I walked past this Madame Zingara store in Kloof Street called this is not a post office – looks cute will have to check it out soon.
It reminded me of a time when I had pen pals (I was 12) and how I loved getting letters in our post box. I felt like a grown up getting my own mail in those blue and red airmail envelopes. I had 8 pen pals in total all girls except for 1 boy who was from Egypt. The girls were from all over Europe: Germany, Netherlands, Belgium, France, Denmark, Greece and Turkey. I enjoyed learning about the people, culture and countries thousands of miles away from where I lived. The anticipation of waiting for a letter to arrive for me and when I actually received a letter was so exciting to me. The only thing I regret was not keeping at it and staying in touch with my pen pals.
I write so I call myself a writer regardless of whether I am good or not. It does not matter if I am good, I have a blog, I will write and you poor saps (oops I meant my darling subscribers) will read it. So why do I write? I write because for the first time I’m doing something that I feel comes naturally to me and it does help that I’m a Grammar Gremlin.
I remember the exact moment when I decided I wanted to be a writer. It was when I read my first Roald Dahl book The Witches. It was magical and mesmerising. Who is this man who abandoned all known adjectives and created his own? At school you are taught all these rules as to how you should write but here this man just threw out all the rules and made his own. Then I did what all children do when they grow up and start treading into the murky waters of adulthood, I opted for a sensible career choice and silenced that inner voice that was telling me to dream, create, write.
Now though there are days when I stare at my PC screen and think, now what? The urge to write is there but I feel I have nothing to say and if I do manage to string a few sentences together I wonder who would want to read this garbled mess. I don’t know how I would survive if I had to write on demand for a publication for instance. I’d have a permanent case of writers block. In fact I probably wouldn’t be able to hold down a writing job.
I’m in the process of writing my first novel. This is something I have always wanted to do so it should be easy right? Instead it isn’t. I am an extremely organised person so I always want everything to be structured but I guess I shouldn’t worry about that too much and let the words just flow from mind to keyboard. The only piece of consistent advice that I have read and heard is that to be a better writer I need to keep on writing so no I am not giving up. Not just yet. Probably never.
In other news – since starting this blog last year June I have reached a couple of milestones – I’ve surpassed 300 posts and have had over 10 000 views. I take this as a good sign as I am famous for starting something but not finishing it.
It reminded me of a time when I had pen pals (I was 12) and how I loved getting letters in our post box. I felt like a grown up getting my own mail in those blue and red airmail envelopes. I had 8 pen pals in total all girls except for 1 boy who was from Egypt. The girls were from all over Europe: Germany, Netherlands, Belgium, France, Denmark, Greece and Turkey. I enjoyed learning about the people, culture and countries thousands of miles away from where I lived. The anticipation of waiting for a letter to arrive for me and when I actually received a letter was so exciting to me. The only thing I regret was not keeping at it and staying in touch with my pen pals.
I read and I write things 