Media | When the Filter Fades in Previdar

Thank you to Sijabulile Ndlovu for the amazing interview for Previdar. We spoke about internet culture, how women mediate their lives online and how my career has inspired me to write fiction.

Read a snippet of the interview below:

What did you find most challenging about writing ‘When The Filter Fades?’

Writing a book is a solitary activity. With my non-fiction work, The Big South African Hair Book, I interviewed 30 women, so I was interacting with so many people in the making of the book. With When The Filter Fades, it was just me, my imagination, and my laptop against the world. The writing wasn’t the challenge, putting it out into the world has been a huge challenge for me. I come from a journalism background, so I am very comfortable in a fact-based world. When people read my other work, they can critique or challenge it on the basis of facts, which is easy for me to navigate. But a novel is so open to tastes and interpretations, and that’s very new to me.

Coming of age in the era of the internet is quite challenging. What advice do you have for young women who resonate with the stories of Lin, Lebo and Mbali?

It’s not sexy advice, but I think for now, while Boomers and Gen X are decision makers, be careful with what you post online, because those elders still care about ‘social media footprint’ and what you’ve posted in the past. I think many of us don’t understand the scale of social media. If you were to stand on stage in front of 1 000 people, many people would think that’s a big room and have a hard time talking in public BUT we somehow don’t convert that thinking to posting something crazy to 1 000 followers?

The reception of your book has been great. Did you expect “When The Filter Fades” to be received so well and how does it make you feel?

I honestly didn’t expect such positive feedback and it took me completely by surprise. This is my first novel, I had never written fiction before, and I’m not a fiction expert, I didn’t ‘study’ story structure, although I am a voracious reader, so I wasn’t confident that I got the theory of writing a book right. I think the part that I’m overwhelmed by isn’t necessarily that people like the story, it’s that they really ‘get it’ and they like the characters. I put a lot of thought into crafting these women and making them feel real, and making their motivations and decisions seem real, and seeing how people are responding to it is very rewarding to me.

Can readers expect a sequel to the book?

I have a plot brewing in my head – and it’s so juicy! So, who knows? Maybe?