I probably don’t strike people as a particularly passionate person.

I don’t say a lot, and when I do, I’m pretty quietly spoken. I’m undemonstrative – I don’t act in ways that draw attention to myself. I certainly don’t dress in ways that draw attention to myself. You might easily be led to believe I don’t particularly care about anything much. You’d be wrong.

Underneath my seemingly offhand persona, I like to believe I’m a highly passionate person. Beneath my undemonstrative exterior, I hold strongly onto a number of values and beliefs. I’m not going to go into the details now – if you’ve been a regular visitor to this site, you should have some idea of what some of them are. But there is one area of my passion that I would like to highlight in this post. I am passionate about the stories I write.

I have to be. As I’ve made the point numerous times before, I don’t have a lot of time to write. I have to sneak in my keyboard time in between work and family, both of which can be significantly demanding on my time (don’t get me wrong, I love my family; my work, maybe not so much). Often, it takes considerable effort to force myself to sit down and write. The only way I can generate the motivation I need to make that effort is to be passionate about what I’m writing.

I’ve got to really love that story with every inch of my being. I’ve got to feel it surging through me. I’ve got to have it circling in the back of my mind, even when I’m preoccupied with other aspects of day-to-day life. Otherwise, it’s not going to happen. I’m not going to find the energy I need to push myself to write. There are many easier things I can do to fill in my leisure hours.

That’s one of the reasons why my stories are the way they are. Why they go their own way and follow their own strange logic, rather than the logic of the standard genre outings. I could try and force myself to write in a more conventional manner. I could try to follow the rules and constraints of genre. I may even improve my chances of actually getting some substantial sales. But my heart wouldn’t be in it. I could never generate the passion I would need to continue, day in and day out, until I had a completed manuscript.

So I’m going to keep doing what I do. Keep following my own slightly odd set of rules. But I’ll do it with passion.