My writing seems to have taken a back seat to knitting at the moment, but I’m happy to report that my blanket is now past its 43rd square out of 70, and going according to plan despite the crooked finger (see previous blog below). The fingers are not the only things activated by the knitting; the brain has been mulling things over too. While waiting for feedback from reading friends on my current WIP, I have been thinking about the next novel. Or in this case, a previous novel.

My very first novel (long ago relegated to a trunk and destined never to see the light of day in that particular incarnation) started out ten years ago as a family history – my own. My great-great-grandparents came to Africa in 1880, from Manchester, with a small settler party destined for the farm Willowfountain, outside Pietermaritzburg. The Willowfountain Settler Scheme was a disaster from inception to final failure, but fascinating to me, particularly since it involved my family and gave me some insight into what my ancestors must have been like. 

At the time when I began to write about them, I searched the files of the Killie Campbell Museum and the Pietermaritzburg archives, but there was only so far I could go with the actual facts. Before long my imagination filled in the blanks and I created a frame story set in the modern day to encapsulate it all. This was to be an exciting romance between an actor and a writer who are adapting the historic story into a film.

Sadly, in reaction to my previous academic writing, my fiction writing style of ten years ago turned it into a turgid, wallowing epic. The narrative head-hopped between all the characters and I’m ashamed to admit to some rather embarrassing purple prose. The plot jumped about all over the place with no real focus and in no particular direction. Eventually it all got too much, too big, too long and very definitely too boring, hence its relegation to the figurative trunk in the attic of my computer’s hard drive.

I must confess, however, that every now and then something triggers in me the desire to tell that story properly; to take a few elements and give it my best shot now that I have more writing experience. Perhaps it’s guilt about a niggling duty to my ancestors, but I feel that there is still a story there that is worth telling, and it’s up to me to find it. I don't know any other descendants of this particular settler party who are ever likely to write about them and, even if they did, it would be their story, whereas this particular story is mine. Write the story that only YOU can write, as the saying goes.

Some years back – just after I had finished doing Michael Green's creative writing course at UKZN – I began to re-work my epic family saga about Willowfountain but, following the advice of a journalist friend, I took my newly acquired skills and started another project instead. That became my Greek novel The Epidaurus Inheritance and since then I have continued to apply myself to only new projects. 

The other day, I came across the file on my computer in which I had stored the re-worked first 6 chapters of the Willowfountain epic. I started to read the first page with great trepidation but four chapters in I realised to my surprise that – well, this wasn't too bad! Consequently I have been thinking that this might be my next writing project. Treating my original manuscript as nothing more than an idea, I will do a total rewrite from page one, but this time with a properly plotted outline.

First I will have to re-think my going-nowhere story and re-invent those flat, pathetic modern-day characters, but at least there is nothing wishy-washy about the setting. Nothing from the past nor present can alter the fact that the original farm of Willowfountain was the worst possible place to dump a party of English settlers. The facts concerning the hard life of those settlers speak for themselves, giving me a harsh, cruel and very real setting for my soon-to-be vibrant and tormented characters. 

Watch this space...!

The index finger of my left hand is bent and sore, and the end joint is badly swollen, but I can’t stop knitting. Knitting? I’m supposed to be a writer and this blog is supposed to be about my progress and process, so why am I knitting instead of writing?

The seventh draft of my current novel is finished, and finally it’s in a state that I’m not ashamed to show to other people. It’s gone to five of my trusted friends and I await their comments. I have also finished the final proofread of my earlier novel The Epidaurus Inheritance so that paperback copies can be printed. Now it’s time to think about the next novel.

One of the best ways to free up your mind to do some creative thinking is to give your hands something to do. Two months ago I joined an initiative I had read about on Facebook: to get enough people to pledge to knit a blanket for some underprivileged person who doesn’t have one, and to do it before winter sets in. Winter in the southern hemisphere, that is.

Driving this venture are two remarkable women. Zelda la Grange was for many years the personal assistant to the late, greatly-mourned father of our nation, Nelson Mandela. When journalist Carolyn Steyn asked her what she would like people do in his memory, she answered that she would like 67 blankets to be knitted for poor people who would otherwise not have one.

Carolyn Steyn took up the challenge and invited people around South Africa to join her in making 67 blankets by July 1, in time for Mandela’s birthday which is on July 18. While anyone is more than welcome to buy and donate blankets to any charity of their choice, this is different: these blankets have to be made with your own two hands, either knitted or crocheted.

