Commonword Blogs

And that was the first lesson I learnt in Novel writing. Apparently, you have 3 minutes. Probably less. In that time the words on the first page of your first chapter need to have reached out, grabbed the reader by the collar and shook the life out of them. Beat them. Spat on them. Raped them. Abused them. Or lured them with the promise of… anything that isn’t normal. It seems people are less willing to spend fictional time with normal people, let alone fork out £7.99 to do so.
All first drafts are excrement said Hemmingway.

The Novel starts in 2002 after a chance encounter with a stolen Marechera.
Almost every Zimbabwean writer of my generation has either worshipped or imitated Marechera at any one point. I was one of them. I was 16, reeling from the discovery of the dark foundations underpinning my relationship with the world. 16 and shocked by my place in the mother country - African at best, Zimbabwean at worst. I6; fresh out of the Zimbabwean school curriculum, free to read as I pleased: