The editor’s meme

One thing I love about the internet: everybody knows what a meme is (I like the punning angle too, me-me). There’s been one doing the rounds for about a week (which means it’s probably already had its day), a poster describing a profession from the perspective of society, parents, friends and the person doing the job.

Here’s the one for publishers, for example.

Some folk are already sick of the meme, and there are some lovely parodies as well, but it really tickles me.

I think this is because I love what I do so much, and yet it isn’t immediately clear to folk what I mean when I say I’m an editor. I sat next to a very clever British engineer at a wedding this week, and upon hearing what I did for a living, he said “So you correct people’s grammar, then?” Sarah Lotz overheard, and zinged back, “She tells authors to cut the crap, and that they can do much better.” Cue confusion.

So I went home and collected the following images, which Rustum Kozain very kindly made into a poster so I could put it on my Facebook wall. (Thanks, Mr Grondwerk — it’s much appreciated.) And so this, my dear ones, is what I do, what I love doing, and what I will be doing until I drop in harness, or the world ends, whichever comes first.

Here’s Rustum’s poster:

Here are the pictures (a little different):

This is what society thinks I do:

This is what my friends think I do:

This is what my mother thinks I do:

(What my mother, my friends and society all think I do is pretty interchangeable, I should add.)

This is what publishers think I do:

This is what my authors think I do:*

This is what I think I do:

This is what I really do:

When I’m not doing this:

* True confessions: I put together this entire post just so that I could publish this picture.

A prayer to St Valentine

I wish… I wish Valentine’s Day was actually Vagina Day.

I wish it was a day with a total embargo on rape, a day when not one woman got hit or hurt or trafficked or enslaved, not anywhere in the world.

I wish it was a day when huge posters of paintings by Georgia O Keefe would be plastered all over billboards, and people would plant flowers instead of flying cargoes of limp, scentless forced roses all over the world.

I wish it was a day when businesses would donate truckloads of pads and tampons to women in poor communities, a year’s supply. Along with lots of clean undies. Oh, and painkillers for cramps, too.

I wish it was a day when the government would launch a huge fleet of mobile family planning clinics into the rural areas, staffed by motivated and enthusiastic health workers.

I wish it was a day when every single doctor, nurse or midwife who provides reproductive care (including caring for HIV-Aids patients) in the public health sector could get a free slap-up dinner in a fancy restaurant, with champagne or strawberry juice according to preference.

I wish it was a day when every medical facility, including the posh, private ones, would offer free, safe sterilizations to anyone who wanted them. And free Pap smears, too, administered with care and gently heated speculums.

I wish it was a day when every rape survivor testifying in court could do so with a hot-water bottle on her lap, or a lovely friendly dog at her feet in the witness box, and a box of chocolates for afterwards.

I wish it was a day when companies who manufacture cosmetics would invest in making affordable biodegradable pads and tampons, along with safe re-usable sponges and mooncups.

I wish it was a day when businesses would open shops selling only locally made fair-traded V-day gifts, lovely indigenous beadwork and pretty Proudly South African lingerie, instead of a flood of tacky, job-destroying Chinese tat.

And because Vagina Day shouldn’t just be about women, I wish V-day could also be Vasectomy Day. With legislation that gave every man who got the snip the choice of either five grand in cash, or a small tax rebate for life.

Not exactly a Christmas piece (but there is an editor’s Christmas card)

I tend to sail past Christmas, ignoring it, the legacy of observing “Black Christmasses” back in the mid-80s, a luxury I’ve been able to keep up thanks to the absence of a conventional family, with kidlets demanding traditions like trees and letters to Santa Claus. (Speaking of which, every year I get a card franked “North Pole”… it’s a tiny one-horse-with-three-legs town close to Fairbanks, Alaska, with a very popular post office.)

I digress. Contemplating the gift conundrum (phone calls to one’s nearest and dearest: “Do NOT get me a present because no ways am I getting you one – unless you want a book?” *last phrase uttered in hopeful tones*) leads to thoughts of gifts and gratitude in general. And this year, the most astonishing cornucopia of gifts and opportunities kept showering down my chimney.

