Writing can be a solitary but rewarding pursuit
Roy Robins is a creative writer
What does it take to be a creative writer?
It is contained in that very first word: creativity. The creative writer needs to envision a full, fascinating, stylish and self-contained world outside of his or her own world. Even if the life you describe is based on your own life, you need an elevated and invigorated sense of place and self, and the shape of things as you perceive them.
You need to be intuitive, perceptive and vivacious in breathing life into both the familiar and the exceptional. You need to make the familiar exceptional. You need to realise strong characters with real flaws, and create a community so that your characters do not exist alone. In other words, a creative writer is a world-maker. You also need to be comfortable working alone in a room for hours on end. Take solace in silence and the pleasure of simple things: breathing, typing, understanding yourself alone. You need to be all right with spending all morning turning a sentence around and around, putting the right word in the right place. You need rigour and vigour and a lot of self-discipline. Because writing can be a lonely pursuit.
Actually, like all jobs, writing can be very tedious. But when things are going well I can honestly say there is no greater pleasure.
And if you manage to get your writing out in the world, if you find that most coveted of commodities — a readership — all of your time and trouble will be worthwhile.
What was your first job?
A holiday job when I was 17. I worked at a huge toy store in Cape Town, close to where I grew up. It’s gone now, but my memories of the place live on. My primary memory is my shocked discovery that I, as a middleclass white kid and temporary employee, was making more than my fellow black employees, who were permanent and had worked there for years. It was my introduction to wage disparity and the quiet racism of the South African workplace. That human unfairness really bothered me. I came home and wrote a story about it.
How did you end up being a creative writer?
I have always written stories. I was a shy child and I used my imagination as a weapon and an escape. Even before I knew how to write, I would “write” stories. I would hand my mother paper and a pen and dictate stories (which I had already illustrated) to her. Shortly after I learnt to write, I produced a book-length and terribly spelt story called The Planet of Mars Returns to Earth. I still have a copy — and can’t make head or tail of it. As a young adult, I started writing more seriously and frequently — and have never stopped.
What makes your job meaningful?
As a writer, there is a special kind of pleasure in an apt sentence or keen observation. I love describing the world around me — and the world inside me. My favourite aspect is writing something that surprises me.
What advice do you have for young people wanting to write?
Step one: read as much as you can. Explore different genres, eras and tropes. Don’t be afraid of the classics but be in touch with the contemporary scene, too. Immerse yourself in other worlds. Go out and talk to people. Get a sense of how people talk.
Step two: write as much as you can. Keep a diary … of observations of everyday sights, sounds and smells, ideas for novels, lyrics, poems. Don’t expect to be a millionaire. Approach writing as a passion, a vocation.