Novels

So, I started two novels.

One is just utter pants and it's been shelved for about 5 years and it makes me cringe to even look at it.

The other is more like a good idea but without the necessary personal effort required to write it. I will write it.

However, I've come upon another idea. Not really a novel this time but more or less a living documentary and I actually do think it's worth doing. I recently found a whole load of old papers and documents belonging to my late father, documents which explain his journey to the UK and help me build up a picture of his lonely steps to a cold Britain over 40 years ago. It's also opened my eyes about some of the family history too - both personal, emotional and financial. It's filling in a few of those gaps for me and I have even figured out my sister's actually a year older than I thought. It's those bits of certainty that compells me to actually write this thing.

I have a structure in my head about how I want to put it together - but I also want it do something for a generation of people under 25 - and that is to given them a glimpse of what their parents and grandparents went through during that period of pre-Enoch migration. I want them to understand that they can aspire to something and actually, to be a tiny bit grateful for those lonely journeys.

I am thinking of collaborating on this as a project perhaps with one or two other writers of my generation with migrant routes.

But you know, this idea, it's got a bit of passion behind it - and it has facts, truth as well as that ordinary mystique you get with folk-tales and handed down oral tradition. I can make those early "pioneers" into heroes, legends, and who knows, their descendents might let them live on in their own actions. They might understand how important it all is.