Do you remember the first book you ever read? I do. It was called The Very Hungry Caterpillar and I was probably 6 years old. I loved that book. It was made of cardboard and its pages were all different sizes, getting longer each time the caterpillar ate something new. I read that book over and over and over. I loved it. I don’t exactly remember the order of books after that, but I know I couldn’t get enough. I gorged myself on random books from the library or wherever I could find them. I was a fiend. I read and if I couldn't read I was read to.

Then, one day, my mam handed me two box sets. Narnia and Harry Potter. When I tell you I devoured those box sets in days I’m not lying. I was hooked. I was in deep and there was no turning back. From then on I read everything. Everything. Horror, thrillers, sad books, happy books, fantasy, YA… whatever I could get my hands on. I started reading young and I never stopped. Even when I was hiding it from my friends because books weren’t cool. There was nothing in my life better than reading a good book. And then, like getting hit full force by a truck going a hundred miles an hour I realised something. I didn’t just want to read. I wanted to write. I wanted to create something. I wanted my own characters. My own world. Something I dreamed up and then fleshed out. That’s what I wanted. So I wrote stories in my head before I slept. If a book ended in a way that didn’t sit right with me I wrote a new ending. I wrote entire chapters. I wrote snippets. Excerpts from books I hadn’t written yet. I told my mother I wanted to move to New York. Sit in cafe and drink coffee and write stories as the world sped past outside. I wanted that so badly.

But (and there’s always a but) I was afraid. Terrified. What if I didn’t have a story to tell? What if I had a story and people laughed at it? What if I wrote a story and no one wanted to read it? All the what ifs I could think of. So I didn’t. I didn’t do any of it. I went to college to study something I didn’t really care about. I got a job doing something I didn’t really want to do. I read as many books as I could get my hands on and every night as I fell asleep I would write stories in my head that I was sure would never see the light of day because God forbid someone laughed at me.

But (there it is again) then… I got older. I turned 20 and I had people around me who didn’t laugh when I told them what I wanted. I gave birth to a son who I wanted to make sure would never ever be afraid to be laughed at. I grew up and then… Covid happened. And there it was. My moment. My opportunity. I didn’t need to sit in a cafe in New York. I could pull out my laptop while my son slept and I could finally rip those stories right out of my head and put them on paper. Who cares if I get laughed at? Who cares if no body reads them. I was going to write a book.

And I did. Quietly, at first. I told very few people. I kept it to myself (because I promise you that’s where progress happens.) I had this idea for the end of a book and I wrote that. Then I figured out how those characters got there. Somewhere along the way I got to know them. To understand them. “Why would she do that?” I’d ask myself, and then, “because she loves her father.” Or because she was scared. Or because he loves her. All the answers came to me like the characters themselves had told me and maybe they did. Maybe these imaginary people I’ve created really do live somewhere inside my head. Maybe there’s worlds and worlds in there that I have created. Perhaps they have minds of their own, I don’t know. But (you see my point?) somewhere along the way a story was told. It was there in black and white. A world that never existed before, suddenly, shockingly, on paper.

I guess, in a very long winded, slightly condescending way, what I’m trying to tell you is that I was terrified to do what I loved. I was too scared to do what I knew I wanted to. What I knew I could. Until I wasn’t anymore. Who cares if someone doesn’t like what you do. Do you like it? Who cares if you get laughed at. Everyone does at one point or another. If you have something you love, and you want to do it then do it! Do it now! Do it as soon as you get the chance. Life, I’ve discovered, is short. And fickle. And honestly sometimes just awful, so find joy where you can. Do whatever you want to do. Maybe write a book. Maybe teach yourself piano. Maybe get up on stage and act. Maybe people will laugh… but what if they applaud?