All I've ever wanted to do was be a writer

Seriously. Apart from when I was three and wanted to be a cat, a brief period when I was seven and I wanted to be an acheologist (thanks to Jurrasic Park, but when I realized I wouldn't meet real dinosaurs I changed my mind) and a day when I was nine and thought about being a vet but I couldn't stand the thought of animals dying.

All I've ever wanted to do was write. I was reading before I started school and all through school I was graded at least two years ahead of my actual year-group. When I was ten and eleven, my teacher wanted to grade me higher but there literally wasn't a grade available. Reading and writing always went hand in hand with me, I always had a book with me or pencil or paper and I was constantly lost in a little world of my own.

My family always told me I'd grow out of it. They said I'd grow up and I wouldn't want to read books all the time or write my own stories about vampires and mysteries and girls with no friends becoming heroes.

But they were wrong, and soon enough they stopped telling me I'd grow out of it. They realized that writing and reading and creativity was a part of me, it was who I was. My mum bought me a typewriter and I used to sit in the cupboard under the stairs with candles and type on it, pretending I was the sole survivor in an apocolypse, or Harry Potter's lost little sister, or a maid living in the Victorian times. Writing wasn't just a hobby to me, it was in my blood, in my soul. My brother has a tattoo for me, which is a quill with an 'A' underneath, to represent my love for writing.

I believe everyone is born with a purpose, and my purpose is to be a writer.

When I was sixteen and doing my final year at school, teachers discouraged me from pursuing my dream. I was shown facts and figures and given lectures about how being a writer wouldn't give me a steady job and I'd never make it big and I wouldn't make money. They told me to try medicine or law but I shrugged it off. It has never been about money or fame for me, it's just... if I don't write then I'm restless. My head is always thinking up characters and situations and plot-lines and I need to share them with people. Even if it's just a handful of people.

I'll be nineteen in a couple weeks, my last year as a teenager. I live in my own flat and pay my own bills and I play at being a grown up. I've got a degree in Creative Writing and right now I'm studying Journalism so I can work freelance while I work on novels and short stories.

Throughout my life, I've clung to my dream and I always will. I can't discard this piece of me any more than I can discard any other part of myself. I'm a writer, no matter what.