Writing in South Africa
“This is a country with much to say and it’s not being
said.”
Mandla Langa
For starters, we must pay far more attention to English teaching
in South Africa. Our youngest daughter was lucky enough to go to
Woodmead, a progressive school with a truly gifted English teacher called
Ted Smith. In their first year at high school, he spent months patiently
teaching them how to write essays: first thinking about their theme, then
structuring a plan, then researching if necessary in the library (strictly
without copying anything verbatim), and only then starting to write.
They were all writing competent essays by the end of the year and most
of them sailed into university or challenging courses after Matric because
they knew how to communicate logically on paper.
South African colleges and universities teaching English still concentrate
on the study of literature and practical criticism, and seldom include
creative writing instruction that would be of help to would-be writers
who have the talent but lack encouragement and guidance. ‘Writing
can’t be taught,’ is the general cry. Many established writers (bolstered
by their excellent educations, supportive backgrounds and unlimited access
to books) maintain that, ‘If a writer really wants to write, he’ll write
– just look at me!’
These lingering remnants of the stuffy British attitude towards the
teaching of creative writing are a disgrace in a country where four decades
of apartheid education has been inflicted on young people, denying them
their right to good teaching, and the vast majority (including newly literate
adults who have often struggled for years to learn to read at night classes)
are starved of accessible, enjoyable books.
Surely, if we are to build a nation of readers – the slogan of the
impressive Centre for the Book in Cape Town – we need teachers who are
committed to developing and encouraging writing talent, and serious funding
from the very top echelons of government?
Practical
ways to encourage writers
I believe writers are born with an over-developed curiosity gene
and a more than usually observant eye. If they’re lucky, there are
storytellers in the family or the village who fire their imaginations and
stimulate a hunger for stories. Later come a love of words and books
and reading, helped along by access to libraries and writing that excites
them. Supportive parents and teachers (which include books, of course)
will fan the flames and encourage the necessary learning and discipline
and effort that form the foundations of good writing.
Practical ways to help young writers include: making exciting, well-written
books available; providing a beautiful notebook and a good pen and suggesting
that they keep a journal; and reading or listening to their efforts when
they come to try them out on you. I read a book once (I think it
was called Young Writers, Young Readers) written by an English teacher
who used to get his class to write a poem, each child making suggestions
and improvements until it was complete and written up on the blackboard.
I tried this out on my own children, starting when they were quite small,
and it worked very well. We have a bookful of poems they made up,
first together, then individually. All four became avid readers and
wrote excellent English, and one has become a writer herself.
This poem was a dual effort between sisters aged 7 and 9 who had
just seen a snake in the garden:
The Snake
I saw a snake caught in the grass
Its colours were a ghastly green and brown
Its head was like a long thin triangle
It slithered over the ground
Trying to get free
And I felt a slimy feel in myself
I tried to run but my feet stuck to the ground
The snake looked at me with a wary eye
And struggled and turned
Until it got free at last
And slided under a many-angled stone.
When people tell me they want to write, I ask them: ‘Do you read
a lot and write every day? If not, you’re clearly not serious about
writing.’ If pressed further, I’ll suggest keeping two notebooks:
one of their own work and observations, and one of other people’s writing
that they admire. You learn by doing it, by studying how other writers
do it, and by endless revision.
On a personal
note
What I try to do in my books is to write
a good story in plain, clear, vivid prose. I also want to open windows
and use words that haven’t been done to death… I’m not trying to
re-invent the novel or to impress literary academics – an impossible task
anyway. The reaction that pleases me most is when a reader comes
up to me and says, ‘I couldn’t put your book down.’ That’s the ultimate
accolade for a writer.
I don’t make a plan or work out a detailed plot, or even know the
ending. My books evolve rather like pearls, from a core idea that
grows slowly by accumulating layer after layer until it has the shape and
feel and inner glow that I’m aiming for. For me, part of the excitement
of writing novels is to start with an idea and some imagined people and
have the story develop from there, growing as they do. It’s a far
more dynamic process than working out a detailed plot in advance.
I think that novelists must operate on two levels: the conscious,
observing, fact-gathering level and a deeper one where concepts and ideas
and the characters to flesh them out grow unbidden, like crystals on a
string in a chemical solution.
Creating a character or a background is an act of imagination and
the details come from many sources, many inspirations. With me, sights,
sounds, people, places, emotions, anecdotes all go into a general compost
which I draw upon as I need it. I’ll use things years after I saw
them, or they happened. Often I don’t know where a particular detail
comes from.
My characters (with a single exception) are fictional and I try to
make them real. The thing is, it’s easy to make up charming fairy
tales and create eccentric, lovable characters and to keep on doing the
same thing over and over again. The movies do this very well.
Star-crossed lovers, cute kids, dotty old ladies, serial killers, gritty
cops, caring hookers, science fiction geniuses – all these are clichés
that can work on the big screen and in blockbuster bestsellers… The
challenge for me is to create and write about real people with real problems.
One of the best compliments a reader can pay me is: ‘I enjoyed your book;
it was so real.’ Specially if he or she adds, ‘It could have been
me you were writing about.’ That’s when you feel you’ve really succeeded.
