Since June 2001 a group of people have been writing together every Wednesday during lunch-time at the Centre for the Book. Who comes and for how long varies, but the energy is always high and everyone writes flat out for at least fifteen minutes. Then there is a chance for each person to read what he or she has just written. Writing is usually a solitary and somewhat lonely activity, and this open writing group aims to offer writers the chance to be heard, to be encouraged and to enjoy writing together.

If you would like to come along, feel free to do so.

Here is what some of the regulars have to say about Out to Lunch:

"A quiet room. The muffled sound of cars back and forward. A still moment in a hot day. It's cool in here and reminds me of sitting in the school library as a teenager. Forced silence a relief. Walls of books hiding me.

I hear people's breathing, scratching pens. I'm conscious of others yet sink slowly into writing. It feels like I'm moving forward when I come here. Not just running in busy circles. It's me in this room, not the mother, wife, daughter, sister, worker, friend and so when I walk out, I have for 55 minutes, let the me crawl out, stretch herself. And although I have to put her back inside, resume the stance, I'm more alive for that day and the next.

A phone rings. Footsteps down a passage. My pen runs out momentarily so I scribble it and ink flows back. My afternoon ahead - Pick 'n Pay shopping, cooking supper, sorting out my car at the panel beaters, taking back long overdue library books. But for now I write."
(Dianne Lea)

"Is there a writing thing happening here?" I asked the lady sitting at the right hand cubicle by the entrance. "Out to lunch?" she said. "I think so, it must be that." I said. "Down the passage and to your right" she said. I walked down the passage and halfway down became uncertain of where I was going, turned back and went back to the lady at the desk. "Where?" I asked the same lady. I think I was a little bit rude. Anyway, she came with me and at the entrance to a room, she stuck her arm through the doorway and pointed at the people sitting around a table. There were a few of them. The crowd of people Out to lunch has changed quite a bit. I wonder what happened to that other guy who used to come. I don't remember his name. Anyway, so there were these people sitting quietly around the table scribbling away vigorously in their notebooks. I went in quietly and sat down on an empty chair. One lady stopped writing and showed me a paper on which stood two words. It read "High Tide". She whispered something else about a prompt.
(Nawahl Razak)

"The best thing the Centre for the Book has done for me is to help me think about myself as a writer and to give me a network of writers with whom to talk and work. I think 'Out to Lunch' is one of the most important programs of that the Centre for the Book sponsors because it gives outsiders an immediate sense of belonging and a tangible way of accessing the Centre."
(Ali Michael)

"I can feel it. There's a peace that settles in the room as a dozen hearts go to work. It is the kind of peace that celebrates each one ofus as a writer: passionate students, travellers exploring new worlds, business people overcoming boredom, parents grown wise by years of experience. We are all the same when we face the teeth of a blank page.It only takes a prompt and then the magic starts. It flows with the power of a thousand years through our veins and onto the page.

It never matters what we write. This place is safe enough to take arisk. At the start it felt like a first date, all awkward and uncertain. Then the relationship grew, changing, but always beating with the pulseof an ancient heart. And with it, the confidence to write and write."
(David Shandler)

"Out to Lunch, a breath of fresh air right slap, bang, in the middle of the week. The timing calculated down to the last second. It is there, enticing, helping me through Monday and Tuesday. Soothing for Thursday and Friday. Forgotten until Sunday night when I set up my schedule for the week, starting with Wednesday at one.

I first came to Out to Lunch in about March this year - I still remember the day well. I felt apprehensive, as if I were about to take a huge step, as if something momentous were about to happen.

There are moments like this in your life, when you know that your action is going to change the course of events for ever. I have been following a trial for murder in the regional court recently and I have always been struck by the unreality of the proceedings, by the sense of unreality the accused seems to feel as he stands in the dock. Yet at some point of his story reality intervened, at the moment he picked up the woman and dropped her over the railings.

Coming to Out to Lunch on that first day was like that. I had always known I was a writer, but I had not been able to write for over thirty years. Dry, scratchy years. As a girl I had left my Matric English paper white, completely blank even though six months earlier I had published my first pieces. Now, with my hair turning gray, I was going to allow myself to be coaxed back into myself.

I have done little but write since that day, as if to make up for lost time. I have filled reams of paper, exercise books, examination pads, the backs of till slips, airline tickets, even my skin when nothing else was available. Thoughts, memories, understandings, hopes, stories, poetry telling of fear, anger and hatred, beauty and love, and, most recently, joy.

Most of the time I don't have the courage to show anyone else what I am writing, for fear of losing it again, this precious gift that has been returned to me late in life. But on Wednesdays at 1 pm at Out to Lunch I find the trust to write and share. It feels very precious.
(Penny Busetto)

"Out to lunch - an escape from the world of not enough. An escape from finding a solution to things.

An allowance of my mind to deliver nothing but a sense of opening. This is the home for the writer in me - the part of myself that is not allowed expression in the normal world. The world of paying those bills - medical and otherwise. This is the place where writing about a joker, a thief, a nightmare, a dream gets rewarded with appreciation and love. This is where that side thought that makes no sense in conversation gets airplay: a life of its own. It gets nurtured and a surprising sense of relief that it has been valued; and appreciated. This is where words can be strung together without the importance of meaning but taking a meaning of its own. How grateful I am that this side thought gets appreciated and taken for what it really means. This is the place for the love of writing and beautiful memories or things on my mind to be cleared and appreciated. Good heavens! There is no such place in the real world. No such release..."
(Douwe Bijker)

For more information

Please contact Mandla Matyumza at the Centre for the Book
[62 Queen Victoria Street, Cape Town]

Tel: (021) 423 2669
Email: mandla.matyumza@nlsa.ac.za

If you want to be put on the mailing list for this and other writingevents and workshops, email Mandla too.