Sue Pickford Cheung

Finally! I’ve handed in the final draft for the sequel to my YA novel Chinglish. I started back in December 2021 so it’s taken 3 and half years to complete – about the same amount of time it took for Chinglish.

They were both bloody hard to write. No, I didn’t have to tell the world and their dog about my life. I didn’t even want to write Chinglish to start with. But it was when my agent said it might help people, that I thought, well that’s a good reason to do it and ultimately it ended up helping me, cos I saved loads on therapy.

Chinglish, a creative part-memoir set in 1980s Coventry, covers my teen years 13 to 16. Then the sequel picks up from there and covers 16 to 18. It reveals a whole new set of challenges including homelessness and teen pregnancy. Because this period was so bleak, I thought that writing it as a graphic novel might help me swerve feeling too much. It didn’t work. It was only when I repeatedly sat down to face my demons that truth started to seep, like a freshly picked scab. There was no other option but to use the same format as before; brutally honest raw diary entries, with signature humour to dull the pain.

There’s still a way to go before publishing, more edits and illustrating. But what I want at the end of the day is for this story to be out there, showing how life’s dead ends don’t have to be that way at all – and it’ll be closure for me.