Like many good things in this internet age, the request went viral and over the last few months individual people and groups from all over the country have signed up and are either knitting or crocheting. Housewives and mothers, ballet dancers, schoolchildren, even butch rugby-playing men – there are no limits. As people’s friends and contacts on Facebook have read about it, others have joined too, and some members live as far away as Japan, Australia or America.

As of today we have 983 members. Many who started earlier have already finished their first and are onto their second or third blankets by now. The first handover is scheduled for April 7, so more than 1000 cold people are going to be warmer this winter. Now that’s enough to give any hardened, cynical person a warm, fuzzy feeling, isn’t it? Even a writer like me.

When I first signed up, I had no idea just how much knitting I would end up doing. I started with 5mm needles and some leftover double knitting yarn. I cast on 35 stitches and knitted until I could fold it diagonally to form a square. With my tension that’s 70 rows, which makes a square about 21cm by 21cm. Then I moved on to the next colour. I’m not very good at joining up, so I decided to knit my squares in 7 vertical strips of 10 squares each. My 70 squares will make a blanket that’s roughly 147 cm by 210cm. So far I’m on square number 24 and still have a long way to go.

Constructing a blanket stitch by stitch, square by square, reminds me of constructing a novel word by word, sentence by sentence, chapter by chapter. But knitting is much easier (apart from the physical pain of the swollen joints) because you don’t have to do seven drafts of a blanket and re-do almost every single stitch before you are brave enough to let someone else look at it. I will finish this blanket in the next two months, whereas a novel takes me about two years to complete. And my blanket will keep someone warm for much longer than it takes to read one of my novels.

The beauty of something that is handmade speaks for itself, and no one minds a dropped stitch or a wonky seam, because its primary purpose is to keep people warm. If at any time a knitter feels discouraged, a quick visit to the Facebook page results in messages of camaraderie and inspiration, and beautiful pictures of the blankets that others are making with their own two hands. Suddenly the pain in my joints isn’t so bad. Another cup of ginger tea and I go back to the knitting.

Sore joints are not all this blanket has given me. Another thing I didn’t realise at first was how – unlike my novels which serve only to entertain – knitting a blanket could actually serve a basic need and help one person get through winter. Other ordinary people like me can make a difference just by doing this small thing of taking up two needles or a crochet hook, getting a few balls of yarn, and casting on that first stitch.

Have a look at what people have created in Mandela’s name by going to Facebook and typing “67 Blankets for Madiba Day” in the search box. As Carolyn Steyn says in one of her many posts to encourage and support all who partake in this venture: “Stitch by stitch we will be keeping people (around the world) warm this winter!!!”

Maybe you’d like to join us?

In my seemingly endless quest for writing improvement, I return time and again to the three points of my magic triangle: Characters, Plot and Setting. This time I want to look at settings and why they influence a novel so much.

Let me give you an example: One of my favourite stories is that of Romeo and Juliet, and yet I don’t like the musical West Side Story. Why is that? In a word: Setting. Last year I saw an excellent production of this musical, but I still felt the same vague dissatisfaction I had felt as a teenager when a helpful teacher showed us the movie of West Side Story in an effort to help us understand the plot and passions of Shakespeare’s masterpiece.

The story of Romeo and Juliet – to me anyway – belongs in an historical, romantic Italian setting, and no amount of great dancing, fantastic music and memorable songs can sway it for me into the world of warring gangs whose passion and cause is probably even more poignant than those of the Capulets and Montagues. Sorry, Leonard Bernstein – I know it’s just me, but I can’t change the way I feel.  

People often ask me: “When you start a new novel, do you think of the story first and then find characters to fit, or do you think up some characters and weave a story around them?” I can’t answer that, because I have come to realise that I start with the setting: a place that moves me, and then I build both characters and plot around it.

I am a great believer in that old chestnut: Spirit of Place. I love to visit new places and soak up the atmosphere, the weather, the history, and the invisible threads that weave it together. A while back I realised that if I am going to be a writer for the rest of my life, I need to travel to exotic, faraway places and set my novels there.

Sadly, I just can’t afford to do that on my salary and with my country’s diabolical exchange rate, so I have to rely on past memories. I was lucky enough to travel when I was younger. In my wild impetuous youth I also changed jobs every three years or so and started life anew several times in a different city in my beautiful country. Some of the jobs I took involved plenty of travel and in each place I visited, I made copious notes and took loads of photos.

