Work beginning to thrill? The writer's repeatedly nursing source of some hope (8)
I believe the answer is:
optimism
'some hope' is the definition.
(optimism is being hopeful)
'work beginning to thrill? the writer's repeatedly' is the wordplay.
'work' becomes 'op' (abbreviation for opus).
'beginning to' says to take the initial letters.
'the writer's' becomes 'I'm' ('I am' referring to the writer of the clue).
'repeatedly' becomes 'ism' (I can't explain this - if you can you should believe this answer much more).
The initial letter of 'thrill' is 't'.
'op'+'t'+'im'+'ism'='OPTIMISM'
'nursing source of' is the link.
This may not be right. Some or all of it may belong to another bit of the clue.
Can you help me to learn more?
(Other definitions for optimism that I've seen before include "Hopeful nature" , "Hopefulness" , "Mind-frame that looks on the bright side" , "Feeling that all is going to turn out well" , "Looking on the bright side" .)