Written by Olly Halton
A passion is defined as a strong and barely controllable emotion. When you realise what yours is, it can be a draw, a pull, a call to action and resisting it is near impossible. Some regard it as destiny, but I believe sooner or later we unlock our passions and with it our purpose.
As I sit and write, I cannot help but to be ultimately grateful that I have found mine. I started writing when I was a child, creating pieces for school criteria about plotting and first person perspectives and now, I have just finished curating my own science-fiction lesson based around Carl Jung’s literary archetypes.
My love for reading has fuelled my literary hand, breathing in the lyrics of Margaret Atwood, Darren Shan, Suzanne Collins and James Dashner to name but a few. I imagined myself as characters in their books, screaming how to defeat the villains to the main characters on my second read through an invisible and yet blinding barrier. This reading and watching of films and TV shows developed within me my love of genre fiction, especially sci-fi and fantasy. I wanted to live in their worlds, in their shoes, and to change their endings. I wanted to save Rose Tyler from the void and I wanted to bring the one ring straight to Mordor.
So I decided I would create these stories for myself. I started off with fan-fiction as a child and then started creating my own narratives and characters, finding a draw to create and research and make more complex decisions about what would happen and to whom. In year eight, I re-wrote a study text just because I loved the title and now my dedicative passion pulls me back each day to my laptop and the notes in my phone and on scrawny notepads.
Some passions, particularly artistic, exist to re-create like painting one’s lover or playing a Mozart symphony at a family party. Writing is quite different.
My job, to put it simply, is a duty to create a world as intricate and enticing as our own, but a world that no one can see or touch or live in and convince people to believe that they could live there, if such a place existed. It is to imagine people never born, names never bestowed and lines never spoken. It is a duty to look at the world through a literary lens, describing things beyond their colour and their sizes and shapes – to instead look at relevance, imagery and reference.
So now I leave you with a wish to find your own passions and the careers you care about. I hope you keep reading to become a laureate, keep drawing to become an artist, keep making music to become a musician, keep experimenting to become a scientist and keep helping to become a charity worker.
Good luck my friends.
Available in the February '21 Issue on page 16 - Read Here