I am truly, deeply grateful for them all, and I thought I’d share two of the best – or rather, the two that made me cry the most (in a good way).

First of all, golden girl Lauren Beukes went and won the Arthur C. Clarke award for her second novel, Zoo City, a bravura tale of dystopia and magic in a Jozi that’s alarmingly familiar. I all but did somersaults of joy; having worked on both Zoo City and Moxyland, I know Lauren is an editor’s dream: hard-working, committed, feisty, humble, utterly without ego.

As if that wasn’t enough, this is what Tom Eaton said to me after Lauren’s triumph: after pointing out that she was writing in a genre read by hundreds of thousands, he noted that her work would inspire imitations, riffs, responses, innovations (of course he was right: check here for the tip of the iceberg). “And what this means, Helen, is that you’re not just a writing mother. You’re going to be a grandmother.”

It still makes me tear up.

Second of all, I was lucky enough to edit a lot of fiction – good fiction – this year, and what a joy it was. I really should write at length about how special it was: and I would like to thank Thando Mgqolozana, Siphiwo Mahala, Terry Westby-Nunn, Mark Thornton and Richard de Nooy (collectively known as “the Lambs”) for teaching me so much, and writing such beautiful books. You made this year magical for me. But it was the dedication that Thando (also known as “Youngest Child”) wrote that undid me completely. Here it is, unadorned:

“Siphiwo Mahala, Zukiswa Wanner, Pumla Dineo Gqola, Angela Makholwa, Zakes Mda, Cheryl Potgieter, Ndumiso Ngcobo and Helen Moffett: this book would be dedicated to you, for reasons known to me – if it were not dedicated to your children and kitties, whom I shall name on another day.”

I blamed the sleep deprivation at the time, but it made me sob audibly. It still has me reaching for the tissues.

So there you have it: this sentimental cynic is deeply grateful for all the wonders and gifts I get on a daily basis simply because I am lucky enough to work in the booky business and with booky people. Hats off to you all.

PS: These are the fabulous novels I edited this year: go stuff them into some stockings. And enjoy.

Hear Me Alone by Thando Mgqolozana

African Delights by Siphiwo Mahala

The Sea of Wise Insects by Terry Westby-Nunn

Kid Moses by Mark Thornton

The Big Stick by Richard de Nooy.

Three reasons it is actively cruel to call me on my cellphone

Not strictly a booky post, but within a week or so of posting this as a Note on my Facebook page, I had yet more calls from strangers requiring professional services, all of whom had gotten my cellphone number from booky people who know me. I hate having to chastise folk about this, so I thought I’d simply create a link I can send. Also good to do some disability awareness work.

The three reasons:

1) Remember, I have only 50% hearing. (I am not going into why the usual options — hearing aids, surgery, etc — haven’t worked so far.) I keep having to remind people of this because I’m good at lip-reading.* Those with normal hearing don’t realise it, but there’s a huge difference in sound quality and clarity between fixed-line phones and cellphones. I’m mostly able to manage on a landline, but on a cellphone, I can rarely hear more than one word in ten.

2) Aggravating my hearing situation: I live on the side of a mountain with notoriously bad reception. Every time my cellphone rings (that’s if I can hear it), I have to run round in circles in search of that elusive single bar indicating (extremely limited) reception. Followed by several headless chicken minutes of crackle, hiss, and gnat-like buzzings from my phone as I bellow “WHO IS THIS I CANNOT HEAR YOU.” It is hard to come across as either professional or friendly while bellowing.

3) My parents, who are in their late seventies, live alone on a remote smallholding in the rural Free State. I shouldn’t have to spell out why I can never, ever switch my cellphone off for more than an hour or two, or why I keep it on all night. Or why, when I see a number I don’t recognise (police? neighbour? hospital?) at peculiar times of day and night, I HAVE to take the call. Which means that every time I see a strange number or “unknown caller” indicating an incoming call, especially outside working hours, I experience a tiny stab of pure terror.