What shines through the most when I look back on these is the memory of how each new place made me feel on first contact, and it is this essence that a writer needs to capture in order to provoke a similar response in the reader. I can’t write about Russia or China because I haven’t been to either. Armchair travelling – books and television documentaries and staring down at Google Earth from above cannot give you that spirit of place that an actual visit can. You need to breathe its air and wonder why it feels different. For example, I have noticed that favourite foods in one place are ignored in another – for no logical reason – and that new tastes acquired along the road often lose their flavour in the next destination. Why? I don’t know but that’s how my senses respond.

A while back I dreamed up a complex plot involving a sojourn in the high remote mountains of Peru, because my best friend had been there. Six chapters into writing the first draft, I found that no amount of quizzing her and reading travel guides could make my words ring true because I had never been there. Since I couldn’t afford a trip there, I had to find another setting – one that I knew.

The answer was on my doorstep. A mere two or three hours from where I live is the magnificent Drakensberg mountain range on the western border of KwaZulu-Natal. Not only is it a world heritage site, but I have been there many times, taken numerous photographs, soaked up the atmosphere of wild beauty and dreamed countless dreams about those mountains on my return home. In fact, I even bought a plot of land up there a few years back for when I retire, because I love the place so much.

A slow process of transition began to take place in my manuscript as my characters and plot adapted to their new environment. Two weeks later I was back on track and clocking up a word count faster than I had done on any of my previous novels. Just over a month later, I wrote those magic words “The End” and my first draft was complete.

Of course, the story doesn’t end there. I have been busy on it for another year and written another six drafts since then. Hopefully all will be revealed in the next few months.

Last weekend I finished the sixth draft of my current novel and increased a whole dress size at the same time, without even leaving my laptop. How did I do this, you may ask? I ate my way through my novel. No, not like those horrid termites that ate their way through a shelf of my books back in February (Will she never stop going on
about that? – Ed), but by eating with gusto the entire way through the writing process.

The way I look at it, we have to be as healthy as we can and this depends on food, doesn’t it? What you put into your body fuels it. Ergo, what you feed your body while writing your novel fuels your novel as surely as it does your body.

With many writers there is a danger that, while they are so busy writing, they will forget to eat. Not in my case. In fact, sometimes I am so busy eating that I omit to write. I have, however, developed a rather canny knack of typing with my right hand while my left paw keeps up the conveyance of crisps into dip, and from thence into mouth. Crisps and dip can be a notoriously messy snack, but if you can manage to do it with one hand, then the other is free to write. All day. And all the way through the dip. And the next packet of crisps.

Of course, there are motor problems here with the finger co-ordination. My right index finger, for example, tends to get a little muddled and I often end up with the odd “t”in place of a “y” unless I concentrate very hard. And then comes the time to write a “y” and I end up with a “t” but these are small problems and can easily be edited out in the next draft, possibly while sucking some juice through a straw, because that doesn’t require
hands.

Some writers might eat the kind of food that their characters eat, or the national dishes of the country they are writing about, but I don’t really discriminate. I’m happy to eat whatever’s in my cupboard, or in my biscuit tin. What I like about crisps and dip, though, is that the crisp crumbs tend to land in the dip and not on the keyboard, which is a bonus because you don’t have to stop to turn the laptop upside down; you can just collect the fallen crumbs from the inside of the dip tub with the next crisp and nothing is
wasted on the keyboard.

(Pizza is particularly messy, and I prefer to leave this until I am watching TV. This is usually followed by microwave popcorn with Jelly Tots. Did I mention that I like Jelly Tots in my popcorn? You really should try it – it works especially well in a darkened movie house, and it’s much better for you than all that salt, which I hate on my popcorn, particularly that hideous, artificially-flavoured powder that they leave on the counter for you to poison your popcorn with. Yuk! Seriously, the best part about eating it in the dark is that your fingers can’t distinguish between the rough curved surface of the popcorn and the rough sugared surface of the Jelly Tot, so every mouthful is a surprise. Fun, huh? Trust me on this!)

Anyway, back to the novel. This weekend I managed to consume five pots of English breakfast tea, three and a half litres of iced tea, two packets of biscuits (mostly dipped in tea for the same reason as crisps and dip – see above), one and a half maxi-size bags of crisps, a tub of dip, a pizza while watching TV between editing sessions, two medium tubs of yoghurt, and a six-pack of hot cross buns. I know these last are supposed to be seasonal, but my garage shop stocks them year-round. They’re good writing food but sticky rules apply. Sticky rules? Always have a damp kitchen cloth on a saucer close at hand – it beats running to the kitchen every time you need a mop-up. Yoghurt is good writing food, but you need the big tubs, not those poxy little ones that fall over as they get emptier because the spoon suddenly becomes too heavy.

