Jamie O'Connell: 'I'm scared of the part of myself that thinks I'm not good enough'

'I think my childhood, growing up gay in a deeply conservative Christian environment in north Cork, left me with a feeling of not being good enough'

'The greatest advice I've been given is to live for now and not for when.'

I was reared in Ballyhooly in north Cork but I spent a number of years in the UK so the accent is a bit of a mixed bag. I'm living in Kenmare now with my partner John. I came down with a small suitcase for four days when Covid hit last March and I just haven’t left. John is the person I turn to most. He thinks I'm brilliant even on my worst day and he has a huge capacity to love. Despite the Cork and Kerry rivalry. Cork is my hometown and it always will be.

My earliest memory is being about three years old and listening to 101 Dalmations on those red cassette tapes in the 1980s and reading the little accompanying book. As a child, I loved to be creative. When I was 11 I heard an interview with Maeve Binchy on the television and something clicked in my head. We got a computer in my family home and I just started writing on it every day and 25 years later I haven't stopped. Edna O'Brien was asked once what she would be if she wasn't a writer and she said she'd be in a mad house and I feel like that. There have been times in my life where I haven't been able to write because of work commitments or travel and I've felt almost a heaviness in my spirit. There's just that creative itch that keeps pulling me back.