connected with her – about how the little everyday things, which used to be imbued with such meaning, suddenly seem empty and valueless when there is nobody there to share them with. She still sometimes talks to her dead husband, she admitted, even after twelve years alone. It was a comfort, she said, to read about someone else feeling the same way.

Have you read a book recently and enjoyed it? Did it resonate in any small way with the experiences of your own life?

If so, then think of the lonely and frustrated writer, sitting in isolation at her keyboard. Dig out some notepaper – or click on the author’s website and find the contact page. Write back. Let her know she has communicated: that she has been heard and understood.

Right, I’m off now – to write a letter to the author of the book I’ve just finished.

Rosy

(matric. 1982)


Rosy Thornton is an exciting, original author of contemporary women's fiction and has three novels published by Headline Review - "More Than Love Letters", "Hearts and Minds" and this year's "Crossed Wires". Do visit her website at http://rosythornton.com/