I’ve been asking folk, with varying degrees of politeness, not to ring me on my cellphone for YEARS. I don’t mind close friends and family, who are used to the situation, calling me (usually after trying my landline), but for any professional discussion, it’s impossible. I’m terribly self-conscious about coming across as rude, crazy and far more disabled than I actually am.

My cellphone exists for purposes of sending/receiving TEXTS and calling the AA when I break down. That’s it, good people. And it should be crystal-clear by now: giving my cellphone number out to anyone, especially for professional purposes, is a hanging offence. There are absolutely no exceptions to this rule. Not even if George Clooney offers you money for it. Not even (breaks into sweat) Daniel Day-Lewis.

What’s that, you say? How to contact me to offer me a plum job? Social media is an absolute Goddess-send to folk like me, and I’m almost constantly online, so you can always post a comment on my blog here, or send me a Facebook message. And I haven’t changed my email address in 14 years — please ask your booky contact for that, rather than my cellphone number.

*An aside on lip-reading: contrary to what Hollywood would have you believe, this is not some mystic and infallible ability, a bit like being able to play Chopin’s Fantasias by ear or spin twenty-two plates at once — although I’m good at the latter as well. Lip-reading takes practice, and it’s tiring, as it takes absolute focus. The faces of strangers are far harder to read than friends; the closer the friend, the easier it is to lip-read them. Moustaches/beards and botox are death; folk who put their hands over their mouths as they talk (more common than you might guess) and mumblers make my smacking hand itch. Folk with foreign accents are murder: their mouths form words slightly differently, even if English is one of their mother tongues. To my HUGE chagrin, homogeneity rules — I find my own racial, national and linguistic group the easiest to lip-read; white South Africans who speak English at home. I wish this wasn’t so, but it is, although this applies only to strangers. Friends of all stripes, hues and accents are the easiest by far — the most NB criteria then, for being a good read, is willingness to spend a bit of facetime with me.

Nine noteworthy things about Karen Lazar’s memoir, Hemispheres*

* in the style of Maya Fowler and Colleen Higgs

(Read about the launch here.)

1. The cover is intriguing. I thought the main image was a piece of intricately worked and fragile lace. I was wrong. See if you can guess correctly.

2. I read it in one sitting. All the time I was reading it, I was trying (unsuccessfully) to slow down, wanting the experience to last.

3. I cried twice, first at the fragment “Noluthando”, then at the fragment “A Place of Hope”. I defy anyone not to weep at “A Place of Hope”.

4. It is exquisitely written, with grace and austerity. It takes the form of a series of short fragments, some of which read like prose poems.

5. It is also exquisitely edited, as close to perfection as I have seen. I don’t know how much this is due to Karen herself, or input from early readers. But I salute Nella Freund, the editor thanked in the Acknowledgements. I did not see one excess or awkward word, not one misplaced comma. Brava.

6. The page design is subtly quirky, appropriately off-balance. It forced me to rethink the structural, physical process of reading. See if you can spot the anomaly…

7. There is no trace of self-pity. This might have something to do with a reality that underpins this memoir without being directly addressed, except at the beginning, where Karen dedicates her account to those she has met facing greater physical challenges, but with scant resources. That reality is the apparent absence of any financial anxiety — after Karen’s paralysing stroke, there is private health care and rehab — also trips abroad, wheelchairs and a zippy scooter. There is also a large, loving and supportive family. Throughout, I got the sense that Karen considered herself exceptionally fortunate, rather than unfairly afflicted.

