(If you’re looking for the text, you can find it here.)
I wrote The Written after spending three years studying English. I’m fascinated by the power of the written word – the power to destroy and to heal, to control and to set free, to distract and to inspire. I’m also fascinated by how the written word’s form can affect the impact it has. So I came up with three characters – Solomon, Sonya and Max – whose lives are permanently changed by their relationship with different kinds of writing. Sonya is an obsessive reader, using novels as a way to anaesthetise herself against her problems. Max is a student who finds himself getting trolled on social media after a video of him goes viral. And Solomon is a lecturer who has no choice but to engage with the Bible – which means wrestling with his doubts on a regular basis.
The Written alternates between the three characters’ viewpoints and it’s set in Cambridge. It largely takes place over a (very long) fortnight in the autumn of 2016. Each section is about 600 words long, so I’ll be publishing them on here as blog posts. You can expect a new one every couple of days!
