Author interview #7: Shanice Ndlovu
The Zimbabwean fantasy writer on an author's duty to the truth and trusting the words will lead you where you need to go
A note to subscribers: I’ve been finding managing this Substack challenging alongside a full-time job, so am changing the cadence of And Then to fortnightly - to ensure both its sustainability and my sanity! Thanks for understanding. Karen x
My very first job was as a promotions assistant for Oxford University Press. My primary role was to promote newly published books by sending them to newspaper book editors to be reviewed in the press. A highlight was planning the launch for, A Country Unmasked, an account of the Truth and Reconciliation Commission by South African politician and anti-apartheid activist, Alex Boraine. Had I not left after just a year on the job to travel up the Amazon river, my head freshly shaved into a buzz cut (cue much handwringing from my parents!), I might have stayed working in book publishing and perhaps, even have written my novel by now…
It’s a short-lived fantasy because the reality of my career (and life) is that by tacking this way and that, like a dingy on a breeze (sometimes a gale), I’ve ended up precisely where I need to be. The reality of my life - as it is now, in this moment, is far more interesting to me than the make-believe of “what ifs”.
Similarly - when it comes to reading - fantasy is not typically my genre of choice. However, I absolutely loved stepping into the worlds created by Shanice Ndlovu in The Pride of Noonlay, her collection of epic fantasy short stories influenced by her upbringing in Matebeleland in Zimbabwe.
The intro to the eponymous short story in her collection had me hooked at the opening sentence:
She always smelled of home. I felt it most when she was alone by the Murk, singing the old songs. My mother used to say that she could sing worlds to life, and she did. Every note filled my nose with over-ripe fruit and wet earth, tree sap and cow dung so pungent I had to check my boots and be sure I had not stepped in it.
Smell is so evocative and it’s made me consider how I’m using that sense in my own novel to bring it to life.
I found Shanice’s answers to my questions profound in their simplicity and I hope you find inspiration in them as I did.
What are you currently working on?
For the past two years, I have been enrolled in a Masters in Creative Writing program at the University of Witwatersrand. I’m currently working on my creative project in the program, which is a short story cycle. I have also been working on a novel.
What is a short story cycle exactly?
It’s a collection of short stories put together with the specific goal of an overarching narrative when read as a whole. It’s also known as a composite novel.
Where do you typically write?
Due to work and time constraints, I have learned to write wherever I can. This is often at home but I can also be found in the backseat of a taxi mapping worlds.
When do you typically write?
I have been lucky to be able to work under any circumstances that present me with time and an opportunity to create. I write whenever the opportunity presents itself.
What challenges have you faced cultivating a regular writing practice and how have you overcome them?
The biggest challenge is often balancing the demands of capitalism. The general drudgery of trying to 'make a living' and the time that takes away is always pressed up against the measure of the actual work. I try not be too hard on myself and write when I am able.
Ahh, the demands of capitalism… what do you do to pay the bills?
I work various part-time jobs in tutoring and copywriting.
What tactics or tools do you use to write when you’re stuck or simply don’t feel like writing?
Days when I am 'stuck' are great days to revisit old work, and to edit.
Could you describe your writing process?
I am definitely a gardener as opposed to an architect. I dig and see what I find. The only real plan to the process is trusting that the words will lead me where I need to go.
Could you provide practical tips to help someone struggling to get started on their novel or short story - for example on creating characters, building plot, figuring out what narrative voice to write in or developing believable dialogue?
There are different answers to each of those questions but I suppose one that would cover most of what is hard in beginning a story is the most obvious answer - just write. When you trust the words and the work then all that is left to you is to put the words to paper and let them show you what they can do. Everything else comes afterwards - the characters, the plot - it doesn't happen unless you are actually writing.
Could you tell me about the genre you write in? What about this genre speaks to you?
I found a world and I have always been aware that despite it being a mirror to this waking world - it was other. I wrote historical fiction when I first started but it chained that world to the things that are known to be true in this one. Epic fantasy has given me the freedom to show this world in all its colour, without the limitations of what we may think we know to be true here.
Do you have any tips for someone wanting to explore this genre? About creating fantastic worlds for example? Is there some balance to be found between building magical universes but keeping the story grounded in some way for the reader?
To me writing has always felt less like creation and more like discovery. Again, the question of trusting the words that you are putting down and trusting that they will do what they are meant to. The glory of fantasy is that anything could happen but that could also very easily be the trip wire that tumbles the story. Whether it's a thriller or a romance or a fantasy, the writer still bears the duty to the truth. Perhaps that is more urgent in fantasy because everything else is seemingly so farfetched, the story itself must be a human one, true to that experience.
Your stories are incredibly original - where do the ideas come from?
I cannot speak to the source of the work, I can only speak to the influences as well as the instruments that draw it out. There's specific work that inspires me and this is in writers like Marlon James and Madeline Miller who both sketch divinity with all the clumsy grace of the human experience. I am also greatly influenced by my upbringing in Matebeleland and the beliefs that we grew up around. Then of course, music, I often say that nothing draws a story out of me like a song.
Could you tell me more about your upbringing and its influence on you?
I was born in a mud hut in Matebeleland, Zimbabwe. In that part of the world belief systems are less a question of faith and more a matter of fact. There's what one knows within themselves to be true and whatever we are then taught becomes an echo of that. The method of teaching is often in the folklore, and the ritual, and the storytelling. The lesson is that one exists in a community of stories, those who have come before and those yet to come. And so to strengthen the self is to strengthen that community, that is the power that feeds its spirit - the stories we tell of ourselves and each other.
You mention song being an influence. Any song in particular?
There is a song by the Irish folk blues musician Hozier, titled Uiscefhuaraithe which is an old Gaelic word for the feel of coldness specifically from water. There's a line from the song that begins with, "all my dreaming..." I heard that for the first time and something stirred in me and stood. It lured out of me the title story for my MA Creative Project but also untangled the thread that brought the stories together. This is a constant in all my work. I listen to certain music because I enjoy it but ever so often it coaxes a story out or untangles loose an idea that has been long knotted in my mind.
I learned a long time ago not to ponder too long for a reason when it comes to the work and what fuels it or why. Only that, in this case, it works for the snake charmer with his flute and it works for me.
We all know the power of the opening line of a piece of writing. “She always smelled of home,” is really evocative - could you share the story behind how you settled on the opening line of ‘The Pride of Noonlay’?
The opening line to ‘The Pride Of Noonlay’ needed to carry the ache of nostalgia, the weight of pining for a past that no longer existed. And nothing evokes memory like smell. From that line alone we are able to tell that this is a person who means something to the main character and it perhaps hints at his longing. The role of the first line is to lead you to the next one, yes, but it is also to make sure the reader even wants to go that far.
How similar or not was your first draft to your last draft?
They were similar in the way of a toddler and the woman she grows into. I definitely did not have a book until my wonderful editor, Nerine Dorman, got her hands on it and together we raised a woman. I was a different writer then and the stories were all slightly incomplete until we worked on them and ended up with a collection we could be proud of.
Any other advice for writers who don’t want to write?
Unfortunately the doors will not open while you stand and watch them, as the saying goes. If you mean to be a writer then you must understand that you will have to write, and that it will take time, and that even then the world might not understand it. Yet, all we can do is just keep writing.