Welcome to The Writing Coach. On this podcast, I speak with the instructors, editors, coaches, and mentors who help writers and authors create their art, build their audience, and sell their work.
In episode #112 of The Writing Coach podcast, I speak with Deryn Van Der Tang.
Deryn is a writer and exploration geological cartographer who worked in the mining and oil industry before retraining as a housing manager and working with the elderly. Her life has taken her through divorce and widowhood, and around the world to multiple countries and continents.
A descendent of the 1820 settlers in South Africa, she has spent most of her life trying to find her voice and expression of her faith through writing, art, and photography. Her words and photographs have been published in a variety of places, and she has been selected for Senior Travel Writer competitions. Her blog Crossing My Bridges covers her soulful adventures through life and is interspersed with her love of poetry and art.
Through her writing, photography, and fine art, Deryn seeks to transform both positive and negative experiences into something spiritual and beautiful. She is inspired by nature and the natural processes of life, growth, and death — finding meaning in their metaphors and seasons.
During our discussion, Deryn describes:
- Why she volunteers to beta read and review other authors’ work
- The impact both mentorship and self-education played in her development
- What it was like being displaced from her home country of Rhodesia-Zimbabwe
- The importance of resilience for writers
- The relationship between biology, the natural world, and art
- The value of being exposed to diversity in both the natural world and human cultures
- And much more!
Listen to the full podcast episode:
Watch the video of the conversation here.
The Writing Coach Episode #112 Show Notes
Here is where to find Deryn on the web:
FB Page: https://www.facebook.com/dvandertang
FB Group: https://www.facebook.com/Derynsbridge/
LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/deryn-van-der-tang-6117b91a/
Amazon Author Page: https://www.amazon.com/-/e/B07TKDCCWV
Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/derynvan/
Twitter: https://twitter.com/dvdtang1
Episode Transcript
Welcome to the show.
Thank you very much, Kevin.
Could you tell the listeners a little bit about who you are and what you have going on in the world of writing as well as in helping authors?
I started writing a little while back. I started doing church newsletters, but I’d always wanted to do writing and art. And, uh, so I took a writer’s bureau course and I started that way. And it’s been a long slow journey because obviously these things take time and you can’t always just get to do what you want to do. You also have to earn a living at the same time, but when I retired, I decided I was going to really make it work for me this time. And I started off by doing, um, just small things to, you know, trying to get a few articles written, uh, travel articles, cause I’ve done a bit of traveling and, uh, reviews for TripAdvisor just small starts. But as I progressed, I realized obviously we all need help along the way. It’s not a one man band.
And so when I was invited to do a part of an anthology, I found that was a very good intro into getting into published. And then of course people need to have their work reviewed and it’s always difficult to find someone who’s going to review your book. So your work. And so, because when I was doing the re writers bureau course, they said to be as well, you know, doing reviews is also very important part of being a writer. So that’s why I started doing reviews and to do B to readings, just to help others and excuse me with it and have that. Um, it will be reciprocated too.
You actually grew up in South Africa, is that correct?
Well, sort of. I grew up in Rhodesia, which was Zimbabwe. I grew up there and I actually started writing there. I had my first letter published in the newspaper when I was about 10 years old. My grandfather was a great writer and he used to write letters to the newspaper all the time and he encouraged me a lot to do that. And so when there was something of interest, wrote my letter and got five bucks for it.
Which made you a profession.
That’s where it all started really.
It sounded like you had some real support at a young age in terms of embracing the arts and writing and communicating.
Well, I’ll put it this way. My grandfather was a great support. He used to love poetry and he teach me how to write poetry. Um, he’d also be a self-learner. Uh, he grew up when, in the era of the Boer war and he had a tutor and they were always taught to teach themselves. And so that was this modus operandi. And as a child, I would be walking past and reading the newspaper and he suddenly call out to me and I never forget this one day. And he says to me, what’s a crude ATAR. Well, yeah, about a seven or eight year old. Child’s not going to have the foggiest idea what a coup to tie is, but he would make me then go and fetch the dictionary, look it up, find out what it meant and learn about it. And then probably two days later, he’d call me back and say, Hey, what’s a tar, and I’d have to tell him I’d be able to spell it.