Strangely, cheese and chocolate – two of my favourite leisure foods – are not favourites when it comes to writing. This is because they usually have fiddly wrappings that need two hands to undo them, and that really takes you right out of the novel – usually at a time you can ill afford the interruption, and even I am not such a pig as to consume the waxy rind or the silver paper of these respective products. I still have old metal fillings in my mouth...

Soup, pasta dishes and those nifty little cocktail sticks with chunks of tasty things on them are okay, but the preparation time is the big downfall here. Fine if someone else has prepared them, but food that comes in a packet, ready to eat (or to microwave) takes the first prize in my house every time.

So what is my novel about, you ask? Can’t remember exactly, but the characters do eat several pizzas and drink a lot of Australian wine. Watch this space!

A few months have passed since I wrote about the problems I was having with the fourth draft of my novel. Midway through that draft I realised that a major rethink was needed. My main female character had become the secondary character, while the actual secondary character was staging a coup and taking over the book. While I appreciated his input, I couldn’t let him overshadow her. 

I really liked him though, and didn’t want to water him down or dilute his impact, so my female character just needed to be better. She had to up her game and compete with him. Literally. I needed to put some spark into the dialogue and create more friction between them. She had to be the irritant – without being irritating –and bring to the story something even bigger, which he couldn’t provide on his own. So she became a woman with a bit of a history.

Stephen King warns us in his book On Writing: A Memoir of the Craft that: “The most important things to remember about backstory are that (a) everyone has a history and (b) most of it isn’t very interesting. Stick to the parts that are, and don’t get carried away with the rest.” 

Any woman with a history has secrets, and the best way I could find for my heroine to hold onto her secrets was to let the reader into her head. I worked out the significant events of her past, buried them into her subconscious, rewrote her into first person instead of third, and let those secrets fester for a while. And out of that cauldron came a whole new Bad Guy in my fifth draft!

I don’t want to sound smug, but I do love it when the writing goes well. And sometimes, for that writing to go well, we have to let our characters find their own way. My initial suggestions and plans for my heroine hadn’t turned out well, so instead I let her carve her own path and carve it she did. I gave her an inch and she ran those miles. In doing so, she created more intricate threads and convolutions for the plot. In short, the novel has taken on a new depth and come alive again.

Stephen King builds his books on situations rather than outlines. He likes to put a character (or group of characters) into some kind of situation and watch them work their way out of it. In other words, he creates a sort of “what if?” scenario. It’s rather like mixing two chemicals and waiting to see what happens. The result can go one of several ways – utter dormancy; a symbiotic mix; or fireworks. In novels, it’s the fireworks that we want. Right now, I am watching the fireworks grow in my sixth draft, and making sense of it all.

I don’t expect this novel to be ready by Christmas, but if I was the kind of writer who did, I’d be selling my readers short. Call me old-fashioned but I can’t get into that modern habit of churning out a book every few months (or weeks, as some do). If the book is to be worth reading, then it must be worth waiting for the writer to do it properly, to the best of his or her ability. 

My favourite writers – Kate Morton, Mike Mills and Anne Fortier – don’t turn out books like fast-moving sausage machines, and it shows. Their books are well worth the wait when they are released. Even as I read them, I marvel at the time and effort that must have been spent on building and crafting that intricate plot which I know they created for the sheer enjoyment of me, the reader, and many others like me. Yes, they are books that I read quickly – usually because I can’t put them down once I start – but I relish every moment of them. 

And while I’m waiting for each one’s next release, I have plenty of other favourite authors to read, and probably some unknowns that I haven’t yet discovered. That’s what’s so wonderful about the world of books – there is enough space for all of us in it.

So please excuse me while I leave you and try to follow their examples. I have a novel that needs some more work.

I’ve been renovating my oldest bookcase. It’s not made of special wood, but it was made by a special person – my father. He made it for me when I started university back in 1979, and I have squeezed it into no less than nineteen cottages, flats and basement apartments since then. Despite the acquisition of an additional eight bookcases over the years, my father’s bookcase has remained my favourite, even more precious to me after his death.

