In April, I decided to delete my Facebook app from my phone. Same with my Instagram, conceding that, if I were to focus on my novel, the elimination of each would lead me to its end.
What’s happened in the meantime has, to say the least, been transformational. The garbage, sprouting like thistles from a venomous soil, prickling my sanity has … poof,
gone—
replacing it with words. Just words.
On a seminar I went to in Dubai, led by the infamous Ben Okri, he kept reading, I recall, this:
‘There was no hope for him this time: it was the third stroke.’
third stroke.
‘There was no hope for him this time: it was the third stroke.’
No hope, third stroke.
‘There was no hope for him this time: it was the third stroke.’
Repeating it again and again. The simplicity and clarity from James Joyce’s first line: The Dubliners.
I delete emails, unsubscribe, stare at the sun, block the news: has it made writing easier?
I’m reading Michael Collins’ Midnight in a Perfect Life—something I picked up from a coffee table in the air b n b I’m staying at in Cyprus: a kind of dystopian take on marital crises where the protagonist, at the cusp of that tender time when he’s approaching forty, feels disillusioned re. the baby his partner, Lorri, so badly wants.
It makes me wonder about a generation reaching this time period (I don’t want to say ‘lost’, ’cause we’ve all been there) and panicking about; or trying to figure out, what they want to do next.
I had a child at twenty one, another: twenty two, then my third in my later twenties: time took up working, building a business as well as parenting.
Was it because I was so young?—or have I forgotten—was too busy to be deliberating that ‘here’ (and I’m talking of others I listen to, often) was not where I ‘should’ (if such a thing exists), or ‘wanted’ to, be? There was this inner challenge—that I do recall—but one puts that down to always aspiring—reaching forward—needing to grow, nature’s natural thrust and eventuality. Yes? For surely without creation, we die.
It’s true, life is ‘of the essence’, precious: we do not have long here (hopefully I’m not sounding too morbid!😊), and we must do what we can of it.
I met up with a wonderful young man recently—so positive, energetic and fantastically forward thinking re. using social media to grow a business, which, of course, we know of, but some of us (like me) look over the fence at. Entrepreneurship.
In Collins’ novel, the protagonist says: ‘We had been duped by the mania of the popular media pushing pregnancy, pushed towards something neither of us really wanted.’
The landscape here in Cyprus is rugged, particularly in the Paphos region, with ancient Poseidon style rocks succumbing the waves that slap and smash, misting our hair.
I write because I have to.
There’s mediation … I read.
I wrote a poem, once, from an artist’s on Facebook portrait of flowers on a table:
Sunflowers in a vase
at different
heights
and
you
opposite
me
at breakfast.
Inspiration can be plucked from anywhere, including Larnaca’s Municipality museum on Finikouthes beachfront, where— in the old colonial and converted warehouses—the theme when I visited was, aptly, Greek Cypriot Culture, of men in black pantaloons ploughing the land, whilst a woman, serene faced (another showed) with her eyes down like the Panayia—Madonna—succumbed to her fate, villagers around her smashing pomegranates on the house’s doorframe, blood squirts signaling her fertility.
I’m pleased to say that I now read with veraciousness, back to devouring large sections of text like a hungry lion, with ease, something that had slowed when I was attached to Facebook, Instagram and other sites, and I must say, it’s delicious.
The mind doesn’t need much— just an entry into a human’s life: from Jonathan Coe’s The Rain Before It Falls second world war family saga on both childhood and life’s friendships—another: Ruskin Bond’s scary tales collection set in the Himalayan hills of misty India, to Jessica Thompson’s Three Little Words’ male, initial, perspective—there’s plenty there that’s scraped and left like plaque upon your brain to steam …
My mother, interestingly, hadn’t told me of the pomegranate ritual before she passed—rolling a child upon a bridal bed, I knew, plus hanging sheets the morning after for all to view.
These rituals must clearly be unique to certain villages: my mother from the south and Dad from pre-’74 Morphou north invasion.
The novel is becoming. Family, folklore, relationships and tales from Cyprus to London and growing minds … And isn’t it wonderful when you discover that actually, what you thought your novel was about—it’s central heartbeat—is not in fact that thing at all, but something else? Such is the power of thought. Of silence. And fingers on a keyboard, tapping, soft music (sometimes) in the background to block out thorns, and letting the mind roam free.
Nitsa writes about displacement, relationships, culture and identities, when living in Britain and other lands.
Check out her stories here on her ‘My Books’ page.
Happy New Year!! 💃
Copyright © 2026 Nitsa Anastasiades All rights reserved. Written content, photos and images may not be not be copied, distributed or used without permission from the author.
