There are some truly wonderful people in this world. I had the opportunity to meet with one a few days ago. This lady is a published author of 40 years standing, an English lecturer - I think you get my drift about the kind of qualifications this lady has in the area of writing. Well, the point of all this is that, with all of this going for her, she offered to mentor me - for free!

Ja well no fine, as the saying goes. I was all excited about it when she offered this when I met her in Feb. With one thing and another on her side and on mine, the opportunity for the meeting only came came this last Friday. She had had my manuscript for a few weeks, to read it and do what she felt fit. I simply put it from my mind (actually, I was coughing so violently, there was little chance for anything to remain in it no matter how much it tried to hold on. Poor brain - yet another assault on it.)

Then came the e-mail (pause - dramatic music) Sally, I think we could meet this week.

Oh, that'll be wonderful. Would Friday work for you?

Yes, Friday would be fine. Come at one and we can have some lunch, and then get to work.

Great, I'll see you on Friday.

The week passed, and with each passing day, I came to an increasing realisation of what I was facing. Let me just give you a little flashback in life here:

We are in the early 1980's. I am facing exams. Which exam? Pick one, any one - medicine, surgery, paeds, obs, gynae, whatever - I hated them all. There wasn't an exam that I enjoyed. Exams and I were bad company. And what was the worst part of exams? They were all ORALS and CLINICALS. Performing in front of people was always my worst nightmare. My brain goes into freeze-mode (I-am-frozen-I-can-no-longer-think-please-do-not-ask-me-my-name-definitely-do-not-ask-me-the-underlying-biochemical-reaction-argh-argh-argh-ddying)

Right, so perhaps you might be starting to get a little bit of the picture of what was starting to happen inside me. Of course, This isn't happening to me, I'm fine, I'm not going to have a panic attack about this, This is NOT an oral exam.

Fine? Fine.

But, she's going to rip it to shreds! That's what professional people are meant to do to manuscripts (MS as the professionals refer to them. I will now do that - mainly because it's shorter). She's going to shred my 80 000 word baby. I don't know if I can do this. Oh, this is so hard.

I stop on the way to get a melktert and apple juice to contribute to lunch, and then take a leisurely drive out to Somerset West. Don't know where I'm going, so I've got to leave lots of puncture time. I get there an hour early, which doesn't suit her, so I go off to look at an historic old farm down the road.

I'm back. We chat. We have a leisurely lunch in the garden. We chat about our children. Time is passing, and I'm anticipating the MS-ripping. It's chilly in the garden, but I don't think that's the major reason I'm shivering.

Finally, she starts edging gently into the subject of books and publishing, and what a bad market it is now. Youngsters read less and less, and what they do read - is in competition with TV, the Internet, X-Box, i-Pod, etc, etc, etc. Therefore, the writing has to be different. Snappy, quick, action-filled. No time to describe anything, to build a scene, hardly time to build a character.

Are you feeling breathless? So was I. Then she said: I want you to cut a third out of your book. See, I told you.

That being said, she then sat with me with my MS. She had read the whole thing, and then gone back over the first 9 chapters with a red pen. I haven't seen a red pen all over work of mine since I was in school. Whoa! She was really professional. Once I over my initial mental "Oh my hat! A third - I've got to cut out a third? She's got to be on something." I was able to listen with an open mind and heart.

She knows what she's talking about. She didn't need to take all that time for me, not only to read my MS, but to give me very sound advice.

So you see. Full circle. There are wonderful people in this world. Because of this one, I have a whole lot of work ahead of me. Oh, incidentally, she did say that she does really like my book and would really like to see it published.

Pam Cerff gave me a lovely quote this morning, by Dorothy Parker:
"If you have any young friends who aspire to become writers, the second greatest favour you can do them is to present them with copies of 'The Elements of Style'. The first greatest, of course, is to shoot them now, while they're happy."

Seeing as nobody obliged me with the first greatest favour, I shall have to see if the library has a copy of 'The Elements of Style', to do myself the second greatest favour.

On that happy thought, I bid thee farewell, gentle folks.

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.