So in many ways that’s was the encouragement that I got. Um, I think also, you know, I had, uh, I went to a school that, uh, we had a very good literature teachers and, uh, we had also from the Cambridge in the UK, the certificate we wrote, it was a very well structured. And I think we really enjoyed our literature and as well when I was, because I went to very new brand new school when I was young, the headmaster was the main teacher and he didn’t have time to teach it once we could read and write. He just said, well, go to the stockroom and get a book and read. And so we sort of basically self-educated us with ourselves with the box of it in the stock room. And so I think definitely in my love of reading really began. And then as you progress in life, things happen.
And, uh, I started to write for the church newsletters and eventually I became like the editor of a church magazine and along the journey of my life and working in the UK, I also worked, uh, submitted to the local, um, the company news magazine that they put out and various other small articles here and there. But I think the main focus now was getting actually into being published properly and having, uh, books on Amazon that people can buy. And so I started that journey, I think was two ago, got one, uh, part put in an anthology. And in last year I had an opportunity with a fantastic group of south African ladies, uh, writing another [inaudible] of, uh, devotions with an African theme, which I so enjoyed doing that. And all along the way, I’ve also been helping others, doing reviews for them, looking out for them to try and promote their work as well.
I currently live about 15 minutes away from where I grew up. I’ve lived very sheltered, small life, so I’m always impressed by people like you who’ve lived all over the world. Can you tell me a bit about what that has been like moving, changing continents and then how that perhaps inspired some of your travel writing?
I think, you know, transitioning, it’s not easy, uh, and I’ve had to move continents four times and my family’s moved all over the world. I’ve got family in Australia and the UK and America plus other small places, but you know, it’s, it’s been a hard road because I’ve had to leave my home land because things didn’t go well there. And so I had to transition into another country, which was South Africa. I had to make my way there and learn another language and function in that language because the job that I had as a exploration, cartographer, it required that I spoke another language. And so that job actually really inspired my course eventually, but after I had finished with that job, I am in my late husband died. I wanted to move to the UK to be near my other, my one child. And so I had to move there and I changed my whole career path.
I had changed from, um, a cartographer to a housing manager, but when I went to the UK, I had to change to be in a, uh, old HR manager and said, you know, your, your life experience now enriches so much because you’ve had to learn. You’ve had, you’ve been challenged to the utmost. You’ve had to learn another language. You’ve had to learn a completely different set of, uh, laws as well, working in a different, um, environment, you know, from a regular house into elderly housing and all those things, you know, give you so much experience and you realize you have to build resilience into your life to be able to cope with that. And, uh, you know, my one son married a Finnish girl and I had to go and visit Finland for a couple of months to go and visit with them, his family, and get to know them.
There was another language altogether and I don’t claim to speak much more than about three words, but their culture is completely different as well. And all these things challenge you, you know, um, from your regular, you do it this way. That’s how it’s done and our Kartra and that, and other cultures, it’s just not done that way. You know, you really have to adapt and stretch yourself. And so, um, I think that’s given me a lot and I’ve inspired not to spot the places. Um, but also by experiences in those places. Um, you know, for instance, in the middle of Finland in the middle of night, I was traveling, I don’t speak the language. I was on the coach and it broke down in the middle of the nowhere. And I didn’t know how I could contact anyone to say, look, I don’t know where I am and I don’t know how to contact you and do that.
You have to have a bit of faith in and just know, look, God knows where you are really well. And fortunately, my son had placed an app on my phone that he could actually get the GPS location where I was, and then inform you could track realize it informed the family who were to pick me up, but there’s things like that. That actually also, I think it stretches every part of you when you travel. Uh, but then you also have the pleasure. It may be challenging all these things, but you do have the pleasure of seeing all the wonderful places in the world. Uh, I have been to under the ocean in Australia to see the barrier reef up into the top of mountains of being in the deepest snow in Finland and in hot desert in Namibia. There’s just so many wonderful experiences in places that are visited.
And of course, having come from a land where there is a huge, uh, radiation, dear spora, I’ve got friends all over the world. Who’ve had to travel the same road as I’ve had also the challenges of adapting to new countries and new cultures. And it’s actually been really hard for some of them, um, because you know, we were a community and that community was completely, um, dispersed. Uh, we were displaced people and so we’ve all made our own way in the world. And when we can meet up in places like Australia, it’s been absolutely fantastic. And yeah, the, yes, just roll away and do back to it. You were 40 years ago
In your art, not just in your writing, but also the fine art that you do, you have a great interest in nature, flowers, and growth. Does that come from having seen a lot of the world, or what is the relationship between the natural world and your art?
