I started writing in a diary when I was about eight years old. My sister and I both got those cheesy ones with pastel flowers on the cover with a cutesy lock as a gift from my parents. I immediately set to writing all my secret thoughts in it. I still have it somewhere, stuffed into my old brown school case. (That suitcase was the bane of my schooling existence for many years — it was one of those awful huge things with dividers that looked like I was carrying a large accordion on my back. And it was indestructible. I tried.)..