Mike Nicol

Mike Nicol (born 1951 in Cape Town) is a South African writer and journalist.After completing his studies in Johannesburg, he worked as a journalist for the Leadership magazine.In 1978, he published Among the Souvenirs, a collection of poems that won the Ingrid Jonker Prize in 1980. Mike Nicol is also one of the major authors of the South African thriller, with Deon Meyer and Roger Smith. Quotes I call writing a curse. It is something you have no control over. If you don’t write you feel terrible (but then when you write you also feel terrible, only less so). What all this boils down to is that writers are probably born. Of course you can improve your writing ability by reading and writing but in talking with other writers I have found that generally they were all compelled to write. From my early teens I started writing poetry and some 15 or so years later it resulted in the publication of my first book, Among the Souvenirs in 1978. I published another collection of poetry – This Sad Place – in 1993 but haven’t written verse since the 1980s. Every writer started without a career. Writing careers take years to establish, so, no, you don’t need the big writing profile to succeed. You start with one book and it goes on from there. Being in the media or teaching may help because you might meet people in the publishing industry as part of your daily job, but it is worth remembering that the poet TS Eliot was a banker when he wrote the most significant English poems of the 20th Century. Our most important poet, Douglas Livingstone, was a marine biologist which goes to show that you don’t have to be in the media or have publishing industry contacts. Nor do you need to be highly educated but you do need to read. You need to read and read and read, and then read even more. Writers are there because they were readers first. Indeed, publishing has changed in SA in the sense that there are ever more books being published each year by an increasing number of authors. When I started out in the 1970s I knew most of the writers, now there are too many to know personally. I think this vast array of writers and their books is wonderful. We are now writing more novels than ever before. We are writing more non-fiction than ever before. Local publishing might have to battle small profit margins but it is certainly vibrant. External links Category:Living people