Short Story Day Africa spent the weekend curled up with Novuyo Rosa Tshuma’s new book, Shadows, a novella and collection of selected stories. Read an excerpt from Shadows here. Novuyo sketches, with astounding accuracy, the realities of daily life in Zimbabwe and the peculiar intricacies of being [...]]]>

Short Story Day Africa spent the weekend curled up with Novuyo Rosa Tshuma’s new book, Shadows, a novella and collection of selected stories. Read an excerpt from Shadows here. Novuyo sketches, with astounding accuracy, the realities of daily life in Zimbabwe and the peculiar intricacies of being a foreigner in Johannesburg. The writing is vivid, sparse and beautiful. The stories are tragic and funny, and remind us, that no matter what our circumstance, we all share a common humanity. We asked Novuyo to tell us a little about the writing and editing process that went into creating the collection. This is what she said:

Working with Lynda Gilfillan, who edited the work, was such a transforming process; she is a wonderful, meticulous editor with whom it was a delight to work on Shadows. We went back and forth and back. It was one of the most enjoyable parts of the writing process. The editing process taught me, the writer, new things about my own work, which was greatly humbling.

We caught up with the erudite Cat Hellisen, a judge in our Fairy Tales, Myths and Legends Reimagined YA Competition, and asked her what she looked for in a winning story. 

I think fairytale retellings need to step outside the boundaries of the [...]]]> When the Sea is Rising Red Giveaway!

We caught up with the erudite Cat Hellisen, a judge in our Fairy Tales, Myths and Legends Reimagined YA Competition, and asked her what she looked for in a winning story. 

I think fairytale retellings need to step outside the boundaries of the original story, so to keep me reading I’d like to see beautiful but precise language, and an excess of imagination. My own taste is for darker tales, but one of the hardest things to pull off is comedy. If you can do both at the same time, I’m sold.

Cat’s debut novel, When the Sea is Rising Red, has been described as dark, perilous and haunted, rich in atmosphere and romance. It follows the story of seventeen-year-old Felicita.  After her dearest friend Ilven kills herself to escape an arranged marriage, Felicita chooses freedom over privilege. She fakes her own death and leaves her sheltered life as one of Pelimburg’s magical elite behind. Living in the slums, scrubbing dishes for a living, she falls for charismatic Dash while also becoming fascinated with vampire Jannik. Then something shocking washes up on the beach: Ilven’s death has called out of the sea a dangerous wild magic. Felicita must decide whether her loyalties lie with the family she abandoned . . . or with those who would twist this dark power to destroy Pelimburg’s caste system, and the whole city along with it. Read an excerpt here.

Cat is currently working on a new book, Three Dog Dreaming. We asked her about her writing process, and how she works to achieve the perfect combination of language and imagination.

 They were selected from more than 200 entries and are Dawn Garisch (best story), Roger Smith(best thriller), T. O. Molefe (most original), Liam [...]]]> Bloody Satisfied Giveaway!

The National Arts Festival and Mercury are pleased to announce the winners for the Short Sharp Stories which is an anthology of short crime stories entitled BLOODY SATISFIED.

 They were selected from more than 200 entries and are Dawn Garisch (best story), Roger Smith(best thriller), T. O. Molefe (most original), Liam Kruger (best new voice).

This inaugural anthology, introduced with a foreword by renowned crime fiction writer Deon Meyer, is a collection of thrilling twist-in-the-tale stories that make good on the ‘Bloody Satisfied’ promise: slick and sexy stories that brim with danger and elements of the sinister; sophisticated stories that focus on the subtler crimes of everyday life; smart stories that invert expectations and linger in the mind.

Meyer says “This book is immensely entertaining and it’s a pleasure to be associated with it. It contains the best 24 out of an astounding more than 200 contributions. It includes word-class, internationally famous authors, and a very large number who will soon fall into that category.”

We are giving away two copies of BLOODY SATISFIED to Short Story Day Africa followers. Follow us on twitter or Facebook so you don’t miss out! Winners announced 21 June 2013.

“Buy it. Read it. Relish it.” DEON MEYER

“A cracking, eclectic South African collection with stories of stunning originality and skill.” SARAH LOTZ

“here’s something that’ll leave even the Gupta’s gobsmacked! The backstabbing, the guile, the arrogance, the plot twists… it’s all in here!”  FRED KHUMALO

Enquiries for purchase can be made to Staurt Hendricks of  Mercury.