In February this year, termites came up through the floor and ate through the bottom plank of it on their way to devouring 24 of my biggest books. The books can be replaced, but the bookcase was one of a kind, never to be repeated. So in the months since then, I have been busy with a project between bouts of writing. There’s nothing quite as satisfying as the restoration of something precious to you, and the repetition of manual tasks frees up the brain to think while the hands are busy.

It struck me during one of these sessions that repairing a bookcase is like fixing a half-written novel. Parts of the original casing (or first draft of the novel) are still fine and serve their purpose, but big changes need to be made to other parts. Termite tunnels in the bottom don’t make for a solid foundation, so what no longer works needs to be unscrewed, cut away and abandoned in the same way that ideas we once thought marvellous for the novel don’t always work when the characters start to think for themselves. 
 
In place of the ruined wood, a new plank (story thread or idea) has to be sourced, bought, cut to size, sanded down, painted with primer, and left to dry. All new story threads need time to mature and develop before they can be woven into the existing plotlines of the novel. 
 
In order to accommodate the new part, the old bookcase has to be sanded down, have all its joints checked for more insect holes, and rusty screws need to be replaced. Old holes once taped up and glossily painted over (plot holes that I may once have tried to hide) must now be undone and repaired. That original plywood backing that I thought I needed can be jettisoned and the shelves can be left open to allow the books to breathe, in the same way that leaving out a non-essential element of the book allows the characters to stand in sharper relief, on their own, and don’t need me to labour a point.

When both parts of the bookcase are ready, holes have to be measured and drilled in the new plank, in exactly the right place to ensure a proper fit. There is only one chance to get this right so, on my story outline, I highlight all the new pieces and work out exactly where each new bit has to slot in, before I adapt the existing text forever and write the new pieces into it. Very carefully, the new plank is inserted as seamlessly as possible into the original piece.

Huge sigh of relief, but the work doesn’t stop there. In fact it’s only just beginning. Once holes and joins are sealed up, the completed piece needs to be re-painted. It’s very tempting to rush ahead with both the painting and the writing before the holes are sealed up, but time and care taken now will be time saved later. 

The bookcase needs an undercoat before the colour, even a second undercoating two days after the first if the old colour or ugly pink primer is still showing through. Two thin coats are always better than one thick one, in the same way that two careful edits of anything you have written will yield better results than one heavy-handed one. 

After each coat has had sufficient time to dry, a light sanding is needed to pare down the rough bits (edit out the glitches) that crept unseen into the previous coating of paint. Test the sanded surface by running your hand over it to feel for uneven textures, in the same way as you need to read your novel aloud to hear what works and what sounds awkward. 
 
Paint manufacturers warn that each coat must be allowed time to dry, especially in adverse weather conditions. Read their instructions properly, and stick to what they say. They have written them to help you, because they know their product better than you do. In the same way, you need to read as many books on writing as you can find, before attempting to join the ranks of published writers already out there. 

Like coats of paint, you cannot write one draft straight after the other – it needs time to cure, to settle down and solidify. You also need time to forget how brilliant you thought you were when you wrote it; time for your brain to forget what you were trying to say, and instead be able to see with fresh eyes what you actually did write. And then you need to re-write it. At any point, feel free to call in other writers, painters or carpenters to give
your work the once-over and point out where you need to fix things.

Be sure that the undercoat is ready before the first coat of colour goes on. I once made the mistake of painting a door before the undercoat had dried properly. The entire thing blistered and had to be re-sanded back down to the undercoat, and the whole process done all over again, this time with a second day in between each coating. It takes monumental patience to watch paint dry; it can’t be rushed, and it’s no good stabbing at messy bits with a paintbrush in the hope of covering them up. It doesn’t work. Be honest and don’t angrily flog recalcitrant bits of plot until they’re dead or no longer recognisable, just because you’re keen to finish writing the novel.

The first coat of colour needs to be followed two days later by a second, but don’t forget another light sanding in between, or that second coat will never be as smooth as you’d like it to be. There is always time for another light sanding, just as there is always time for more detailed editing. Once you're satisfied with the colour, your bookcase will be finished, but wait until you're absolutely sure that the final coat has solidified properly before you pile on the weight of the books. 

Your novel needs to be as perfect as you're capable of getting it before you attempt to send it to prospective agents or publishers, and if you're self-publishing it, then it needs to be even more perfect, so give it yet another edit before you cast your darlings to the wolves.

Good luck with all those books, and watch out for the termites!