Because it is a work in progress, it’s not static: a sentence will change here, and another one will change there; paragraphs will be added, others will be moved; new entries will be made while other entries will be removed… such is the life of a work in progress.

If I manage to pull it off, I think the Diary will be a double-first in Zimbabwean literature. It’s already the first attempt at a novel in the form of a blog by a Zimbabwean writer. If I pull it off, it’ll be the first such novel by a Zimbabwean writer.

Even though it’s a work in progress, the Diary has been well received.

Its very first version received a commendation in the 2005 Leicester and Leicestershire Library Services Annual Short Story Contest. A year later, a slightly different version was published on both the U.S.-based Glimpse Abroad website and in the Glimpse Foundation’s quarterly magazine. This year, extracts from the Diary were published in the second issue of Tripod Magazine. Another extract, "Living on Promises and Credit" (which was written in 2002 and which I intend to integrate into the Diary) was published in Writing Now: More Stories from Zimbabwe (Weaver Press, 2005).

I’ve also received some very interesting and encouraging comments from some of the world’s finest writers. For example, Maurice Suckling, the versatile computer games scriptwriter and author of the collection of short stories, Photocopies of Heaven (Elastic Press, 2006) said, “Crickey… That’s pretty [fill in appropriate adjective here, since I don’t know how to sum that up in one word].

“When do you think this novel might be finished?”

Nigel H. Thomas, author of the critically acclaimed collection of short stories, How Loud Can the Village Cock Crow? (Afo Enterprises, 1996) and Why We Write: Conversations with African Canadian Poets and Novelists (TSAR Publications, 2006) said, “The writing is forceful. It takes skill and experience, I think, to produce excellent fiction using the epistolary mode, and the excerpts you posted attest to this.”

Gordon Hauptfleisch, in his review of Writing Now: More Stories from Zimbabwe, described “Living on Promises and Credit” as “earnest and affecting.”

To go back to Maurice Suckling’s question - I have every intention of finishing the novel.

Although I haven’t been updating the version of the Diary which appears on the blog, Brave New World Revisited, I’ve been working on it in earnest since about February of this year. In April, the winds rose and it’s been taking a lot of energy to just stay on my feet. When the winds settle down, as they are bound to, the novel should start moving more markedly. Until them, I’ll continue doing what I always do… my best. The material is there in my own life and in the lives of the asylum seekers I’m in contact with. The challenge is to see if I can tell this story in 50,000 words or more and still be able to hold the reader’s attention right through to the end.

The Diary of an Asylum Seeker is currently being hosted on the blog, Brave New World Revisited.