In my early twenties after reading the first two of Simone de Beauvoir’s autobiographies, I knew I wanted the life of a writer. I have managed very well. I think the two salient points I picked up from that early reading was  how worldly it seemed to write in cafés and to have relationships with wonderfully unsuitable men. The other aspect was to be part of some kind of literary scene, to know writers, to be a writer, to know publishers, to be one. For a long time I thought I wanted to marry a poet. Now I know I want to be one, well a writer. For a long time, I only thought of ‘being a poet.’ As though it was something you could do and be apart from just writing poems. At times some of these desires have led me in conflicting directions, but nevertheless I have persevered with my writing and with the other imperatives.

For me being a writer is writing, it is showing up on the page, it is working away at my writing, trying to get better and better. Sometimes I am thinking about character and how to ‘do characterisation’. Other times a particular character stays with me for a long time, lives alongside me, inside me. I see the world through her eyes.

The thing I find hardest to do is to send out unsolicited work to magazines and journals and to enter writing competitions. It feels too much like admin. But I know it is an important step or set of steps in becoming a writer, being a writer.

I go through periods of writing more, writing less. Lately I have been distracted by amongst many other things, Facebook and starting Modjaji Books.

Sometimes I write down my dreams, often I write To Do lists, sometimes I write about something that is troubling me, that I am trying to get to grips with. I have long periods where I can write nothing, I don’t even try, I am speechless, wordless, like an animal or a small child.

In my office I have most of the notebooks I have written in over the years, they take up two shelves, about 60 notebooks. I lost one once, in fact my newish white Nissan bakkie was broken into outside Naran’s in Grahamstown. I’d popped in to buy some veggies and when I came out the window was smashed, my bag was gone. I lost my purse, ID book, cheque book and notebook and keys to the doors of the NGO I worked for up in Joza. The loss of the notebook disturbed me, left me bereft as though I’d lost a hand or a large piece of flesh from my inner thigh or an ear. The notebook contained writing from a trip Andre and I made to Lesotho, we had visited the trading station where my family had lived when I was four and five – Hellspoort, near Thabana Morena. There was also a picture in my notebook that a friend had given me cut out from The Cape Times ‘society pages’ of the man who may or may not have been my birth father. Sometimes I see the signs for his company up around Cape Town. His son went to Bishops.

Fiction happens when the compulsion to write is more powerful than the fear. Either way, we are talking about an internal war. During the writing my first novel, I became tired of my own anguished ambivalence. I felt worn down by the vicious dialogue between my love of writing and my fear of being seen. Out of desperation, I worked out two ways to sidestep the war.

1. Routine

I dedicate some morning hours to my imaginary world. I get my ass down on a chair by nine in the morning. I get up once an hour for tea or a snack. I ignore the thought that I should really have my thyroid tested instead, or that today is the perfect day to renew my passport. I stay away from the phone. I resist phoning a friend to tell them the thing I forgot to say the other day.

2. Self Deception

When I start writing I tell myself, ‘This is not my book. These are just rough notes to use as reference when I really write it.’

When I have written a couple of hundred pages, I say to myself, ‘Let me take out the bits I don’t need and write in the notes that are missing. Then I’ll really start on the first draft of my book.’

Afterwards, I say, ‘Let me edit these rough notes just to make them readable. It would be nice to print them out before I really start writing.’

Once it’s printed, I say, ‘Goodness gracious me! This could pass for a first draft!’

A few weeks ago I read John Irving’s The World According to Garp. It’s odd I took so  long to get to it considering that I am a huge John Irving fan, but it was an early book and I found the title unappealing; still perhaps there’s some truth to the adage that the teacher appears when the student is ready. An overseas publisher at the 2007 Franschoek Literary Festival mentioned the delight of completing a trans-Atlantic flight with the manuscript of The World According to Garp as reading material. In spite of the story’s unusual nature she pushed for it to be published and the rest is history. The World According to Garp became John Irving’s breakout novel.

