I guess one of the things that really influenced me in being interested in writing (which lead to reading other's work and words etc.)was an English teacher that I had about three years ago. At that time, unpressurised by exams, we did a lot of creative writing projects, where he would set a theme that we would write about. I got a bit bored of always going for the obvious like everyone else did, so when brainstorming ideas, I used to come up with the most strange, downright wierd ideas i could think of. I never really intended to carry them out, but he was so sarcastic about some of my ideas (obviosly thinking that I wouldn't use them) that I did, just to get my own back. I've been writing reams of stories and poetry ever since.

My current English teacher in fact recommended AWAD to our class a while back - I guess I'm the only person 'geeky' enough to have followed that up. If my friends knew...