Everything must be carried to term before it is born. To wait with deep humility and patience for the hour when a new clarity is delivered: that alone is to live as an artist, in the understanding and in one’s creative work… These things cannot be measured by time, a year has no meaning, and ten years are nothing” — Rainer Maria Rilke
When I first moved to Finland, people often asked: “What was life like as a Black woman during apartheid?”
My response: “I was only a child.”
I wasn’t being dismissive; I truly meant it. And without fail, I’d recommend books by renowned South African authors who had written about the politics of the time. I didn’t think I had a story that hadn’t been told before. Just to clarify, I still don’t have a story about the apartheid system. What I have is a story about people, families, living in 1980s South Africa.
The Discovery Stage
Then, in 2013, I happened upon new information that wreaked havoc and left me questioning what I thought I knew about my happy childhood. As I penned my shock, anger, and feelings of betrayal, I accidentally shot the messenger.
I hurt a loved one; I should have thanked them for sharing that information with me. Because if it weren’t for them, I’d still be in the dark even today. I tell you, I learned a lot from reviving the corpse! And, in the process of reviving, I over-corrected by burying the story even before I wrote it. I was afraid of causing more hurt.
The Foundation Stage
It was only in 2015 that I finally wrote the first draft of my forthcoming novel. I wrote that draft from start to finish in less than three months. The catalyst was the new information and two years brooding about it, yes. But more importantly, it was curiosity and an attempt at sense-making. Writing that first draft was an ugly process… It was purging the pain!
This is a story I didn’t even know I was carrying. As we know, memory is fickle, just as our minds sometimes interpret silence and create stories to fill the void. That fickleness was a gift that ushered me into fiction, where we can create imaginary worlds and professionally lie to tell the truth.
After writing that first draft, I abandoned the story altogether. We’re often told not to write from anger, but not so much about not writing from a place of hurt. I needed distance to learn how to write without hurting the people I love.
The Growth Stage
Just as I shelved the manuscript, I stumbled upon Rainer Maria Rilke’s Letters to a Young Poet. When I read the quote above, I thought: huh, who has time for patience and humility — deep humility at that, in this era of instant gratification! So, I focused on writing poetry instead.
I came back to the manuscript two years later, armed with empathy and humour. The healthy distance offered perspective as I examined the story from all sides, not just two. I had fun imagining and rewriting the story. In fact, I was so happy with the outcome that I stamped the manuscript with a 2019 publication date.
But certain characters wanted nothing to do with my ending. They protested. And when I refused to listen, they pressed on my insecurities instead. Yes, I wrote this book with characters hovering over my shoulder, waking me in the middle of the night, urging me to tell the story.
They asked: What do you want the reader to take away from this story? I told them my wish. “Well, you’re far off the mark. There’s no chance of that happening now. You’ve given the story a too-tidy, too-much-like-pretending ending. Try again.”
The Exploration Stage
Of course, the characters were right; it was a cop-out ending. I needed to confront the difficult issue of forgiveness in my real life before I attempted to channel it into my art. But at the time, forgiveness felt too much like condoning the act.
And I was even more upset when I realised I had to rewrite half of the book. I barely touched the manuscript for the next three years. The word “quit” sat at the tip of my tongue. I questioned the purpose of it all and contemplated abandoning this project. Just then, a fellow writer crafted and sent me the poem below.
The words, Write Yourself Free, helped me realise that fear was also holding me back. Through writing, we both conceal and reveal. My imagination had gone wild, and I feared making the private public. There were no metaphors to hide behind. Now, each time I feel the urge to edit my emotions and imagination, to censor myself, I return to this micro-poem.
The Mastery Stage
People often talk about the evolution of a learner in six stages, with mastery as the fifth one. But in my writing process, mastery never quite feels like a place I arrive at and stay in; I’m a beginner every day. Writing this novel has been a long trial-and-error process that asked me to step outside my comfort zone again and again. I made mistakes, of course, and learned a great deal. It is my first novel, after all, and I already know I will approach the next one differently.
That said, I don’t want the length of time it took me to finish this book to feed the idea that the more one struggles, the better the outcome. I don’t subscribe to that. It took me a long time partly because slow creation is simply how I work. Also, I like to travel, to sit with places, to do research in person where I can, rather than only looking things up online. Despite my intimate knowledge of the novel’s fictionalized settings, I still visited in person. That was some kind of memory recall.
So I’m simply sharing what writing this book looked like for me personally, not suggesting that this is the way to do it. There is so much that could be said about writing advice out there. And perhaps that is part of the point too: each of us must find a way of working that is true to our temperament, our process, and the life we are living. And I’d love to know, has something you made ever taken longer than expected, simply because it needed to ripen in its own time?
The Wisdom Stage
Rilke was right when he said we have to wait with deep humility and patience for the hour when a new clarity is delivered. I came back to the story in 2023 with a clearer artistic vision for this novel, deep humility as I surrendered to where the story wanted to go, and certainly compassion for the characters, and for the parts of myself I had once tried to write around. Seeing the story through to its end was incredibly rewarding. Because the story was no longer mine; the characters showed up and stood behind their truths.
In all, writing this book broke me, but also healed me. It’s the work of art in which pain and joy have lived closest together. Yet, I’m immensely grateful for my experiences. As someone once said: “Nothing bad happens to a writer; it’s all copy.”
And Rilke was right again when he said, these things cannot be measured by time. This served as a constant reminder that the completion of this novel would unfold naturally, on its own schedule, rather than by my arbitrary deadline. By the way, Rilke’s book itself is one of the greatest gifts he gave to the world.
It Will Come. Distorted Is The View; my first novel explores ambition, distance, silence, family fracture, repair, and forgiveness.
It’s coming out on Tuesday, 9th June 2026.
PS. Feature Photo by Debby Hudson on Unsplash. All other images are mine, thanks to my husband.
