This week I turned 70: a milestone in anyone’s book, and one that deserves some kind of a literary nod. How far have I come, I should ask, and how far will I go on this incredible writing journey? And it really is incredible, when you come to think about it. Here I sit at my laptop in a remote corner of Ireland, committing my thoughts to paper/screen, and there YOU sit, wherever you are across the world: reading those very thoughts. That evokes in me a deep sense of responsibility, and always has. I want to be sure that they are worthy thoughts, that the words I put out there are good ones: good in the sense that they will do good. Good to the people who read them, like seeds that will sprout and bear fruit, however small, in the person reading them. That they will help in some way. Uplift. Support. Encourage. Inspire. That readers will nod, and say, yes.
But it didn’t start out that way. In fact, I had no idea, as a girl, that putting words to paper would be that thing I do.
I began my writing life as a very naïve 19-year-old, who had left boarding school in England with a couple of A levels and no idea what I wanted to do with my life, apart from having fun. I’d had a rollicking few years as a teenager, and had never given a thought to what lay beyond. But having returned to my home country, Guyana, and back into my mother’s house, reality came knocking at my door. ‘You have to get a job’, said Mum.
I actually had never given a single thought about life beyond school. As a happy-go-lucky schoolgirl who took life one day at a time, I believed manna, in the form of Mummy, was my destiny, for evermore. I certainly would never turn 70: that was for old people, boring people, and I and my friends would never grow old. And what on earth would I do, with a job? What kind of job, and who would want me, a silly girl who knew very little beyond parties and the A-level stuff she’d just put behind her? With no discernible skills, beyond writing silly notes in class and passing them to my best friend for a few giggles?
Fate came to the rescue, with an ad in the local newspaper for trainee journalists. I applied, along with, I later learned, a hundred other young people. I was chosen, along with two young men.
And that was my entrance into the heady world of committing words to paper. Of course, back then, it was all on paper. I soon progressed to writing feature articles for the Sunday edition, and that is when I really woke up to the power of the pen. My editor, it seems, discovered that my strength was in human interest stories. I’ll never forget the story that woke me up: I’d been sent to do a feature on an orphanage in Georgetown. The orphans were all children who suffered from polio, and I’ll always remember the emotion I felt as I entered the premises and a horde of children rushed towards me, catapulting themselves into my arms, crutches and all. Their spindly legs were all in callipers. And yet every face was wreathed in smiles. They lurched towards me, laughing, eager to meet this new visitor, radiant joy written on every face.
That was, for me, a breakthrough moment. It was the moment I recognised the power of the human spirit to rise above. To rise above the vicissitudes of life. To find, within oneself, a source that is truly independent of whatever ills and hardships life might throw at us; to not only meet those hardships stoically, but to gain strength from them. It became my own life’s mission, not only as a writer but as a human being. Happiness, strength, love, patience, peace: it’s all there within us, quite literally, no matter the circumstances, if we only dig deep enough, diligently enough.
Later, much later, as I found my final calling as a novelist at the ripe age of 49, that insight was to be the recurrent theme I’d plant into each and every work I produced. Somehow, my stories had to be about people rising above the vicissitudes of life, whether that life involved the aftermath of slavery or war. Characters learning and growing and becoming stronger, not weaker, when life pitches lemons or worse at them.
My own life has teemed with challenges. Ups-and-downs have always followed me, and it’s taken years, decades, to find some kind of practical stability. I’ve ventured far and wide, crossed oceans and continents, fallen over and picked myself up, made mistakes, stumbled and faltered. I’ve put down roots here and there only to have them torn up again. And yet, behind it all, is that knowledge that wherever I am, that’s my home. And what I truly seek is right here, within me. And the older I grow, the closer I come to knowing this not only in theory, but in lived truth.
And so I welcome this eighth decade earth-side. I know there are surprises waiting for me, new discoveries to be made. New books to write, new people to meet. Veils that hide me from myself will fall. Always, I will grow, until at last — as the Guyanese folksong goes — I know what I really can be, who I really am.
I’m lucky enough to have come this far, reached this milestone. But every day from now on needs to be a new milestone, a lived one, because every day is a gift, and time is getting short. I pledge to live that gift, bring it to life, and put it into every word, every book, I write.
Find out more about Sharon Maas and her novels at www.sharonmaas.com. Find her latest novel, Those I Have Lost here.
