The Writing of Silenda

There comes a point in every person’s life when the concept of mortality shifts from abstraction to reality. For me, that moment arrived at the age of fourteen, when doctors discovered a lesion on the stem of my brain. It would later reveal itself as a tumour. That night, I went to bed with a new awareness—the visceral, unrelenting fear of death. For the first time, I fully understood what it meant to be mortal.

In the aftermath of that diagnosis, my worldview underwent a profound transformation. Although I did not yet have the language to articulate it, I fell into a nihilistic state of mind. Life, once vibrant and technicolour, faded rapidly into shades of dark blue. I found myself withdrawing from the present and retreating into realms of fantasy. Escapism became my coping mechanism. The cruelties of the real world—its arbitrary pain, its unanswered suffering—seemed to disprove the notion that life held any inherent meaning. I clung to fiction: landscapes where trees bore the scent of death, where emotion was raw and contained, where I could disappear into paper worlds. Any intrusion from reality felt like a betrayal. It made me bitter.

In September 2016, the same year Silenda first began to take shape, I wrote in my diary: “How long do you have to flounder before the sea decides your fate?” That line later found resonance in the voice of Horatio, my protagonist, who says in Chapter Three, “I was born with paper-thin skin.” Looking back, I see this as more than metaphor. From a young age, I experienced emotions in their most acute forms. Happiness was euphoric, almost too bright to bear, while sadness consumed me like a raisin shrivelling in the sun. Even joy came with an intensity that bordered on discomfort. The sun no longer warmed me—it scorched. I was an inverted flower, recoiling from sensation.

It was during this period of heightened emotional perception that I came to recognise my tendency toward dichotomous thinking. Everything was either beautiful or cruel, sacred or meaningless, euphoric or doomed. I had no language for grey areas, only the extremes of black and white. But through writing Silenda, I began my lifelong pursuit of ambiguity—not ambiguity as uncertainty, but as nuance. I began to seek out the space in-between.

Constructing Characters as Psychological Reflections

Horatio Young arrived in my imagination on a day lost to memory. He emerged not as a flash of inspiration but as a constant presence—one that would linger throughout almost a decade of my most formative years. With his shaggy black hair, subdued disposition, and symbolic lightning-branch tattoo, Horatio became a vessel for my existential anxieties. In many ways, he bore the weight of my fears so I wouldn’t have to.

Loosely inspired by Shakespeare’s Horatio in Hamlet, my protagonist occupies the role of the observer rather than the hero. He is drawn into a high-stakes, life-or-death narrative, yet he rarely acts. Instead, he narrates, reflects, and withdraws. Horatio is an embodiment of paralysis—the type born not from laziness, but from fear. He symbolises the side of me that found more comfort in language than in action, more safety in thinking than in doing. Writing his story forced me to confront this tendency. Horatio had to evolve so I could. His journey became an allegory for learning how to change, how to move, and how to live—however imperfectly.

Carson Whitmoore, in contrast, entered the story with fire in her bones. If Horatio was inertia, Carson was ignition. With less privilege, less self-awareness, and far more defiance, she propelled the plot forward. Carson encapsulates the anger I experienced in adolescence—the deep, untethered frustration of seeking answers in a world that often offers none. She represents the emergence of what is often termed “feminine rage”—a righteous fury in response to violation, to silence, to injustice. In her, I channeled every unanswered question I had about girlhood, identity, and survival.

The Writing of Silenda as a Spiritual Reckoning

Creating Silenda was not only a literary endeavour but also a profound exercise in emotional and philosophical introspection. I have always been drawn to the act of extending empathy—of imagining the lived experience of others in order to deepen my understanding of humanity. Yet there was one concept that consistently eluded my grasp: the idea of God.

Every time I was plagued by dark thoughts, I found myself wrestling with the same questions: If God exists, why would He allow this? In the face of suffering, tragedy, and injustice, I couldn’t reconcile the concept of a benevolent creator. Why would an omniscient being permit so much pain? What sort of divinity designed this world?

Through the narrative of Silenda, I sought to interrogate—not answer—these questions. I crafted characters whose relationship to faith differed vastly from my own. Some clung to belief as a source of hope, others as a shield against the chaos of existence. In doing so, I came to understand that faith, particularly cultural faith, serves purposes far beyond dogma. Faith can be refuge. It can be ritual. It can offer structure in a disordered world. And while I still do not consider myself religious, writing Silenda allowed me to make peace with the idea that we are not meant to know everything. Sometimes, humility in the face of uncertainty is more valuable than forced certainty.

Setting, Themes, and Truth in Silenda

Silenda unfolds across two dramatically different but equally significant landscapes: The Urb, a neon-drenched cyber-city pulsing with artificial life, and West Town, a misty, Edinburgh-inspired village of cobbled streets, lochs, and grey skies. These contrasting environments embody the duality of the story itself—its vibrant emotional palette rendered always with an undertone of melancholic grey.

The novel explores the intricacies of mortality, friendship, love, and fear. Horatio, despite being surrounded by action, remains still for much of the novel. His stillness, however, is not void—it is full of observation and insight. Over time, he comes to understand that pain is not a curse, but a connective tissue—linking him to those who came before and those who will follow. Silenda insists on finding beauty in grief, hope in loss, and presence in fear.

It also delves into themes of sexuality and feminism with raw, sometimes painful honesty. Much of the first draft was written during my teenage years—when I myself was encountering these complexities for the first time. The final draft, completed in my early twenties, layers that initial honesty with the clarity of hindsight. The result is a deeply personal yet universal meditation on gender, power, intimacy, and identity.

Silenda’s Enduring Message

At its core, Silenda is a love letter—to the adolescent within me, and to anyone who has ever felt trapped by the binary constraints of society. It speaks to those who have been told they must know all the answers in order to live fully. It offers a different philosophy: that uncertainty can be a source of strength. That not knowing who we are, or what we believe, is not a failure—but a starting point.

If Silenda can offer one thing to its readers, I hope it is this: reassurance. Reassurance that it is not only acceptable to live in the grey areas of life—but necessary. That being kind, being honest, and admitting when we don’t know something is a far more radical act than pretending we have it all figured out.