A common problem for novelists is the assumption readers often make
that your characters are you. Though I suppose there is a bit of
me in every character I create, where’s the challenge in writing about
existing people unless you’re a biographer? Even more alarming are
readers who believe that your characters are them, and accuse you of using
their story. People love to think that you’ve put them in books and
it’s hard to convince them that you did nothing of the sort… As a
novelist you assume that people understand you’re writing fiction, but
often they don’t.
Then there are readers’ expectations. They want you to go on
producing the same kind of book. Do something different and half
your readers will moan that it isn’t nearly as good as the last one, or
that your characters aren’t as sympathetic.
Criticism of each of my books has run the full gamut from lavish
praise to sneering contempt. The younger the critic, I find, the
more patronising they are. Mere children straight out of university
will savage a book with the ferocity of a piranha, backed by 3 years of
Lit Crit and shabby lecturers who have never set foot out of the literary
ether and couldn’t write a book if it got up and bit them. Well-reasoned
reviews by readers whose opinions I value and which I can learn from are
as scarce as hen’s teeth.
I take comfort in Doris Lessing’s comment that: ‘Most literary criticism
is just sheer bloody-minded malice.’
I often find myself buttonholed by would-be writers (and most people
seem to be would-be writers) asking for advice, my method of working, how
I discipline myself, my agent’s address, who my publisher is and (breathlessly)
how much I make writing books. Strangers who phone for advice are
usually convinced they have a potential bestseller if only they can get
it down on paper. Many have begged me to write their story for them.
The chutzpah is breathtaking. The naivety as to what’s involved in
writing a book is terrifying. I always tell them that ideas are two
a penny, it’s getting them down on paper so that other people can understand
them that’s hard.
The bane of my life when I was younger were poppers-in who assumed
that because I work at home, I’m ready to drop everything for a chat over
a cup of coffee. I had to learn to be firm about my working hours
and just say no. It’s not a problem confined to writers. Anyone
who works at home has to devise strategies for dealing with insensitive
family members, friends and offspring who ask for favours, pleading that
they need help or are too busy or important to do something. What
they don’t get is that I’m busy too.
It’s always a pleasure to talk to people who actually read.
In fact, it’s unusual for a South African author. All too often we
find ourselves sitting next to people who tell us with pride: ‘I don’t
have enough time to read books’ or, ‘I never read novels.’ Both of
these are translations of, ‘I’m far too important to indulge in anything
so trivial.’ At a business dinner once an elderly executive who had
heard that I was a writer said in a condescending tone, ‘It must be so
nice for you to be able to earn pin money.’
But there are, of course, also great joys and pleasures in the act
of writing. Days when words seem to flow like honey and things pop
out of hidden recesses you’d completely forgotten. There are times
too when uncanny things happen: when a scene feels so right that it almost
writes itself, when a character suddenly slots into place in a way you
hadn’t planned, or a story darts off in a different, more satisfying direction.
These times are pure magic. The stuff of dreams.
Being involved with book people – writers, readers, publishers, editors
and booksellers – has illuminated and enriched my life.
Recommended
reference books for writers
-
Bloomsbury Guide to
English Literature
-
Bloomsbury Good Reading
Guide
-
Brewer’s Dictionary
of Phrase and Fable
-
Brewer’s Twentieth
Century Phrase and Fable
-
Collins Concise Dictionary
and Thesaurus
-
Collins Dictionary
of Literary Quotations
-
Collins English Dictionary
-
A Dictionary of South
African English compiled by Dr Jean Branford (Oxford University Press)
-
The Everyman Dictionary
of Dates compiled by Audrey Butler
-
A Glossary of Literary
Terms, M H Abrams (Holt, Rinehart, Winston)
-
The Oxford Dictionary
of Quotations
-
The Right Word at the
Right Time (Reader’s Digest)
-
Roget’s Thesaurus
Books
of interest to writers and aspiring writers
-
A is for Ox, Barry
Sanders (Vintage)
-
The Agony and the Ego,
edited by Clare Boylan (Penguin)
-
Good Advice on Writing,
William Safire and Leonard Safir (Simon and Schuster)
-
How to Write &
Speak Better (Reader’s Digest)
-
Making
Money From Freelance Journalism, Arthur Goldstuck (Penguin)
-
Mother Tongue : The
English Language, Bill Bryson (Penguin)
-
Novels and Their Authors,
W Somerset Maugham (Heinemann)
-
The Novel Today,
edited by Malcolm Bradbury (Fontana Press)
-
On Being a Writer,
edited by Bill Strickland (Writer’s Digest Books)
-
Our Language, Simeon
Potter (Pelican)
-
Paper
Prophets, Jenny Hobbs (Zebra Press)
-
Scribblers for Bread,
George Greenfield (Hodder and Stoughton)
-
The Way to Write,
John Fairfax and John Moat (Elm Tree Books)
-
Writers at Work,
The ‘Paris Review’ Interviews, a series edited by George Plimpton (Penguin)
-
The Writer’s Chapbook,
edited by George Plimpton (Penguin)
-
The Writer’s Handbook,
edited by Barry Turner (Macmillan)
-
A Writer’s Notebook,
Somerset Maugham
-
The Writer’s Voice,
Dorian Haarhoff (Zebra)
-
Writers on Writing,
Jon Winokur (Headline)
