One of the things I’ve been doing in my spare time is writing fiction for the local council My Brother Jack awards.

As an annual award to encourage writers in the local community, this competition has been running for many years and it’s always been at the back of my mind to submit an entry but I never did.

Local history fascinates me because I find some connection to place when I know that people before me in this same area lived on this land and worked on it. Unlike places in Europe or England where you see the old buildings, feel the history seeping out of the cobblestones and listen to the stories passed down from generations, here in Australia, these are lost. The only remnants of history I see on our streets are places that have been heritage listed, and the stories, well, they’re lost in the local libraries in self-published books by people who used to live before me. Sometimes, if you’re lucky, you’ll find old post cards or photos of your suburb in the second hand opportunity shop in some dusty box.

The older I get, the more I need to reconnect with the past for some reason. I have no idea why.

A past long before my past I might add.

So I decided to write a piece of fiction but surprisingly, I’m finding it difficult because I’m not writing from my perspective but of a character. This feels foreign to me.

Initially I started it in third person but I’ve never written this way before. He said this, he did that. It’s weird. It’s as if I’m an arm’s length from the character. An observer watching the character, playing out the scene in my head and writing what I’m seeing. Then, I write too much – it’s too descriptive. I take out words, I re-write and curse myself that I don’t have the Hemingway approach to writing.

Have I removed too much that the brain can’t fill the gaps?

Am I assuming too much from the reader that they’d understand and fill in those gaps?

Then I thought, “maybe I should pretend to BE the character? Change it from third person to first person.”

So I rewrote the piece and I was amazed at the difference. It wasn’t that much easier to write either.

However, it didn’t read so well. Writing it in first person, I felt I was missing the atmosphere. It was centred too much on that person and his relationship to his surroundings. Meanwhile writing it in third person, we observed the character IN his surroundings which was as much as part of the story.

Really, I have no idea what I’m doing. I’m going to write this piece and I have written 1500 or so words already.

The next part is ready to be written and this morning, while doing a slow 2km jog (first time in a long time) while watching the sun rise, I decided on how it will pan out.

I’ll write it all up on the weekend hopefully. My character will have a small but an important (and probably unaware) of his help towards the allied victory in the Battle of Midway in 1942. Not bad for a lettuce farmer of my tiny Melbourne town of Bentleigh.

“For there can be no doubt that 1942 was for Australia – as a nation and as a people – the most important single year of all those two hundred. It was the turning point in the making of modern Australia. In the fire of that tremendous crisis were forged all the elements which have shaped our national life and destiny, to this day.”

The Hon. R.L.J. Hawke, AC, Prime Minister of Australia, on the occasion of Australia’s Bicentenary, 1988