8. It made me think very hard about how people with disabilities are perceived (or not perceived), especially in South Africa, where so many “categories” of human being have been or still are despised, degraded, ignored, discriminated against. There was a slight flicker of progress during the 1990s: bathrooms that could be accessed by wheelchair, ramps, braille buttons outside lifts, the banning of smoking in public places (enabling hundreds of thousands of asthmatics to re-enter the world beyond their homes). Precious little since. Those with mental illnesses and devastatingly traumatic pasts are sometimes given a platform by the book and media industry. But while we read accounts by brave souls fighting their way back from drug addiction and child abuse, we don’t see titles like “My Life in a Wheelchair” on the shelves, much less flying off them. Physical affliction still embarrasses us. This slim book challenges our squeamishmess, but not in the form of a reproach — it comes as a gift.

9. It closes with the most lovely, intuitive and literally poetic anecdote: talking to a doctor about how she might recover French, a language lost to her after her stroke, Karen gets this advice: “Read French poetry.”

Remembering Bob Woolmer: 14 May 1948 – 18 March 2007

Tomorrow will be the fourth anniversary of Bob Woolmer’s death at the ICC World Cup in the Caribbean. It feels like yesterday that I was in the West Indies for the final matches of the 2007 World Cup, which I attended partly as a kind of pilgrimage in Bob’s honour — I still cannot see a palm tree without a dart of emotion.

This first World Cup since his death has brought him back to me countless times, and I find that the oddest things trigger tears. The other day, it was the news that England player Steve Davies had declared openly that he was gay, the first international cricketer to do so. Immediately, I heard the voices of Bob and Prof Tim Noakes, co-collaborator on The Art and Science of Cricket, in my head:

Bob: Makes absolutely no difference, no difference at all. It’s how he plays that matters. All that matters. Course we didn’t talk about these things when I was playing, but the game has to keep adapting and moving forward, that’s the important thing.

Tim: But this is very important. We must put this issue in the book. There must be other gay professional cricketers and athletes, I wonder if there is any research on how they cope? Helen, can you try and find out, and write something up?

I cannot claim to miss Bob the way his family and friends do, a steady ache in the bone, a step constantly missed in the dark. But once I was part of something big, and it wasn’t just as junior partner in the writing of the mammoth and magisterial Art and Science of Cricket, which now bears Bob’s name. It was getting to be a fly on the wall of the friendship between two geniuses – both the best in the world at what they did. I miss being in the presence of giants who had the freshness of children. Their open-mindedness, their constant curiosity blew a heady breeze through the stuffy halls of cricketing tradition, and I miss that too, but most of all I miss the way they sparked fresh enthusiasm in each other, and those around them – including myself. There was always a bit of magic trailing in the air behind them.

Little has been said about Bob at the 2011 World Cup so far, although he is doubtlessly not far from the thoughts of many: Inzamam ul-Haq, the former Pakistan team captain, said “Pakistan should try to do well in this ICC Cricket World Cup not only for the country, but also for our late coach Bob Woolmer, who always believed we had the potential to be the number one side in the world” (ESPN Star).

As I follow the World Cup via television, I wonder why there is so little commemoration of Bob, or mention by the commentators. After all, Bob’s legacy is everywhere I look – Gary Kirsten, who probably more than any other elite coach today practices his trade in Bob’s mould, is steering the Indian team to what might well be a win on home soil; the flashes of brilliance, the heartening improvement in the performance of the “minnow” teams remind us of Bob’s years as the ICC High Performance manager; the reverse sweep pioneered by Bob is taken for granted as a response to the spinning ball.

Some of the most senior players on and off the field are pure graduates of the Woolmer Way: most obviously, Jacques Kallis and Younus Khan (who in the last few years has dedicated almost every victory or man-of-the-match award to the memory of Bob, whom he loved like a father). But there are plenty of others – Shahid Afridi, Shoaib Akthar, Kamran Akmal and Abdul Razzak all benefited from Bob’s tutelage. In Bob’s great book, we featured various players demonstrating their skills in the technical photographs: Jacques Kallis (batting), Allan Donald (bowling), and Jonty Rhodes (fielding). In the 2011 World Cup, Kallis is wielding the willow as one of the world’s undisputed greats, Donald is doing a creditable job as the Blackcaps bowling coach, and Rhodes is tweaking the Kenyan side’s fielding.

