Yewande omotoso biography of donald

Six African writers talk about their books and what works for them while writing. And of course, share some writing tips for the aspiring author. Pioneering this series is Yewande Omotoso, author of The Woman Next Door. Enjoy!

…find yourself a good reader – Yewande Omotoso

My process of writing is seldom from one single idea. Rather a better way of thinking about it is that there are always many ideas and images and thoughts. And at some point, I pick one or a few as a jumping off point for starting a new book. I start wondering. Let’s say I spend a year wondering. When I say ‘wonder’, this primary activity involves other secondary activities such as reading a huge amount of other fiction as well as non-fiction books on various relevant themes. As well as watching the world, observing myself and my surroundings with my novel as a lens; sifting through the events of life with my project in mind and recording what seems significant even if I don’t know why.

Now that I’m writing my third book, I can see a few patterns. The observing and collecting, the note-taking without necessarily knowing where things belong, figuring that out later. With my second book I started using Excel to create spreadsheets that cover the years of my characters’ lives, mini biographies. There are also patterns of despair, of thinking no one cares, no one will read this, patterns of doubt. It’s comforting to see these recur because these spells also pass and life continues and though nothing seems particularly typical right now as I’ve been travelling a lot, ideally I like to wake up and write. Wake at 5 am or so and write for a few hours before other tasks demand attention. I like to get 1000 words down at least and I’m not particularly precious about these 1000 words, I trust there will come a time in the process when I will have to be painstaking about them but with the initial draft I am very kind with myself and everything is permitted and fine. Apart from the writing, I carry a

Yewande Omotoso is the author of the new novel The Woman Next Door. She also has written the novel Bom Boy. She was born in Barbados, grew up in Nigeria, and lives in South Africa. 

Q: How did you come up with the idea for The Woman Next Door and for your characters Hortensia and Marion?

A: One of the things is the way in which ideas pollinate based on what’s going on around me. One of the things I was experiencing is my grandfather had died and I was around my grandmother [more than I had been]--I grew up in Nigeria and she was in Barbados.

I started meditating on what it is to be that age. Younger people are cursory at looking at older folk. I started thinking about what it would be like to be in your last years of life, and it got me thinking about characters, thinking about Hortensia.

Not just was she old but she had nothing particularly fulfilling—you’re at the end of your life, but it’s another thing if your life is unfulfilling and things are incomplete. That character grabbed me. At another point, I thought, she has this counterpart, [Marion].

Q: You tell the story from both women’s perspectives. Did you write the chapters in the order in which they appear, or did you move things around as you wrote?

A: I feel I do move things around. How I would normally write a first draft—I would just go, but not in order. I could do it for six months or a year, free-write, and once I’ve got the characters and the setting in the center of the story, I’ve got a scene. It isn’t in order.

At some point I would say, what’s the arc of this, what’s the plot? I would see what goes after what, and where I need to write more. So I didn’t write it in order. It’s about this relationship—a hateship—and how it might develop.

Q: The novel takes place in South Africa, and much of the story focuses on that country’s troubled racial history. Do you thin