Passion in Your Writing

How does passion fit into your writing, be it birds, wildlife conservation, baseball, opera, peanut butter, running Marathons, Egyptology, cooking, or cycling? In a recent presentation I gave about my nonfiction book, The Man Who Saved the Whooping Crane: The Robert Porter Allen Story, I was asked, "why whooping crane?" A good question, but one that gave me pause. Why did I spend six years writing a book about a giant bird that migrates from Canada to Texas? Why was I mesmerized by my first sighting of a family of whoopers feeding in the shallows on the Aransas National Wildlife Refuge twenty years ago? And why was I so compelled to tell Bob Allen's story?

Released on 9/16 by
University Press of Florida

I also began pondering the writing of my Sydney Lockhart mysteries and noticed bits and pieces of things I'm passionate about show up in my fiction as well. I realized that childhood experiences, exploring the woods around my grandparents' farm, watching baseball with my dad on the old black and white TV, eating peanut butter out of the jar, helping my mom bake kolaches, riding my bike all over creation, led to my passions as an adult. Opera, running, and Egyptology? well, I'm not sure where those came from, but they keep life interesting.

Here's something to think about: everyone is passionate about something, but not everyone writes about it. What are your thoughts?