I want to say a little bit about the process of researching and writing about my ancestry on my mother’s side. I’m sure we all have destructive components to our personalities: sometimes the components are both helpful and harmful. My harmful components create problems in my writing (and other projects).

Problems I faced:

1. I tend to see the big picture in everything I attempt and as I dig further in – the picture broadens ever further at the same time. I need to learn to manage my impulse to keep researching. This behavior of mine can be quite demoralizing as the project has the potential to become very unwieldy. So I have taken on the challenge knowing that there will be a steep learning curve in managing myself.
2. My surgery in August and the initial recovery slowed me down to a trickle. This again created a challenge because there is a potential to loose my confidence, enthusiasm and courage: as I put it ‘I am worried that I would grind to a halt and loose my momentum.’

Solutions I came up with.

1. I decided to stop digging into the many different lives I’m related to for now and write about a specific individual, Pieter van der Westhuizen, where my South African history began. He is the ‘stamvader’, Afrikaans for the English word: forefather, and he is the patriarch of the van der Westhuizens in South Africa, possibly even further afield. So true to my nature I began researching the place where he came from, namely Bruges; the history of the seventeenth century and so forth. I find history really fascinating as my brain lights up while I learn more; but again I have had to reel myself in as I have enough for a first draft. Now I have collated all the documents about Pieter so that I can finely construct a fictional narrative. My plan is to eventually present all the facts as well as a ‘story about his travels and his life.’ His story starts when he is 12 years old and I can’t wait to write it. I am happy to say that I have not lost my momentum.
2. In a way I tackled the managing and pacing by thinking of one the parts of myself as the ‘boss’ and the other part as the ‘serving-natured one’. In my managing of the problem ‘The boss’ allowed the ‘serving-natured one’ freedom to work in the garden to celebrate her newfound strength and the last days of good weather after the surgery. I also had several other important things on the list and ‘the boss’ chose to act with kindness and understanding rather than wield the whip. ‘The serving-natured one’ fears failure and it felt freeing, yet also slightly daunting, to trust that ‘the boss’ was ultimately in control and could decide when best to start the writing process again.

Hopefully me sharing about my process, my struggles and how I try to manage it might be helpful to someone. And if you have any writing tips of this nature please feel free to share. Thank you for taking the time to read my post.

Take care,
~Morag Noffke~