Atropos too is a Weaver - Catherine Butler

It’s no doubt a common reverie amongst those of a melancholy disposition to wonder what their own epitaph should be, but given that I mean to have my ashes scattered in a bluebell wood in my case it’s especially idle. Still, were I to go down the monumental route I like to think that these words would be carved above my mortal remains in letters as deep as a Bic biro is long: “ATROPOS TOO IS A WEAVER.”

Now imagine a latter-day Thomas Gray who happens to be wandering the boneyard, musing on the futility of human endeavour. Seeing my grave he whips out his iPhone 42, curious to find out just who Atropos might be. ABBA readers of course require no such prop, but in case it’s slipped your mind let me remind you that Atropos is one of the three Fates of Greek mythology. There’s Clotho, who spins the thread of life, Lachesis, who measures it – and finally Atropos with her shears, ready to cut it to length. Of the three, I feel that Atropos gets the most unfair press. Killing people is never going to be a popular profession, but if we think of our lives as stories then we should acknowledge that a well-executed ending is a very desirable feature, and that to write “Finis” can be an intensely creative act. Without it, how can we appreciate the shape of the narrative? Arguably it would have no shape.

As with the stories of our own lives, so with the stories we write. C. S. Lewis replied to a correspondent who had asked whether he would consider continuing the Narnia series: “There are only two times to stop a series – before everyone is sick of it, or after.” It’s hard to argue with that. There can be an element of grateful release involved for the writer, too, as Stevie Smith noted:

I am hungry to be interrupted
For ever and ever amen
O Person from Porlock come quickly
And bring my thoughts to an end.

Atropos is helpful in matters of quality as well as of length. By nature I’m a rather obsessive self-editor, which is to say that I tend to fiddle, prink, and generally muck about with my writing, sometimes to its detriment, and am reluctant to let it out in in public. At one time I was secretly rather proud of this perfectionism, believing that it proved me a True Artist rather than a mere hack; but Atropos too is a weaver, and there comes a point when a piece of writing (if it is not to be trashed completely) must be loosed upon the world or lost to it. It will have flaws, of course, but only then will you be freed for the all-important task of failing better next time.

In the last century the paediatrician D. W. Winnicot coined the idea of the “good-enough mother” – by which he meant (as I understand it) not only that women shouldn’t have to beat themselves up about not being perfect, but that realising its mother isn’t perpetually and exclusively focused on its needs is actually an essential part of a child’s development. Perhaps we might speak of the “good-enough writer” too, writers being in a quasi-parental relationship with their books. We bring them up, we teach them to walk and talk, we dress and feed them, and eventually we say, “Go, little book,” and push them out of the front door. Hopefully they’ll be okay; but in any case, without that final step the rest would be wasted.

Atropos too is a weaver.