Roads less travelled

I am busy reading a fantastic book called “On The Back Roads” (encounters with people and places), by Dana Snyman. Do yourself a favour and buy a copy it’s a great read with Dana taking you places you may never have been.

In the chapter “The lessons of the open road” Dana writes the following. “Today it is possible to travel the highway all the way from Musina to cape Town and to drive down the main roads of only two towns Beaufort west and Laingsburg. Whether you drive from Gauteng to Kwa-Zulu Natal, or from Cape Town to George, it’s the same story: you miss all the towns along the way. And, yes, some people prefer driving from Ultra city to Ultra city to reach their destination as soon as possible. But that’s not travelling, It’s driving”

This is the type of book I would like to write one day, to me to travel this country by motorbike take photos of the old villages and dorps and to interview the old residents would be first prize. I enjoy writing so much, its almost become therapeutic for me and I find myself wanting to write everyday, whether it be for the Blog or working on other projects. I hated English at school and to write an essay was akin to you sticking needles in my eyes, so how did this metamorphosis come about you may ask. I would probably have to attribute it to a good friend Paul Els, who, to make a long story short 6 years ago persuaded me to research and write the story of Daniel Roxo. I then started to write articles for the local Speckled Bean magazine in Clarens, it was here that I also discovered that I am not half bad at taking a photograph and with the encouragement of Garth and Karen I started to take more than just holiday snaps, today I love combining the story with photographs, not that I am ever going to win competitions or become world famous, but again it has become therapeutic for me and I have learned to look at the world in a different light and notice the small differences in light, shade and colour that do make a difference when looking at something, this I would not have noticed or even cared about in the past

Garth last year sent myself and Kathleen, another SB contributor on a writing course and to be honest at first I thought what a waste of time, “it’s a girly thing” Well I may have been sceptical at first but by the end of the two days I seemed to have discovered another side of me that I had not known before, dare I say it, ‘I discovered my feminine side”, a phrase that I was given to write on initially had me saying “I cannot write a story around that, in fact I wont” was perhaps the best story I wrote over the two days, I will at some stage let you read it, for those perhaps curious to know the phrase I was given , it was “The first waltz


I suppose what I am trying to say is that if I can get enjoyment of writing stories then so can you and so many other people. While its great to have someone come up to you and say “I really enjoyed your article” the enjoyment of writing for me is to compose something out of nothing. I believe that we all have at least one book in us and even if you do not ever publish you can keep a journal of your family that in later years will be treasured by your children or grandchildren. I have learnt there are no set rules as to writing, you can write what you want in your voice and in a language that you understand, its about what makes you and readers happy, that is what makes writing so great, I was always of the opinion that you had to be a Shakespeare, Hemingway or a J K Rowlins to write, this is not true, so if I do anything today its to encourage you to write, this is a gift that Paul inadvertently passed on to me and I will forever be grateful to him as it opened a whole new world of possibilities and challenges.