KP Spotlight! Sandrina de Klerk

Join us in welcoming the amazing Sandrina de Klerk to the Kingdom Pen team! 

She is a writing intern at Kingdom Pen, and we had the honor of interviewing her!

Thank you so much, Sandrina, for doing this spotlight!

Sandrina de Klerk: I suppose it would depend on your definition of interesting...let me see. I live in the UK, where it does not rain all the time, contrary to popular belief. I prefer to always have a notebook when I watch a film. Oh, and I like musicals.

Sandrina de Klerk: Well, of course my primary goal as a writer is to glorify God through my stories. I aim to write stories that point people to the beauty of Christ and create a longing for the good, the true, and the beautiful. Other than that, I’d love to publish some books one day!

Sandrina de Klerk: Definitely novels. I love poetry, but cannot write it to save my life. Short stories are awesome, but the ideas usually develop into novel length projects... Screenplays I enjoy! I haven’t written very many though, and I write them in a slightly unusual way.

Sandrina de Klerk: Ooh! Good question. It’s probably a tie between John J. Horn and Douglas Bond :). But I think Enid Blyton was the one to influence my very early work, which would explain why most of the things I used to write would include a lot of similar things--kidnapping being a favourite.

Sandrina de Klerk: Well, as everyone else has probably said--like, everything? But particularly the articles :P. I’ve found them incredibly helpful. When I’m struggling with something, I’ll come and search the topic and read through everything that comes up. I’m so thankful for places like Kingdom Pen!  

Sandrina de Klerk: I’ve been told all my life not to brag, soooo... Also, I’m not sure I have that many accomplishments XD. But I’ll try and think of something...nope, not getting anything. I suppose if we’re talking about writing accomplishments, finishing re-writing the second draft of my novel was pretty hard and pretty rewarding. So we’ll go with that?

Sandrina de Klerk: One of the best things I ever read that helped me tremendously was, “write the story you love”. Writing can be pretty hard, and only when you really, really love a story will you be willing to fight for it, and keep going when the going gets tough. So write the story you love, with the characters you love!

Sandrina de Klerk: Ahh, hard question. I’ve never been good at giving information out on this, and I never like the summary’s I end up writing, but here you go. The book is titled, Something like a Soldier. The son of a dead Navy SEAL fights for control when the death of his brother spins his life out of control. Taken from all he knows, the home he’s always lived in. Now he’s in England, trying to keep his head above water and stay in control. Harder than it sounds.

Sandrina de Klerk: Probably creating characters...and their backstories. I love being able to know all the tiny things about them that no-one else knows, and to know exactly what they are thinking and play through all the random scenes in my head. There’s so many things,

Sandrina de Klerk: The biggest struggle as a writer is probably writing. 😛 Often, it’s just trying to sit down and actually write that scene. Biggest fear? Never finishing the project I’ve had for several years ;). No, seriously. I keep rewriting it.

Sandrina de Klerk: I usually write after I’ve walked my dog in the morning--so I’ll probably be sitting down at my computer at around 9:30/10 in the morning and depending on the day, write sometime between then and lunch. If that doesn’t work out, sometime in the afternoon or evening. Basically, I don’t really have one, I just write when I can and usually at least once a day.

Sandrina de Klerk: Ranting on your favourite character on a computer screen is actually very hard. My favourite character, without a doubt, would be Jonathan Courage. He’s been around for a long time now and I know him really well. I think.  He doesn’t like being talked about, so maybe that’s why this is proving difficult. He’s the main character in Something like a Soldier. He’s pretty reserved till you get to know him, he loves to run and do anything active...There’s a lot more, but I’ll stop myself here.  

Sandrina de Klerk: Only three? Man, that’s mean… The Warden and the Wolfking by Andrew Peterson, The Boy Colonel by John J. Horn, annnnnndddd...The Last Battle. It’s so hard to pick just three!!

Sandrina de Klerk: Hmm, hard one. *20 minutes later* I still have no idea, I guess contemporary fiction where nothing crazy ever happens?