Irving’s Garp writes a novel in which the central character knifes her rapist to death in a graphic first chapter. Garp’s publisher considers the book to be x-rated soap-opera, nevertheless the visceral language and controversial subject matter have potential market appeal so he does what he’s done before with books he’s not certain about: he asks the woman who cleans his office to read it, not expecting her to read past the first few pages. We learn that his reputation as a publisher of surprising books destined to be popular is in fact based on the opinions of this unlikely reader who doesn’t even like books. When he realizes that she has actually read the whole book he asks her why. This is the exchange between them:

“Same reason I read anythin’ for,” Jillsy said. “To find out what happens.”

“So you read it to find out?” John Wolf said.

“There surely ain’t no other reason to read a book, is there?” Jilly Sloper said.

When she asks him for a copy he interrogates her as to why she would want to read it again, and she finally responds as follows:

“It feels so true,” she crooned, making the word true cry like a loon over a lake at night … “A book’s true when you can say, ‘Yeah! That’s how damn people behave all the time.’ Then you know it’s true,” Jillsy said.

The mind-blowing realization that hit me as I read these passages was that Irving has always clearly understood the formula for success. Writers in training tend to over-complicate the business of writing a novel and attracting readers to their work; in reality what compels a reader is what compels all of us; we all want to know what happens next to characters we care about. And as for our own writing careers; we are after all the chief protagonist of our own life story. All novelists are waiting for their breakout novel, unless it’s been and gone, in which case they’re working on another one and waiting to find out what happens next. Top of the New York Times Bestseller List?

In my specific case I’m in the throes of tackling a second novel so I’m taking Irving’s directives to heart. Writing a second novel turns out to be a very different process to the first novel which took shape on the UCT Creative Writing Masters Program. Back then gentle suggestions and positive encouragement ensured that I reversed out of cul-de-sacs before hitting a brick wall, halted suicidal dashes down one-way highway lanes and limited how long I went round in circles before recognizing the correct exit to the desired destination. An excitable imagination was channeled. With this second book I must find a way to ratchet the writing up to the next level while remaining true to a central plot and contending with the reality of a book marketplace teeming with original well-written books that have not broken even, never mind broken out. It’s not enough for a novel to be well received. For authors that are not yet established relatively low sales are a blow to any notion of financial survival and have the potential to plunge a writing career into a downward spiral.

As Irving points out any fiction writer worth his or her salt must work towards creating a reality that feels true and that begs the question of what ultimately happens to our characters. If we are serious about honing our craft and making a living as full-time writers then we must be serious about captivating readers. The world is full of readers; we just have to find ways of making them fall under our spell.

Consuelo Roland

After leaving the information technology business Consuelo completed an MA degree in Creative Writing at the University of Cape Town. Her debut novel The Good Cemetery Guide was short listed for the Sunday Times Fiction Prize 2006 and received special mention from the Olive Schreiner judges. She has had short stories and poetry published in Twist, Women Flashing, South Africa Writing, Writing the Self and The Sunday Times. Her essay “Was Ayn Rand Wrong? An essay on capitalism” appeared in The Face of The Spirit: a century of essays by South African Women published by the Department of Art & Culture. Consuelo is currently working on her second novel. She lives in Hout Bay with her husband and son, and a menagerie of pets.

Consuelo has a blog on BOOK SA, and also runs The Good Cemetery Guide website.

Click here to read more about what South African writers have to say about writing.

But it gets worse: I once spent ages sculpting a spectacular horse, only to discover that a horseshoe was all I needed. I still have the horse, stained with blood, sweat and tears where I beat my head against it until I saw the light.

I now work with the 3S system – structure, structure, structure. Needless to say, this process takes place before the real writing begins. Very few people set off on a journey without knowing where they are headed. Those that do, often end up wandering aimlessly, gibbering to themselves, with a bottle of cheap booze in hand. Those are hard luck stories no one really ever wants to hear.