I know they all remember Bob, for whom the subcontinent was familiar territory (he was born in India), and who must be a lingering presence at many of the grounds. Perhaps those who loved Bob don’t talk much about him in public because, like me, they are still outraged at the bungling that followed his death, the media vulture storm, and are saddened that unanswered questions about this tragedy still darken their memories. They prefer to remember the man they knew, not the mess after his death.

Last year, I vehemently opposed proposed new legislation to curb the media and restrict freedom of information in South Africa. But even as I did so, I remembered the horror of watching rumours and frank fabrication bloom like algae in the wake of Bob’s death. Stranded at the time in the American South, whose inhabitants ignore the phenomenon of cricket, my only way to track the breaking story was via the internet and phone-calls home across a jarring time-lag. I remember the wilder rumours that Bob’s other co-authors (including myself) were to be targeted by his alleged assassins, the 3am call from a journalist hunting dirt, reading online that our book had been snatched away by a British publisher (a bald lie). I realised, for the first time, the extent to which tabloids lead the broadsheets by their noses.

I can’t help wondering if shame isn’t part of the reason for the muted voices on Bob and his legacy to the game, and particularly the World Cup. Many members of the Pakistan team at the time suffered enormous guilt over their humiliating loss to Ireland at the knock-out stage, wondering if their shock defeat was a precipitating factor in Bob’s death later than night (a fundi later told me “I think they broke his heart – literally”).

But the press behaved worst of all during those long months in which we all believed that Bob had been murdered, and everyone was hunting for a motive. I like to think that with hindsight, some of those news broadcasters realised that speculating to the point of slander about a man who died doing his job thousands of miles from home, and whose family needed concrete answers, wasn’t quite the same as reporting on whether a starlet was cheating on her latest squeeze. It’s possible that they don’t wish to be reminded of the depths to which they sank four years ago.

Everyone who knew or met Bob remarked on the transparent decency of the man, his affable nature, his passion for coaching, and his enthusiasm for the future. He was by no means starry-eyed about his work – in the unpublished memoir he had started writing just before his death, his exasperation with the various cricket administration bodies he had worked with is clear. But other than his perhaps controversial view that disgraced former captain Hansie Cronje should have been rehabilitated back into the game (a view that was no secret), there is nothing scandalous or murky in his unfinished writings. Like everything else he wrote, and did, they reveal that he loved, and lived for, two things: his family, and the game of cricket.

The world of cricket moves fast, but I hope that tomorrow, it stops for a minute to salute a man whose coaching style is imprinted on the way the game is played, and who, quite literally, gave his life to cricket.

Stuff that (would-be) authors need to know 4: So take a course already

Everyone in the book business is familiar with the Sidle Query: you’re at a party, lecture, bar mitzvah, wedding or memorial service when someone sidles up to ask if you have any ideas on how they can get their novel/poetry/memoir published. There are a number of responses: one writer asks, “What are you reading right now?”, and if she gets a blank look, she makes a hasty getaway.

My preferred method is to ask what local authors the Sidler reads, and which local publishers they see as a good fit for their MS. Nine times out of ten I get either the blank look or a frank demurral – “Oh, I don’t read local stuff!”, at which I become very stern, and the unfortunate Sidler scuttles away.

Then there is the Sidler who hasn’t written a book – yet. They have an amazing story to tell, they confide. Child abuse. Travels with the lost tribes of Patagonia. Their battles with cancer/divorce/bereavement/addiction. A children’s book. A novel that will outsell Harry Potter. A book of religious inspiration. (Some of their tales sound truly fascinating: one octogenarian regaled me with her adventures smuggling herself and four children across Spain and Portugal during World War II. Apparently she seduced a sea-captain into sailing them back to Blighty. I really hope she wrote that story.)