Editing. Rewriting. Doing it all over again.

‘Even the seven year olds?’

Especially the seven year olds.

I wasn’t introduced to the true concept of rewriting until I was in high school. Even then, it was presented more as a method [...]]]> I watch people’s eyes widen with disbelief, ‘You’re going to teach the kids what?’

Editing. Rewriting. Doing it all over again.

‘Even the seven year olds?’

Especially the seven year olds.

I wasn’t introduced to the true concept of rewriting until I was in high school. Even then, it was presented more as a method to catch spelling and grammatical mistakes. To this day, I do not understand why this skill isn’t given greater emphasis. In maths one of the first things I was taught, after the basic ability to count, was to check my sums. Why, if this is essential in mathematics, would we not emphasise such a concept in writing papers? Our day to day lives are built on communication – emails, sms, reports, presentations…it goes on and on. It isn’t only writers that write.

Editing. Rewriting. We except so much of our children these days – hour of homework and continuous assessments of children as young as six. Why is it so hard to believe that people, who only recently gained the ability to hop on one foot, can not comprehend the notion of try, try again? We expect so much, and yet not enough.

Editing

 1. Write your first draft out before you edit.

This is crucial with young children. If they spend too much time checking spelling or fretting about nice even lines, they forget the story they were trying to tell. Make them finish the first draft before they are allowed to worry about the mess. All first drafts are ugly. But we all have to start with something before we can get anywhere.

2. Take a break!

I tell kids that Stephen King is adamant that writers shouldn’t touch their manuscripts for six weeks between drafts. However, young people and short story writers often don’t have six weeks to meet a deadline, nevermind having six weeks to spare for a piece to mellow. So I encourage the children to, at the very least, sleep on it.

‘So our minds can think again,’ one said.

Precisely.

3. Ready to edit? Read the entire story ALOUD!

Yes, we all look ridiculous while doing it, but it works. It slows the mind down, and allows the ear to hear the difference between prose that flow and those that jangle.

This is especially true with dialogue.

‘Me go now,’ said a teacher.

I looked at the kids. ‘Your two year old baby sister talks like that, but whose ma’am would ever speak like this?’

They giggled. ‘No-one’s!’

We discussed an info dump. I launched into a long description of a house, echoing a first draft given to me the year before.

‘This is boring!’ an eight year old said.

Yep.

We talked about filtering the information in as the story progresses.

‘So is it okay if I write everything about that on a separate piece of paper so as I write my story I can put the details in?’ inquired an eleven year old.

Please do.

4.     Get thee a thesaurus!

If I have to hear the word ‘big’ or ‘pretty’ ever again, it may be too soon. Children adore those words. But to be fair, most people while knocking out their first draft latch on to particular words and use them ad nauseam. The key when starting your second draft is to recall my motto: Variety is the spice of life.

5.     Nothing is written in stone! (Unless you really did chisel it into stone.)

I encouraged the children to view their drafts as pieces to a puzzle that could be moved at will. That some of these pieces, even really beautiful pieces, might have to be tossed out. Not because they are not wonderful, but because they don’t suit the story.

‘Well,’ said a seven year old girl, ‘all you do is put that bit on a piece of paper and then just use it in another story later.’

Seven. Years. Old. Hanging upside down in her chair with her head under the table. Didn’t think she was listening to a word I said and she nailed the concept in a blink.

6.     Fresh eyes!

After so many drafts your eyes begin to lie to you. Get another person to read your work. New eyes see new things.

7.     A writer’s work is never done.

There is always room for improvement. Only a deadline should stop you from revising. Rewrite! Rewrite! Rewrite!

‘That’s rather exhausting,’ said a girl of eight. ‘I’m going to do three.’

At eight, three is brilliant. We’ll take it.

(Now if only I could follow my own advice and get an editor for this blog. Do as I say, not as I do. . .)

To pre-order Short Story Day Africa’s Two Anthologies due out in December 2013 please donate to our Indiegogo campaign.

“Dear Diary, Today I walked around The Point and picked up a dassie. When I kissed it, the dassie turned into the ugliest and hairiest man you ever saw. I am never ever doing that again! I guess you have to stick to [...]]]> Short Story Day Africa, the children, the fairy tales & me

“Dear Diary, Today I walked around The Point and picked up a dassie. When I kissed it, the dassie turned into the ugliest and hairiest man you ever saw. I am never ever doing that again! I guess you have to stick to frogs if you want a prince.”

For Short Story Day Africa 2012 we ran contests for the YA and kids. Children told stories of rocks that glowed and scarves that could strangle you to death. The YA group sent us stories from the city, some were imaginative, others made you want to weep. It was interesting for everyone involved, but lessons were also learnt. For example the age brackets were too broad. Also, if we wanted to do an anthology the next year (we do) then we needed a theme that would mesh.

Problem is, there isn’t a lot of overlap in taste when it comes to a preschooler vs a kid vs a tween vs a teen.

“We never heard them approach. Silently they slipped into position like a plotting snake, wrapping themselves around the church. The world had found us. They wanted our men, young and old. The women can leave, they said.”

But everyone loves a good story. The stories that get us while we are young, the ones that stick, however, are the myths, legends, fables that shape our time. Who hasn’t heard of a fairy tale? So I thought of Gillian Schutte, who recently ran a project having adults rewrite these sort of tales. What if we did something similar with the YA / kids?

 ”I went back in. Each woman, young and old, stooped down and gladly accepted her burden. With heads held high, we women left in single file. We left with only ourselves and the men on our backs.”

Short Story Day Africa has many goals and visions for the future. Like getting our contests to eventually accept entries in languages other than English. (Laying the ground work for that one. May take us some time.) But for now, my biggest, being the YA/Kid coordinator, is to get more writers into the classroom. Not just the YA / children’s writers. Most of them already do that. But all of us, taking our craft and braving the snot, the tears and the head lice.

“Struggling to push himself up, an icy wet hand grasped his ankle. His final shrieks fell on the empty shore, until they were swallowed by the depths of the sea. The only sound that remained was the soft rhythm of the ocean’s endless parade of waves.”

Rachel and I have discussed this a lot, this strange disheartening phenomena slithering into classrooms that is choking our children’s creativity. I’m not sure exactly why this is, but I hear a lot of theories – to blaming video games to parenting to the way we teach. This article was also interesting -  Let’s teach kids how to write by asking them what they want to say writes Carole Block. All I know is that I have met children who at 4 or 5 can tell me tales of cows that live on the moon and shells that glow who by age 9 stare at a piece of blank piece of paper in horror and when asked, ‘Tell me a story,’ they cry.

“Max Hare was known as the fastest jet racer in the DR8N Galaxy. He was also a bully.”

I often get asked how to run a writing workshop for YA / children. I usually make some crack about dino earrings. But the truth is, I don’t know. Although I’m sure you can find a professional to explain it.

“They were off. Max zoomed at full warp speed, zipping around the asteroids that hurdled into his path. He was quick, but his flight path was erratic, wasting plasma as he veered widely around the course.”

However, if my years in coaching are anything to go by, I’ve found that if you try to impress kids you’ll probably fail. That if you try to get them to like you, they probably won’t. That if you think you’re cool, they’ll think you’re lame. That you better not be yourself, or they’ll eat you alive. But you better not be a fake. Be quick on your feet, be honest when you don’t know something and have a plan. But…

always be prepared to watch your plan burn into a pile ashes.

“And from the ashes she rose, her rage flying off her like flames. I’m sick of being rescued. I’m tired of waiting for some smelly old prince.”

 After today’s workshops, I’ve decided Rory’s Story Cubes are my new best friend. They rock. They’ve been tossed by 4&5 yr olds and the 35 year old (that’s me) along with the 9, 10, 11, 12 and 13 year olds (all of whom eventually had to be warned that I knew exactly how many dice there were, so no trying to take off with any.) I offered them SSDA’s writer’s block busting cards. They told me they were nice. But they’d rather have their own Story Cubes. (Well, excuse me. Those don’t download from a website.)

Short Story Day Africa is learning, right there with the kids. And like any kid, we’re trying to grow. We are trying to reach more kids, more adults and create two anthologies. If you are interested in helping our campaign please pre-order one or two of the anthologies by donating to our Indiegogo Campaign.

If you are interested in entering one of our competitions please keep checking in at our website. (Things change. Daily. Keep clicking.)

If you are a writer and want more non-advice on getting into a classroom or a library, please get in touch on kids AT shortstorydayafrica DOT org

Starting 27th May 2013, the fourteen long-listed stories in the Writivism competition are running online at the Readers Cafe Africa website and in print in The Observer newspaper. Writivism is a competition that seeks to engage young writers and readers in public discourse, connecting literature to real life. Each [...]]]>

Writivism Long-listed stories NOW AVAILABLE!