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I have spent most of the last six days in bed. I've had sciatica, a terrible pinching of the sciatic nerve that runs down your leg from your hip. It's given me lots of time to think and read and listen to short story podcasts. And it gave me time to think about how efficiently pain focuses your mind. When I tried to stand or move in a way my sciatic nerve didn't approve of, a sharp burning pain would run down my leg, the worst pain ever, and I've had two children. It really forced me to clear out all other thoughts and focus on it alone. It was like a superpower for focusing.
I lay there in my bed thinking how much I wished I could have pain's focusing power for other things. When I'm writing, so many things push there way in and fuzzy up my mind, make me lose track of what I really want ...
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When starting a short story or a novel, one of the first decisions you must make is how the story is going to be told, this is the point of view. You have a few different choices each with their advantages and disadvantages.
First person
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Matlapeng blames himself for her death. Things might have been different if only he had done the right thing from the beginning. She came to him that icy day in a controlled panic. "I've got the results," she said." I'm positive." It meant he was likely positive too. They'd been lovers for more than five years, but she was the one who was sick. "I've thought about it. Mosadi knows of a church. It's up north near the border."
"Tebby, you know it's not like that." He took her small pretty face in his hands. He loved her with desperation at that moment, like a favourite toy that he'd soon have to give away. "It's a virus. Didn't they speak about ARVs at the clinic?"
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I've been sort of taking the easy route lately with my blog. On Mondays posting one of my short stories and on Wednesdays recycling my columns from The Voice newspaper that many of my blog readers aren't able to read. I thought today we might do a bit of a catch-up.
1. Most of this year so far I've been working on editing my far too ambitious novel, If Not For This, which I discussed in My Next Big Thing. I reorganised a lot and edited as much as I could and now I've sent it off to three people who were brave enough to offer their incredible brains and eyes in an attempt to improve on my mess. My hope was that I would get all of their comments back and then get invited to one of the two of the writers residencies I applied to, then I would go off and spend a month or so with their comments ...
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He arrived with the spicy purple of the sunset, at the end of a long, hot, dusty day. They sat on the cool veranda and watched him walk up the side of the road into town.
"Where's he from?" asked Mma Boago the owner of Mable's Takeaway, a takeaway that had never known a woman by the name of Mable.
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I get emails and phone calls from people with all sorts of questions. I thought it might make more sense to answer some of them here.
1. I've written a Christian counselling book, how can I find a publisher?
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Every kid in America knew Sea Monkeys. The perfect little undersea nuclear family. The tall commanding father with his crown and long monkey tail with a little arrowhead at the end. The kindly mother with her Mary Tyler Moore flip hairstyle except in blond so we all knew she was a stay at home mom. That's what blond hair meant in the 1970s. The prepubescent daughter, naked, with her perfect white toothed smile. And the naughty baby brother. They lived under the ocean in their majestic purple castle, a happy loving home full of fun and laughter. I suspected they played lots of board games together. From the moment I saw the Sea Monkey advert I had to have them.
I dreamt about my future Sea Monkey life. They would be my friends. At first a bit confused about the abrupt shift from their ocean ...
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Nora Roberts is one of the most successful authors ever and yet her books never appear in the New York Times Book Review or The London Review of Books. The reason they give is that romance is not considered serious literature, but that's not true. What they mean to say is that romance written by women is not serious literature. A US group just released a study that shows despite the talk men are just taken more seriously in the book world even if they write romance.
"Marina Warner, author and reviewer, described the imbalance as "marked", pointing out that it also applies to which titles are given to which reviewers, "reflecting how readers are subtly influenced to respond - even before starting to read. [So] a romance by a male author reviewed by a male reviewer gains stature beyond the ...
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Bontle hated everything about Gaborone Birding Club: the heavy khaki shorts that created an embarrassing 'shwish' sound when walking, the wide expanse of khaki vest advertising she'd not earned a single birding badge, and, most of all, the pith helmet written- "I'm a Gaborone Birder!".
The members lived in some La-La Land where bird lists and call recognition created an odd hierarchy they worshipped with voracity unseen outside of African Evangelical Churches. She knew on their ladder she was at the bottom rung, but she also knew she had only herself to blame. It all began because of lust and a lie.
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