If you want to learn about structure, screenwriting is a great place to start. No screenplay is sold without a synopsis. And no synopsis is read without a logline. The reason is simple: to produce a film, you need money, which means you need to convince a lot of people that their money will be well spent. You hook them with the logline, reel them in with the synopsis, and then land them with the screenplay. Only then does the cooking, serving and tasting begin.

Granted, book publishing works in more mysterious ways. But ultimately a publisher will have to decide whether your book is worth spending money on. So it’s a good idea to have ready answers to any questions that may be asked. And by doing the prep work – logline, synopsis, character biographies, etc. – you can save yourself a lot of time when you’re writing. If you know the essence, the premise, the logline of your story, it’s easier to spot superfluous or irrelevant material. A good synopsis and chapter breakdown works like a global positioning system, telling you exactly where you are, even in the most convoluted plot. And if you write biographies in advance, you won’t have characters who suffer from multiple personality syndrome.

All this may sound very anal and restrictive – there was a time when I would have said the same – but I still have that bloody horse to remind me that I needed a horseshoe.

Richard de Nooy grew up in Johannesburg, but has lived in Amsterdam for more than 20 years. His first novel Six Fang Marks and a Tetanus Shot (Jacana, 2007) won the University of Johannesburg Prize for Best First Book in 2008. He would love to write a second novel, but spends too much time feeding the corporate crocodile as a translator, editor and copywriter. De Nooy is deeply intrigued by his own quirks, foibles, obsessions, and lack of discipline, which he enjoys projecting on humanity.

I’ve purposely kept the topic broad – don’t want to tie people down to a description of writing routines and rituals (if you’re anything like me those don’t exist in your life). So – the joys, the highs, the lows, the advantages of being a writer in south Africa, the disadvantages, what it’s like to write for a living, some good how-to-write tips, your writing space, something funny, something poignant – whatever you feel moved to write!

I’ll be posting these regularly on BOOK SA – over the next weeks, months and years I hope!

The first writer featured is BOOK SA’s very own and very dear Richard de Nooy.

PS If you know of anyone who’d like to be featured please do let me know.

We talked about looking beyond tips, resources and exercises and the like and offering freelance opportunities to writers. And over and above all of that we wanted to see if there was some way in which a community of writers could offer financial and material support to writers of exceptional talent but limited resources. Although this was to be my project, Colleen, in typically generous fashion, gave hours of her time to helping to formulate exactly what it is that writers need.

The next step was to look at what sort of website I would need. I won’t bore you with details – suffice to say that the wonderful team at Create Design gave me detailed advice and suggestions. I needed a Content Management System, not cheap or easy to set up, and so began the next round of what to do and how to do it. I approached seda (the Small Enterprise Development Agency) where a wonderful man called Thobela Ndlebe devoted hours of his time to ensuring that I, a true naïf (should the feminine of this be naïve?) when it comes to business, had some idea of what I was letting myself in for. I received assistance from seda for the web design and CMS and in the meantime another application for funding (from the National Arts Council) bore fruit and I was able to spend some time on writing the basic content for the site and to offer support to Epiphanie Mukasano – the first recipient of assistance from the Live Writing fund.

And so it went on: meetings with seda, approaching writers and editors, trying to get content written. (Hours and hours of work there, with hours and hours still to do – welcome though it was the NAC money covered a fraction of this time.)

It’s been a wonderfully collaborative effort and I can’t say thank you enough to all the fantastic folk who have listened to me going on and on, offered their time and resources and firmly believed that Live Writing was going to happen – because there were times when I certainly didn’t!

It’s still not perfect – I have piles to do and write yet – but it’s a bit like having children, or going sailing, or embarking on anything where the unknown beckons – if you wait for the timing and all else to be just right you’ll never take the plunge!

And then of course there’s taking this plunge too – writing a blog post for book.co.za as opposed to lurking on the sidelines and popping my head up to make the odd comment. Somewhat nerve-racking!

But here it is written and yet another proof positive that the baby’s (a)live and kicking. Let’s hope I can keep it fed and clothed!