After writing my first book, Nobody Nowhere, and the eight that followed (including the poetry book Not Just Anything), I was drenched in a shower of letters from people of all ages and backgrounds who picked up my books for all sorts of reasons and found some little piece of truth, of self, of learning or belonging within those pages.

My first book, Nobody Nowhere, had its foundations long before it ever found its way onto paper. It was etched upon my soul, beyond the grasp of my conscious mind. Writing was the first key to the door behind which it was all locked.

Nobody Nowhere seeped out between the bars of my invisible cage in the form of poetry and later music. This began when a typewriter was left in my room at the age of nine. Like most introduced objects, these things were not presented to me with instruction for it was known that in my mostly meaning deaf world, that was a sure fire way to put your own stamp upon it, branding the object part of your world and an attempt to invade mine. So the typewriter, like other introductions, appeared to have introduced itself, it was merely there one day.

It took me some time to dare to touch its keys, watching the mechanism as it struck the ribbon through the roller (for there was no paper in it) and the carriage moved along, now shockingly altered by me. I had had an impact upon it. I existed. I had to undo it and pushed the carriage back into line before the hyperventilation subsided.

Progressively, I dared this all again until one day, I arrived home to find the typewriter had fed itself with a sheet of paper. I was shocked. The typewriter and I were not on speaking terms for quite some time. Then I dared to press the keys again.

To my horror, it printed upon the page. Now not only had I made an impact, but it was unerasable. There was the proof, upon the white of the page. There was no denying it now. I had asserted my existence and it had been captured. Then I broke out, defying all compulsion to rip the paper out, shred it and eat it, and typed a whole line of letter patterns. Well, that was the beginning of the end. Before I knew it the patterns of letters had me in fits of giggles and they made their way line by line down the page. Over the next four years the letter patterns would before word lists and the word lists would eventually become automatic, subconscious-driven, poetry hidden in the roof void where it was allowed to dare exist. My career as a writer had begun.

It would be years before I could hold conscious thought with awareness or fluently understand the meaning of my own spoken words falling back upon my often meaning deaf ears. Sometimes, you've just got to trust and open the floodgates.