By Desmond Kon Zhicheng-Mingdé

Let’s get down to brass tacks. Why do you write?

Writing has meant different things to me at different points in my life. Before the last ten years, I saw writing as something I wanted to do, as something that was key to who I wished to be, to be seen as. This has evolved over the last ten years. I have learnt that writing is not about who I am on the surface. Looking back, I see that writing has to do with my relationship with language. With everything I write, this relationship is affirmed and grows a little. The desire to write has been inside me since I learnt the alphabet but it took quite some time before I dared to press the “START” button. And it also took a bit of time before I realised that it was up to me to do whatever it takes to keep the machine going.