Well, I suppose that also started in my childhood, I was passionate about nature and my grandfather also was another one who was teaching me about all the insects and birds and plants and everything. And during the school holidays, he would say to us, okay, now we’re going to learn some botany and he’d make us go out into the fields and collect plants, and then we’d have to come back to the house, identify them in his reference book and stick them in a book and label them. And I just think, you know, with that living in a natural environment, because it was pretty natural. Uh, I really got that foundation that I was a really enjoyed plaque biology when I was at high school, because there, you could draw all the things that you were learning about. So I could draw a bird and I could draw frogs and I could draw plants and seeds and all the other things that went with it.
So, you know, that to me was really a very, uh, it just gave me that love of drawing, what I was seeing. And so when I wanted to, when I was scared to get a job, um, the first is sort of a toss up between going into an Abara tree to see the kind of, and draw the diagrams of what I was experimenting with, or to go into the geological survey. And I got a job at digital logical survey doing mapping, and I just loved that. It was such fun and learning about the earth and the rocks and finding gold and all the sort of things and the mining and drawing up those diagrams and coloring in the maps. So that also just, it was part of the natural world. So when I’ve been traveling, it’s those things, the detail, when you look at the detail of all these tropical plants, you can see the most amazing patterns and colors, and then you go to a place like Finland, where it’s, so you get the mass man, youthful flowers, absolutely perfect and small and beautiful colors as well.
So the diversity of nature is astronomical. You know, you couldn’t put a number on the different, uh, things, species, and different types of plants and flowers and, uh, animals. And I just enjoy the beauty of it. I really do. So that inspires my art, but it’s also the processes. So, you know, as a seed has to fall to die in the sea, the ground, before it can live again. And you know, to me, that’s a lot of a metaphor for how we live. We often have to bury the old things and then wait for it to regenerate into something new. So that also inspires my writing the way that nature works.
Yeah. I think you just, you set up the segue for me. I was going to segue out of life and growth into death and separation, but I think you’ve already, um, led us down that path, this idea that, that they’re not opposite necessarily, but part of the same cycle. Can you speak more about that and, and how you’ve worked it into your work?
Yes. Well, yeah, when you young, you have lots of dreams, you think life’s going to be absolutely perfect. And you know, that doesn’t, I don’t think anyone’s ever woken up and said they’ve had absolutely perfect life from the time they were born to the time they died. There’s always been having to let go of something or letting something die. Maybe it’s an idea. Maybe it was a marriage. Maybe it was a family member who died. It could be anything that was very dear to you that, um, had to, you had to let go off in, in death, you know, but then that seed of that person’s life or what they meant to you actually is in the ground. So to speak, let it sink deep into you. And then it’s a process of going through the grieving process to nurse it, go to allow it to mature.
And the tears, you can say, you know, there’s tears, water, the new seed until it’s ready to burst into bloom again, and to, um, to bring life again, to yourself and to other people. And you know, that to me is, uh, I think one of the major parts of life, we have to be able to let go, we have to build resistance because if you think of a tree, how every year it will bloom and bear fruit, and that truths are the eaten or the seeds are planted again. And there’s cyclists repeated on an annual basis. So we kind of have said, we’ve got to recognize it’s going to be seasons in our lives that we’ve got to let go. We’ve got to have things die. We’ve got to work through those processes. It’s a process that you have to work through before you can really, um, you’ve got to make it make sense to you in a way it’s, you’ve got to be able to come to terms with what happened and then you’re ready to move on, to grow into the next phase or stage.
Well, one of the reasons I wanted to speak with you and have you on the show was I saw that you teach a course called the hero’s journey through divorce, grief, and loss. And that sounded so fascinating to me. Could you tell us about this course?
Yeah. It’s the being part of it being a cartographer. Um, I was with a coach at one stage, you know, trying to figure out what I was going to do in our retired. And we, as we discussed my life and she said, well, you know what? You know, you’ve got all these things. You just got to put them all together. So I came up with the idea of a map because I’m talking about that. And then it started to fall into place. Yeah. I could make this map into my hero’s journey. And so I have got this, uh, it’s free on my website. It can be downloaded and you start off where you are in the Cape of storms. So each of the places on this journey has got a name. And each in my course, each of those are addressed, uh, in a chapter with questions which are searching and getting you to reply to the answers in a way that makes sense to you so that you can move on to the next stage in your journey.
