As a child, a deep competitive impulse took hold of me. I had to win because being less than the best felt catastrophic! I only realised much later how unhealthy it was. When I got serious about writing, this impulse inevitably affected it. I had good reasons to write – I wanted to create worlds and beautiful sentences and, eventually, express the interiority of my life – but I also had one bad reason and that was this unhealthy ambition.