So here I sit with the proverbial blank page in the proverbial typewriter (except for the fact that there is no page and no typewriter). But, you get the idea. Ready to start writing a masterpiece. Of course I am quite determined that it will be a masterpiece. The world will never have seen its like before. The acclaim from "those who KNOW" will overwhelm me. The sales will be like nothing like the publishers (the ever doubting and cynical publishers - bless their hearts) could possibly have anticipated. JK Rowling and Stephanie Meyer move over. A new name has arrived in youth literature.

Through it all, modesty will be my watchword. The media will battle to get an interview from me. My privacy, and my family life are essential and I write for the sake of my ART. Never for the sake of filthy lucre.

"I can't take it any any more. This needs to be a dialogue."

Okay, okay! Stop pelting me with the fruit (Ow! I thought it was supposed to be soft and squishy. That was rock-flipping-hard. I'm going to be bruised for days.

How is an artist to work? But then all great artists have suffered for their their art - shivering in and starving in a garret with nothing but a threadbare blanket about their shoulders, while snow lay all around. Just one guttering candle to work by.

"Excuse me! You are sitting on a very pleasantly warm autumn day in Cape Town, with more than enough clothes to keep you warm, even if you were cold (which you're not). And on top of it - you have a decidely well-developed writer's butt! Starving? I don't think so."

Philistine! Have you never seen La Boheme? That was the epitome of the artist's life. So tragique.

"Look, I'm not saying don't write your book. Just get on with it - as though you were a reasonably normal person. Could you pretend, do you think?"

What an absurd thing to suggest.

"What? That you try being normal?"

I do not think that you will ever understand the mind and heart and soul of a writer. There is nothing whatever abnormal about me. What you fail to understand is that I cannot simply get on and write today. It is by no means as simple as that. The muse has quite left me today. And that is certainly your fault - all your fatuous arguing and fault-finding.

"So what are you going to do for the day now?"

Hmm, I think I might go for a walk along the beach.


***************************************

Well, such might be my life, if I weren't genuinely trying to write in order to get published. Make no mistake, a fair share of day dreaming does happen, and there are too many times that days are not adequately productive.

However there is also a fair amount of time spent trying to find other means of earning a living. That is the reality of life. We can't live the life of starving artists in Paris. Well, we could, but it's really impractical. For us in Cape Town, we don't have to go to Paris, we simply need to look around to our nearest sqatter camps.

Informal housing is the lovely politically-correct euphemism for shacks which people have erected from a combination of any materials on which they could lay their hands. This includes corrugated iron, cardboard (none too weather-proof), odds and ends of wood, and anything else available to be make a dwelling which more or less keeps out the weather (so long as it's not too wet, too windy, or too hot ).

There are a couple of similarities between these folk and our starving artists back in Puccini's opera in Paris. Perhaps not on first glance. However, money was and is a real problem with both groups. Food, and therefore healthy nutrition, to be able to combat illness was and is a problem in both groups. Which then follows into the acual illness - TB is rife in our country. Of course, HIV has greatly worsened that situation, but when I was a medical student in the late 70's and early 80's, when HIV was only just coming into its own, and hadn't yet made its dramatic impact, TB was a major killer without the benefit of what started as its accomplice, and has since become its master. And think back to the lyrically tragic love story set in the cold and poor garret in Paris - dear beautiful Mimi died of none other than TB.

And so the story comes full circle. The sad conditions of those starving artists are all around us here. I am grateful that I am not living in those circumstances. But there are many, many who are. Diseases of poverty, overcrowding and malnutrition are all around us. Those conditions have not gone away. We all know these things. So why labour the point again? Is this the usual begging letter? Or the kind of thing to just make statements, make us all uncomfortable, and then we continue as usual?

Well, I don't think I'm in the position to do either of those things. I don't have the backing to be collecting money for some wonderful charity to make a financial cause, and while that can do wonders, I think the most important thing is to inject money into educating, not simply giving handouts. Lift people to be permanently independent - not permanently dependent on you.

No, I'm just one small voice. All I can do is some small thing for one or two people at a time. Does it make a difference? I hope so, in some small way. What I do know is that if all of society in general tried to make a difference to one or two people at a time, society in general would be better. Is that simplistic? Maybe. My big dream is to make a difference to the education of our people. My little dream is to make a difference to one or two people today.

Hopefully my book will eventually get written, and will make a difference to the way some young people feel about some things - mainly about reading. If even one teen can come away from my book feeling a desire to read more, then I guess I will have made the difference in both ways that I want. Someone's education will have been enhanced simply by increasing a desire to read for pleasure, and I will have made a difference in one person's life.