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Long-term visitors to my old Neurocentric website know that I struggle with my writing: they have read To be or not to be?, Troubled Writer, Conversation with the nafs and Another Evaluation amongst many, many others. I initially started maintaining that website as a means of getting myself to write regularly, for it seemed I just could not finish a project I had started four or five years earlier. Of course, I don’t have to write—I could just give it up—but in some senses I achieved that goal because that work is now with proofreaders and on its way into print. But those who visited my website during the course of 2006 know that in addition to that project, I was also working on a novel. Alas, I cannot report that I made much progress on this over the same period. I have dozens of files for each new version of the text, but not much to actually show for my efforts. I believe I have been “half way through” for almost two years now.

Over the past eight months or so this novel of mine has stagnated, because my mind has been all over the place. I had the entire story mapped out years ago, which I carry around in my head. This novel is a finished piece of work, except it is all in my head; a synopsis may have made it into the word processor and out again, but the novel itself has been less fortunate. The trouble is, the writing process is long and quickly leaves me bored. There comes the source of the stagnation. I have been working on it for so long that the voices have become stale.

Thus over the past eight months this impatient soul has been grasping hold of one new idea after another. The storyline has been cast a decade back in time. It has been condensed into fifty days. The main character has been a student. The supporting characters have become main characters. It has become an interrogation, a diary and a conversation. I have even toyed with the idea of pushing it off into the far-flung future. I have dozens of versioned files, some in their proper place, some on the desktop, some in the USB key in my pocket, some hanging onto emails in my Inbox. The basic story remains the same—the clash of the ego with the allure of power—but how I tell it has alluded me over the past few months.

This week I returned to my original manuscript and was pleased to discover that, in a way, it wasn’t as bad as I thought it was. It needs work—a lot of work—but I think I can live with this interpretation of the tale in my head. Thinking about it now, I think I have another author to thank for this. Reading of her soon-to-be published novel provided me some relief I think.

About a week ago, I found myself with a lot of regrets about the direction my novel had taken. Around 2002 it was the tale of a fourteen year old Somali school girl who overcame the racism of a particularly nasty teacher. But over the years that followed I became fascinated by that teacher and my focus shifted onto him. What was it that drove him? What was his problem? I discovered that it was his ego and the battle within between the higher and lower calls of the heart. As my writing wore on, I found the Third Person no longer an appropriate voice through which to tell this story, and so three years ago that teacher’s voice took over, pushing that Somali refugee to one side. She remains a key character in the novel, but now we see her through his eyes: the objectivity of the Third Person and quirkiness of her speaking for herself is gone.

And here lies my regret. I regretted losing that funny, youthful voice with its unique perspective on all that occured around her. It is enjoyable writing in a more innocent, youthful voice, although I had to stop myself from turning it into Huckleberry Finn. I regretted losing those unique insights into a slightly dysfunctional refugee Muslim family life. I regretted losing the interior of the mosque and the concern of a mother.

And so it was that just last week I was going to adopt that voice once more; to tell the story from that student’s point of view. I drafted a few pages before I went to sleep and hoped to continue at the next available opportunity. Over the next few days, however, I toyed with all those different voices again, littering my desktop with yet more fragments of a novel. My mind was all over the place. I am tired of this novel to be frank, and so I wanted to find the voice and the setting that would allow me to finish it as soon as possible.

Alhamdulilah, earlier this week I chanced upon an advertisement for the official book launch of From Somalia, with Love by Naima bint Robert. I was instantly captivated and began reading all I could about her novel, and suddenly I felt relieved. Somehow, there was this sense of relief. Closure in a way. Yes, I didn’t need to give that young refugee her voice back, because someone else has beaten me to it. Alhamdulilah. And so I return to where I left off at the end of last year and make myself satisfied with that. It doesn’t mean I will actually finish this novel, but it puts some peace beack in my mind.

So thank you, bint Robert, for writing that novel of yours. I look forward to reading it when it arrives and finishing my own now too, insha Allah.