Some lucky sods are born with the intrinsic ability to translate their imagination onto the page without trying. Unfortunately, the rest of us have to learn a craft before we can do it effectively. The problem I sometimes run into is I’ve learned the writing skills I didn’t possess as a kid — the creative skills — but I’ve somewhat lost the bursting imagination. Not completely, but my adult brain has been slowly poisoned by a cynical world and I often forget how to lose myself in my own fiction.

When I wrote as a kid, my work wasn’t amazing on a technical level. But imaginatively it was top. Literally nothing else mattered in that moment. All I cared about was telling the story, whatever it happened to be.

My daily struggle is to recapture that childish lack of caring.