A Love-Hate Affair

At the beginning of the year, I decided I was going to write my next novel. The struggle was real. My first attempt made it to five chapters before fizzling out. The second didn’t even survive past chapter three. I just couldn’t get my head in the game. (Peripheral neuropathy in my feet and hands doesn’t exactly help—concentration is like trying to hold soap with wet hands.)

Eventually, I thought, that’s it. No more books. I’d focus on designing adverts for my small business instead—something simpler, like arranging fonts and wondering if teal and pink are eye-catching enough.

But! Writing is part of who I am. It’s how I process the world, how I think, how I breathe. I love words. More than that, Writing is my teacher. I learn something new every time I sit down to write—usually something humbling, occasionally something useful.

So… I tried again. Third time lucky, right?

Right.

With a clear goal of 85,000 words, I started. Stuck to it. Wrote. Edited. Read each chapter a gazillion times. Despaired. Rewrote. And eventually, I self-published ‘I Think You Know’ on Amazon.

As always, amid the blur of writing and reading, I found myself face-to-face with my oldest nemesis: punctuation. Honestly, the endless debates in my head drive me nuts. To dash or not to dash? Dash or ellipsis? Ugh! And parentheses—where do they even belong? Comma here? There? Anywhere? Or maybe there are just too many commas.

Editing my own work—supposedly cost-effective in my mind—is rather expensive on time and sanity. I won’t even mention the future ‘hidden costs’ when all the editing lands me on a therapy couch for psychoanalysis.

As always, before writing, I watched videos and read articles about how real authors get it done. I explored different styles, themes, and tones of voice. Which narrator would work best—third person or first?

First person always seems like the right fit for the particular brand of crazy I harbour somewhere inside. It draws out the humour in my equally unhinged protagonist’s storytelling.

Of course, there’s always more to it than just some subtle research. There’s also the former-English-teacher in me who occasionally climbs out to join the circus. I have a natural flair for writing rigid, formal sentences—the kind with textbook-approved parentheses, neat and predictable, just like the lessons I used to teach. There’s rarely room for rogue punctuation running wild.

And yet, the imperfect woman I am—not quite English, not quite Afrikaans—somewhere between Engaans and Afringlish—makes many, many, many mistakes.

Believe me, when you read my work, it has usually been polished to the brink of madness. Any errors you find are simply the result of reaching that point of “I can’t see anything anymore”—blinded by the plight of my perfectionistic tendencies. Or perhaps there’s a trace of OCD quietly lurking between the lines.

Having said all this, it turns out fiction doesn’t much care for formal writing. In creative writing, brackets are the overachievers of punctuation—and they’ve been my go-to in every novel I’ve written.

By the way—if you’re still reading, colour me impressed. I’m genuinely smiling over here, knowing you’re still on board—and, miraculously, unbored.

Back in the day, I always told my students: the dash is the shorter line—it separates. The hyphen is the longer line—it joins. I taught it with imagery. For example:

You dash from the scene of a crime. You separate yourself from it. 
You say hi to join a conversation (hi = hy for hyphen.)

This year, while revising punctuation, I discovered a worthy replacement for the dash, the comma, and yes, even the bracket: the em dash. Apparently, it’s a thing. The free spirit of the punctuation world—unruly, versatile, and oddly good at making a sentence work.

And, just to be sure it wasn’t nonsense, I paged through a few novels and—lo and behold—authors have been using it forever.

The em dash interrupts, emphasises, and gives thoughts room to stretch:

She opened the door—then froze.
There was no other explanation—it had always been him.
His thoughts—scattered, rambling, brilliant—took over.

It mimics speech. It breathes. It sighs. It’s practically alive. The em dash is the jazz of punctuation—improvised, emotional, occasionally too much.

I never knew this, but now I do. Hence the earlier statement: Writing is my teacher. 

Almost 60 and still learning.

And just to stir the dash debate even further, it doesn’t stop there. 

Enter the en dash, a revelation. Slightly longer line than a hyphen, shorter than the em dash, used for ranges or connections: The 2022–2023 season was chaotic. Or. The Johannesburg–Cape Town route is beautiful. 

Retirement from teaching hasn’t stopped me from learning. If anything, it’s made me more curious.

But, of course, in a nutshell, writing shouldn’t be about rules. Even though I edit as I write, it doesn’t diminish what truly matters: emotion, honesty, and connection. Sometimes, the smallest mark—a dash, a dot, a well-placed comma—does more than hold a sentence together. It shapes meaning, guides feeling, and breathes life into words. Yes, punctuation is vital—but so are character development, authenticity, setting, and the careful build-up of suspense in the narrative, and all the other elements that make a book a great read. And if a touch of humour sneaks in? Well, that’s just a welcome bonus.

If you’ve read this far, thank you. Maybe you, like me, find beauty in the art of writing. And maybe—just maybe—that’s where its true magic lies.

As Ernest Hemingway said, “We are all apprentices in a craft where no one ever becomes a master.”