Show me someone who doesn’t have a passion and I’ll show you someone who doesn’t have a soul. To be passionate is to live. Whether it’s a passion for travel or running or fashion or animals or baking, it doesn’t really matter. My passion is writing.

From as far back as I can remember, I loved expressing myself through the written word. I was also an avid reader, one of those kids who reads with a torch under the covers, greedily devouring stories when the lights were long turned out. I’m sure that accounts for my poor eyesight and it also no doubt accounts for my love of writing.

A few months ago, an old boyfriend sent me a huge package of letters I had written to him (he was clearing out and thought I might like to see my teenage ramblings). I couldn’t believe the volume of stuff I had written. Several years of my teens were documented right there, things I had forgotten, things my friends had forgotten. I was catapulted back to those schooldays when I would start a letter in the morning before school and continue it during classes, hiding it in my book or copy and pretending I was taking copious notes. I mastered the art of appearing to be absorbed in lessons when really my little head was filled with romance.

I wrote my first book when I was eight. It was a mystery story. I still have the tattered notebook. My early career enabled me to write letters for a living and then brochures and this shorter style of writing suited me. It kept me interested and on my toes. I need deadlines because I'm not very good at setting my own. I have started several novels over the years, but something has always prevented me from progressing them – losing several chapters due to a corrupted hard drive, work getting in the way, too many ideas and being unable to settle on one, not feeling qualified or good enough.

But being passionate about something doesn’t mean that you have to be the best at it or do it all the time. It means that you look forward to it. When you do it, you are completely absorbed in it, you want no other distractions to take away from your enjoyment of it. It gets under your skin and into your heart and consumes you for whatever moment or hour or day. It is that feeling of being alive.

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