Gerhi Janse van Vuuren lives in Stellenbosch with his family. At the end of 2007 he decided to pursue a career as a writer. Something he has always been putting of till later. He is currently working towards the completion of his first novel.
Starting out
When I was at Secondary School I received only one prize. That was for a story essay I wrote during an exam. That story was published in the yearbook and I read it for the first time in more than twenty years just recently. It brought tears to my eyes.
The story managed to move me. Crudely and without finesse it resonated emotionally with my soul. Very few writers manage to do that.
What saddens me more is that I am that same writer a couple of decades on. And because I haven’t worked at it I was a better writer then than now. I always knew I wanted to write. I wish somebody had told that 17 year old kid that that was okay.
Gaining experience
Depth in writing springs from a range of life experiences. Though I haven’t been working on the craft of writing I have broadened my life.
After compulsary military service I studied a BA degree majoring in Psychology and Sociology. I started out with the idea of pursuing journalism but I was twice turned down for a journalism bursary. I also found political science, economics and criminology (good journalistic foundations) to be the dryest and most unimaginative subjects ever.
Towards the end of my degree I did a stint as an assistant personnel officer and saw my future with a social science BA. It horrified me and I convinced my parents to let me continue my studies. The next year I started right at the bottom with a Fine Arts degree. Despite nearly failing at the end of it those four years were one of the most exciting periods of my life.
I met my future wife the next year and also found out that making art a career was hard. After marriage I studied again, getting a teaching diploma. My wife and I started an Art and Drama School. The school went well except that we did not have enough running capital to get us past the first year.
In the first of our major moves we ended up in Johannesburg where I first languished as an underpaid do-everything-nobody-else-wants-to stock manager for a couple of months before I got a job as a teacher. Teaching lasted a couple of years and I concluded that though I loved teaching, I hated school.
In a second major move I resigned and attempted to gain entry to a MA Fine Art pogramme. Through some fluke I was declined entry to the Fine Art programme but accepted for an MA in Drama Studies. During my graduate studies I taught art and media studies, made plays and had a great time. It couldn’t last forever and I got a job as education officer in an Art Museum.
I had the opportunity to develop the Museum’s website and this got me involved in website work and through that also in writing. After numerous attempts to get an information website of my own of the ground I packed it up and thought hard about what I really wanted to do. The result of my soul searching brought us to a third major move, back to Stellenbosch.
At the end of 2007 I turned forty. I realised that if I do not sit down and write the book I always wanted to write now, I would never do it. With that I also realised that not writing at least one book would turn me into a bitter old man looking back on a wasted life.
I am writing every day and my first novel is slowly growing towards completion.