What’s the point?: A Craft Essay by G.D.L. Powell
If you travel along the minor roads of Andalusia, Spain, you’ll pass through a number of rural
towns and villages. And if you happen to stop in one of these towns and wander the streets, you’ll
find yourself being observed by the locals with a mixture of interest and suspicion. This
scenario—the arrival of a stranger in unfamiliar territory—was the basic germ for “El Inglés.”
Throughout this story, El Inglés (The Englishman) is an enigma, a mysterious character, a puzzle.
We learn about him through the narrator. She is also a bit of a mystery; we know little about her, but
as she journeys on her quest to find her missing sister, we discover she is a solitary person, another
outsider.
Outsiders are popular with readers because we’ve all experienced being ‘on the outside’ in some
way or other. In fiction, everyone has their favorite misfits—mine include Odysseus, Don Quixote,
and Holden Caulfield. Strangers are a vehicle that can easily upset the apple cart of normal life;
they are game changers whose appearance and unusual ways might arouse emotions and feelings
such as hope, love, envy and hatred. I think writers are especially aware of, even attracted to. the
outsider—we like to feel different, separate from the mundane world because our quest is to
discover a special something.
Perhaps that special something is the perfect story.
Like the Englishman in this imperfect story, I also live in a small town in Andalusia. However, I
came to Spain to teach English and ended up marrying, having a family, and settling down. I grew
up in a different world—on a farm in the south of England. My mother was an avid reader and
passed on her love of fiction to me. Then I was sent to boarding school, where reading fiction helped
me escape from a prison-like world of rules and regulations.
I didn’t start writing fiction until I was in my mid-twenties though. It happened when I returned
from a stint of teaching English in Mexico and I was at a loss for what to do. One day, I bought a
notebook, picked up a pen, and started writing a story in a friend’s flat in London. That story
became my first novel, The Neon Darkness (of which there is only one copy in existence). During
this time, someone gave me a guide to writing fiction. I don’t remember the exact title but it was
along the lines of: ‘How to Write a Bestseller and Make a Million.’ This became my goal. So in the
subsequent years, I wrote and wrote and sent chapters and synopses to agents and publishers. They
were all rejected. I threw away ‘How to Write a Bestseller and Make a Million,’ but I have never
given up writing.
So why do I write? What is the point?
It’s become a part of me, a way I express myself. It’s not about money or making a living. There’s
the creative side—you get an idea and then you have to conjure a story, create an imaginary world
out of it. There are characters, plot, scenery, and dialogue to work out. It’s a fun escape from a
reality that sometimes seems cruel and out of control. Writers can spend hours lost in imaginary
worlds and it is in these worlds that we choose to communicate (both consciously and
subconsciously) many of our thoughts, feelings, and emotions, however abstract they may be.
This takes time, though. In the same way that I am a slow reader, I am also a slow writer. I can’t
knock out a story in a night—it takes me weeks, months, even years, to complete a story. I struggle
over sentences and paragraphs. And savor them, too.
When I wonder why I do it, why I bother, I take some time off. I concentrate on my teaching, the
family, DIY. The dogs get longer walks. I read more. Despite doing these things, there’s a part of me
that feels at a loss, as if there’s something missing from my life and inevitably I get drawn back and
I find myself writing again.
Perhaps our work remains unread, yet there’s always the hope that one day it will be. Time and time
again, I find myself retrieving a story from a file in my computer. I re-read it, give it a polish, and
send it back out into the world. If I am lucky, a literary journal picks it up—one like Abraxas
Review, whose editors might feel warmed by its light.
End
