#MoreUnboxed with Christina: Mr Pritchard on the art of writing

“My father worked opposite the Cape Town City Library, and they would often throw out large sacks of books to be burned and he would bring them home for me. And then I started creating my own library in my bedroom and started sending the books out to friends and family. And I read, obviously. I read a lot of them. And I just became so excited by the world of literature and wanted to write. And I thought I had to try this myself.”

“When you give yourself two or three hours to write, then that's all you do. And sometimes ideas come to you, and sometimes they don't. So, what I like to do is I like to play with ideas, and I like to choose two completely opposite ideas and see how I can bring them together…. I start to play around rather than try to create something. Once I have the idea in my head, that's when I start sketching it out and I start thinking, ‘Okay, where's my end point going to be?’ And I work my way backwards. I think, ‘Okay. What is my ultimate message I want to get across to the reader? How do I want the reader to feel?’”

“The biggest challenge is to turn off the inner critic. And often when I am writing, I have to turn off that voice… Because no matter what you write, it will be good for something else. It may not be right for that particular focus that you're doing. But once you've written the idea and it doesn't work for you, you put it aside… until the right idea comes to you”