THRILLING DEBUT

Journalist Nicky Greenwall on why writing a novel is one of the hardest things she's ever done

- JANE VORSTER

IT'S scary sending a book out into the world. After all the effort that has gone into bringing it to life, it's now over to the readers and there's nothing the author can do but wait.

That's the situation Nicky Greenwall is in right now as an entertainment journalist and former TV presenter, she's developed thick skin and has trained herself not to worry too much what others think of her. But as the author of a new novel, it's impossible not to care.

"It feels vulnerable to put pieces of myself into the work," she says.

Her new novel, A Short Life, is a domestic thriller about two car accidents that take place on the same stretch of winding road in Cape Town. One of them is fatal and six friends' lives will never be the same again.

"The reader is encouraged to work out if the accidents are connected, and if so, what the consequences might be for the characters at the heart of the story," Nicky tells us.

She says the story had been percolating in her brain for a while but she initially wrote a completely different novel, which was rejected.

"This spurred me to enrol in a series of Curtis Brown Creative online writing classes. That's when the central conundrum of A Short Life bubbled up again and I knew I had to go there"."

For Nicky the hardest thing about writing her debut novel was not knowing how she was going to pull it all together at the end.