Megan Choritz (pictured left) is an actor, improviser, director, playwright – and the recent author of the novel Lost Property, which is released in June 2023. Published by Melinda Ferguson, an imprint of NB Books, the novel tells the often harrowing tale of a marriage gone mad. “One morning Laine wakes up to discover that the man she’s been married to for 15 years has been secretively living out a monstrous lie.” And thus follows a heart-breaking, and horribly familiar, story of abuse. Not only abuse in terms of male female relationships, but in terms of race, and class, and familial relationships. Shifting from South Africa circa the late 1960s and 1970s – when women smoked in cars with closed windows, and domestic workers were on call 24/7 – through to now, it’s as much a flashback to a very particular time and place as it is a fastforward to a potentially optimistic space. Beautifully written, Lost Property is a book that lingers long after you have put it down.
WeekendSpecial: Let’s start with the process – when did you start writing this?
Megan Choritz: I started it at the beginning of last year. During the first big lockdown I joined an online writing group and wrote a bunch of short stories before deciding to commit to writing a whole novel. www.deadlinesforwriters.com was how I wrote and submitted about 1300 words a week, received and gave feedback to other writers, and continued to just do it. Just over halfway in I asked my bestie Melinda Ferguson, who also happens to be a top SA publisher, if she would look at it and let me know what she thought. She loved it. And even though she seldom publishes fiction, she said she really wanted to publish it. That was enough incentive for me to make sure I finished it.
WS: And what was your procedure – are you a wake-up-at-5am-and-write-until-noon kind of person, or a late-at-night writer, or …?
MC: I try to write something every day, but also try to respond to the muse. That being said, I have woken up four hours before deadline to finish, or start and finish something. I don’t like doing that, because it means I don’t spend the requisite time angsting over it. Writing is such a weird process of inspiration, delay, self-criticism, distraction, obsession, judgement, forgiveness, relief, rinse, recycle.
WS: You have written plays, and also a children’s book. You are a much-respected writer for Weekend Special. How was this different?
MC: Yes, I have written a lot, mostly stuff that is in one of a million files on my computer. I have written lots of plays, lots of industrial and corporate theatre, hundreds of short stories and poems, thousands of theatre and movie reviews, and The Big Bird Battle. The basic process is the same, only a novel is huge and quite unmanageable. Nothing behaves itself. Characters, time, structure, rules, dialogue, locations are all shouting for attention.
WS: And why did you decide to write this book?
MC: To be honest, I couldn’t help it. I didn’t know what it would become, only that I needed to start and see what happened. I was doing a whole lot of work on myself at the time, and it was a great way to put down my feelings, while creating a story to support that process. Also, my therapist thought it would be a good idea. I think she was right.
WS: You have spoken about how supportive your friend and publisher Melinda Ferguson has been. Was it very useful to be able to bounce off ideas, and get feedback?
MC: Melinda is a force. She is honest, brave, passionate and a total workaholic. I trusted every comma she added, every suggestion she made and every question she asked. I always felt like she was my ride-or-die, she has my back and she totally believes in me and what I was doing. The days-old baby bird she rescued, and hand reared, is on the cover.
WS: Birds – there are so many birds! Where did this come from?
MC: I’ve always had a thing about and for birds in real life and in my writing. Here they demanded to be noticed. I love the way birds cross over, inhabit spaces we can’t, how they see the world so differently. I also love the symbolism of birds. So it was no surprise that a bird would enter Melinda’s life when it did.
WS: Also – although this is a work of fiction, there are lots of references that I know will resonate with people of a certain age/time – middle-class South Africans during apartheid, the music, the politics, student involvement. It creates a rich feeling-of-place. Did you draw on a lot of your own experiences during these times?
MC: I absolutely drew on my own personal experiences, and those of others, weaving them into a narrative in which all the feelings are real, but not necessarily the actual incidents. People are so curious to know what is and isn’t true. I like to say, if you believe it is true then it is.
WS: Also, on practical level – you swing between times and places. Was this easy to write, to keep track?
MC: There are three primary timelines; childhood, marriage and post marriage. And that helped me to at least know which section I was busy with, because even the sections themselves are not chronological. I can be posh and say it was an organic process, but basically, it just spilled out that way.
WS: On another tack – what writers do you enjoy?
MC: I adore fiction. Kazuo Ishiguro is my favourite. And Martin Amis. And Stephen King. And Margaret Atwood and Lauren Beukes. And Colin Cotterill and Yewande Omotoso and Ben Elton and Karl Hiaasen and Charles Dickens and Jane Austen. And Melinda Ferguson. A book I read last year, Home is Nowhere, by MJ Mngadi, translated from isiZulu by Nakanjani G Sibiya, is one of the books that has scorched me and I will never be the same again. There are so many more, but that is who I am thinking about now.
WS: What are you currently reading?
MC: I am wading through Inside Story by Martin Amis. I had just started reading it when I heard that he had died. It’s a rambling fictionalised autobiography, but he calls it a novel. I felt like I could relate to that idea.
WS: Lastly – how would you describe the book, to somebody who hasn’t read the sleeve?
MC: Lost Property is about Laine, a character who loses herself so completely she needs to go back to her past to find out what made her who she is, accept her present self as a new survivor of her circumstances, and then be influenced enough by something to change her future. That sounds deep. Simply put, Lost Property is about someone who loses themselves and then finds themselves in the most unlikely way.
What: Lost Property by Megan Choritz
Where: At all good book shops and online on KIndle
WS
