For Liziwe Ndalana being awarded a place in the Jakes Gerwel Foundation/ LitNet/Huisgenoot’s Kommadagga Workshop means gaining “insight on how to write a story – hopefully a book – worth sharing and publishing.”
It all still “feels unreal” to Liziwe who will be mentored along with her fellow writers in the art of short prose. The writers spend three weeks at the foundation’s Paulet House in October working with their mentors, award-winning authors Rachelle Greeff and Niq Mhlongo
“I’ve been toying with this idea of writing my memoir, but I always felt that I was too young and that maybe I didn’t have enough accomplishments that would sort of give me permission to write a memoir. In 2020, during lockdown, I was locked up and I just started writing with no idea of a plan of how the story would be published. I simply focused on writing. I managed to write about 66,000 words, scraping my memory for events from my childhood. That story died with my laptop, unfortunately.
“When a friend alerted me to the competition, I thought that was the opportunity I’ve been waiting for all my life. Throughout my writing career, I’ve always been drawn to feature writing and I’ve never really written a book before. This was an extension of that, although I must say that it was rather challenging to condense that story into 2000 words which is a fictionalised version of my own life story, represented by the Slindile character,” she says.
Life, nature and quietness, says Liziwe is “what gets my creative juices flowing.” There is all that and more waiting for her at Paulet House in lovely Somerset East.
And unlike at home, she wouldn’t have to wait until night time “when everyone else is sleeping (and with lots of coffee)” for the quietness required to spin a good yarn or four.
Liziwe Ndalana is a freelance writer and blogger, and she has worked as a radio presenter and a content writer for Fin24. In 2007 she graduated with a Diploma in Public Relations Management from the Cape Peninsula University of Technology. Liziwe is active on social media with her own YouTube channel and a blog documenting her hiking and coffee shop-hunting adventures in and around Cape Town. She founded Dream Factor, a club focussing on the advancement of literacy amongst children and adults in Nyanga. As a literacy champion, Liziwe has associations with Nal’ibali and the Fundza Literacy Trust. She also runs her own laundry business in Nyanga.
