International conference on hybridity, liminality and  

                      boundaries  AND 2nd Conference on South African Children's 

                      Literature (in  parallel) June 30-July 2, 2005  Potchefstroom, South Africa

                 

                          PAPER ON: Crossing the boundaries: Die hart van Zeebak:

                   A writer’s perspective on writing both  the text and the teacher’s guide.
     

        Concise Biography: 

Multi-award winning youth and children’s author, Martie Preller, was born in Potchefstroom in 1948 and currently lives in Johannesburg. She has three children and a grandchild. She is a qualified teacher in Latin and English with an Honours degree in Psychology. A prolific writer, she has published more than 50 books for young people of all ages since 1992 as well as a practical storymaking guide. She is currently writing the scripts for two proposed children’s series for SABC 2. The one is an animated series and the other a story centred magazine-series. She also writes a children’s story in a monthly and co-writes one in a weekly national publication. She has also presented 14 storymaking workshops based on an Internet storymaking course that she had conceptualised in 2000.

Abstract: 

Several personal boundaries had to be crossed before the text of the novel was as it was supposed to be. After the novel was published in October 2004, I was asked by the publishers to write a teacher’s guide for the novel. Again several personal boundaries had to be crossed and other boundaries had to be created in order to do so. 

But personal recounts of writers on the way their work was created have little value unless the recount becomes universal in that it demonstrates processes that many people can identify with.

Stories work in the same way. Personal stories perhaps delight the writer and those that care about him or her, but in order for stories to be published they must have a wide universal appeal and be able to exist almost completely separate from the writer.

Each of us has our own perspective. We perceive life and ourselves and others, often creating personal boundaries in order to protect our fragile minds or to find our own personal space and then we are jailed by our own boundaries.  Sometimes boundaries are created by others for us and we accept those boundaries or defy them. All in all we are concerned with boundaries almost every moment of our lives, because we are not alone on this earth. 

Die hart van Zeebak is a story about a journey. The writing of the text and the teacher’s guide was a journey. A personal journey. I invite you with me on that past journey, sharing what I can and hopefully you, whatever your own personal situation, hopes, dreams, ambitions and fears are, will be able find something for your soul and mind and heart to take with you. Die hart van Zeebak is the story of Ferdinand and Leandra, of the people of Zeebak and of a Tin angel. But perhaps it is our story too.  

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