I find writing to be such a peculiar instinct – the need or desire to create and form a world using words. To shape a narrative by giving it multi-dimensional form, recalling time and space, having characters move and talk and interact with one another. 

It’s almost like blowing up a balloon, with each breath giving form and life.

Is it that stories are all we have because each of us are struggling to make sense of who we are in the cosmos?

Because without an anchor point, there is a very real danger of floating away into the abyss, to be swallowed up by the void. 

And so it is that I turn my thoughts to Vietnam, the country of my origin, where my parents hailed from before escaping in the late 1970s as refugees. They accepted refuge in this emerald isle of England, thankful for a temporary home but all the while knowing in their hearts that this would never truly be ‘home.’ 

And yet many decades later, they have yet to even visit their homeland, and I wonder if the Vietnam that exists in their memory is fated to exist only as a snapshot in time, faded and golden at the edges.

Living in between two worlds is very interesting to me because it gives rise to a complex mix of feelings as to which is more real – the country you inhabit physically or the one that dwells in your mind and fills your dreams?

Growing up I devoured all kinds of Asian literature – Amy Tan, Xinran, and Jung Chang however I could not find any Vietnamese fiction writers or indeed any novels set in Vietnam. They mostly tended to be tragic war stories or documentary style reportage, blurring biography and real life. How strange then that there is nothing in between. 

Yet Vietnam has such a rich heritage, that I am finding myself quite drawn to it. And so I said to myself recently – I will write a novel set in Vietnam. 

Because it deserves to take its place on the stage, because it is more than just a war memory. 

So my heart is set on this, in spite of the other projects on my desk. 

Today is as good a day as any to begin.