But how and where should they start? » read more

Of Fellows and falling dictators: a jolly jaunt to the Nellie

Elinor has been by with her magic carpet again. This time she whisked me off to a banquet at the Mount Nelson on Friday night: the Nieman Foundation was celebrating the 50th anniversary of South African participation in their Fellowship program. To be a Nieman Fellow is very special: it’s the most prestigious international award for mid-career journalists, who are treated to a year at Harvard University, working on whatever they like. Very early on, the program developed ties to the anti-apartheid movement, as it gave South African journalists the opportunity not just to write and reflect, but to do so unharassed by the apartheid police, without the restrictions of bannings and fear of detentions. For Lewis Nkosi, winning this fellowship was bittersweet – it also marked the beginning of an exile that lasted nearly four decades (scroll down this link for a lovely photo of Lewis shortly before his death). Zwelakhe Sisulu returned home after his year as a Fellow in the knowledge that he would go directly to jail. While he was being held without trial, his Nieman colleagues awarded him the Louis M. Lyons Award for Conscience and Integrity in Journalism. The program has a very proud tradition in South Africa, and rightly so.

I trip into the Nellie » read more

The year I crossed the mountain

While it’s still January, let me say this about 2010. It wasn’t a happy year: loss ran through it right to the end. Mostly other people’s losses, but the kind that undermine faith and hope. That being said, it was the year I fell in love – twice.

The first time I lost my heart, it was the spectacular, leg-buckling kind that happens without warning, soaking everything in glory. I got on a plane, flew east, and got off at Mumbai. Incense was burning at the customs desk, next to a little plastic model of Ganesh. My knees gave a little preparatory wobble. The next day, just before dawn, I dragged open the curtains in our room of faded gentility at the India International Centre, eager to see what Delhi looked like by daylight. The sky was the same colour as the sandstone the Mughal emperors and Lutyens fancied for their monumental buildings, and as the heavy curtains swished aside, all the leaves on the tree outside the window took flight, resolving into green and turquoise parakeets.

So you could say that India had me at “hello”. I’m still trying to write about the tiny slice of India (Delhi and Agra) and Indian life I encountered in two short weeks, and I’m still failing. One reason it’s so hard to describe is because everything encountered with any of the senses – sight, smell, sound, taste and touch – is amplified. Whether it’s heat, dust, food, drink, fabric, colour, ancient buildings and tombs, new industries, the sights and smells of poverty, infrastructure that seems held together by string and prayer, cricket, traffic, temples, gods – all these things, no matter how prosaic, seem to be on sensory steroids. Except for the people, who I mostly found to be gentle, patient, courteous and pragmatic.

I walked through my Indian days in a state of blissed-out radiance. While » read more

An uncommon garden thriller

I wrote this story, my first but hopefully not my last krimi, for Wordsetc* just over a year ago, after visiting my parents on their Eastern Free State smallholding. Having just returned from another trip home, I thought I’d post this here as a tribute to my mother’s unbelievably beautiful garden(s). The narrative and characters are fictional, but everything garden-related is true (click here for more photos).

Poppy

The poppies were not the usual blood-red, but a rich purple, which warmed to deep pink as the early morning light struck them. Looking closely, Marian thought that they looked fleshy, the petals delicately wrinkled like ageing skin.

“Want to see something special?” asked Lena, Marian’s oldest friend, and the creator of the early summer garden all around them.

Without waiting for a reply, she stepped forward and gave a grey-green bud-husk a tweak. It came away between her thumb and forefinger, revealing crumpled petals that immediately began separating, like skirts unfurling.

“Watch,” said Lena. “This is the most amazing bit.” And indeed Marian could see that the agitation of the petals was not all their own doing – as the stamens came into view, the women could see two – no, three – bees, throbbing with ecstasy and opium, the little pollen sacs on their legs already swollen to bursting.

“How do they get in?” asked Marian, fascinated.

“I don’t know. It’s one of those mysteries of Nature. Whatever time of day I do it, there are bees inside the poppies. They can’t resist the drug.”

Marian knew there was a reason Lena had asked her to come » read more