And you see this a lot of stations, it’s a huge highlight in a transition from being in a good relationship to being on your own or to being in one country and having to near to another country. You’ve got to leave that old things behind, and that generates a lot of, uh, negative emotions and sad emotions. And, um, you know, you’ve got all anger. A lot of you get very angry at times, uh, because of this loss and ride, why it happens, you know, you’ve got to make sense of why it’s happened. And so my map does this journey. My courses goes through this journey with you and enabling you to work out where you are on the journey. You may have to go back and forward several times. I’ve got a labyrinth in there because we don’t always get it right. You make your decision and you come to a dead end, you got to go back and find another way through.
And life’s like that as well. You know, you just see it. I think it’s straight forward. It just, it’s got so many twists and turns. And one of the most important things I think on this journey is having worked to all the negative parts of it. As you cross that river of forgiveness, where you forgive, maybe yourself, you forgive the leaders of your country, or you forgive your ex or you forget, whatever’s made this situation so bad for you. And you start climbing this, uh, mountain, uh, the hope mountain to the, uh, the Watchman, uh, the, the lookout for the flu. So the future set from the top of the mountain, you can then see this place, the land of new dreams, but that’s way away. It’s not, you haven’t reached it yet, but you’ve got to a place where you can actually see that it’s a future for you.
So then you have to come down this mountain again, and then you have to work through a whole lot of other stations before you can actually get there. And part of March and logical experiences, you have to go to through a mine. So you have to mindful gold, which is the watch was the good part of your experience. You find that, and you work with that. And then you can, you can either find, you’ve just got to a place of peace and settle there. Or if you are more adventurous, you can actually start getting new ideas and really go out again to make it even better life.
I think that’s a process a lot of writers are familiar with, that idea of mining through the tough times to find the goal that you can then turn into a jewel or a work of art or a story.
That’s right.
The course is available, I believe, as a e-course on your website.
Yes.
So where can folks find that?
You can find it on my website, which is, uh, cross the, my bridges www cross-team averages.com. And if you look for the tab, the, that says the course, you will find it, that anyone who’s just interested to look at the map that’s available to download for free.
Great, well, we’ll include links to that on the show notes for this episode. As long as I know you do lots of artwork on Instagram, you’ve got a Facebook group, so we’ll include all those links on the show notes.
Well, thank you very much, Kevin. That’s very sweet of you.
Looking Into the future. I know you said you’re focused on publishing right now. Tell us a little bit about, you know, as we, we maybe see the end in sight someday for the pandemic, um, what you have on your horizon in terms of goals and writing.
Right. Well, this is now go ahead. Back from my editor. Uh, I’m writing a book, uh, called who am I? Um, what’s God got to do with it and does it matter? And it’s basically a set of, um, devotions or meditations on Psalm 139, because I found that psalm 139 was my go to when I was afraid or when I didn’t know what was happening in my life. I could go to that. And that’s where I held my faith in that God knew where I was. He knew what was happening. He was there when I was conceived and he had planned every day of my life. And so even though I don’t know what’s happening, he does because he’s planned it. And so that’s the smile motivations in that book.
What you just said now, was that like a paraphrase of the psalm?
It’s not so much a paraphrase, but I have actually written a diversion on each of the verses with a different focus. And I’ve also had a little booklet that can be downloaded with that, with a drawing for each of those verses as well. So I did a little drawing for each first that, um, the person can meditate with that as well, because sometimes we have more visual than, uh, verbal. You can understand things better with a picture then you can with your, just with your mind.
Absolutely. You said you just got it back from the editor?
I’ve just got it back, that’s right.
The next steps then?
I think the next steps is, um, I just need to try and find a publisher for it. Otherwise, I’m going to have to self-publish.
Keep me posted on that process. I can’t wait to see that book.
Oh, well, thank you very much. Indeed.
Deryn, it has been such a pleasure speaking with you. Thank you so much for being a guest on the show today.
Thank you so much. Inviting me, Kevin trusted earlier. Lovely surprise. And I really appreciate your generosity and giving me this time to tell people a little bit about my writing process and hopefully they will also be inspired.
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