Five days a week Runelle Darrell is up at 5.30am typing an inspirational message into her phone.

It’s something she started a decade ago to get through a difficult period. Thinking it might also help her friends she started sharing – and then they started sharing.

Come next month she’s releasing some of her early messages in a 200-page book, A Cup of Java.

It’s something she has been urged to do for years – by the WhatsApp group that looks forward to her message each weekday morning, and the people who follow her posts on Instagram and Facebook.

Some of them have been faithfully reading her messages since 2011 when she started writing as a way of dealing with the loss of her mother, Ruby Caines.

“What you see is pretty much like my journal gone public,” she said. “I felt completely alone, completely abandoned and I was encouraged to journal [my feelings]. There were friends and some close family supportive of me but it was a struggle during that time and I found an outlet in my writing.”

At first Ms Darrell chose “quotes and daily motivationals” that she found meaningful, and wrote about them from her perspective. As she gained confidence however she began writing from her own experiences.

“It was personal but I always try to find the positive in a negative situation. So with any of my pieces that you see going out it might start in a rough way but it always changes to a positive light.”

Ms Darrell, who runs The Teachers’ Pets Nursery, had never written in that way before.

“When I was younger I used to write poems here and there. I’ve always loved literature and things like that. The thing is this was not supposed to be what it is now. It just happened that the same situations that I was experiencing, other people were experiencing. It encouraged me to continue writing, to continue putting it out.”

In 2013 when she returned to Bermuda from school people kept insisting “this needs to be a book, this stuff is really good”.

For many years she ignored them, happy sharing the way she was. But then about two years ago she decided to go for it. To speed things along she “got a logo drafted up” and started sharing her posts under the name, A Cup of Java.

“It was my personal stuff. I didn’t feel it was good enough for the public other than it being shared here and there. But the magnitude of the following now I’m like whoa … this is literally all around the world.”

Each message usually takes her anywhere from 15 minutes to an hour to write. It’s reached the point where people expect to have them in hand by a certain time.

“Sometimes I do have writers’ block. I try to get them out between 5.30am and 6.30am every day. I have a WhatsApp group that I send it to and by 6.15, if they haven’t seen it I’m sure enough getting a WhatsApp from somebody saying ‘Good morning, is everything OK? We’re waiting for our Java.’ It’s so funny.”

Ms Darrell is hopeful that her book is the first of “several”.

“I want the first book to be [special],” she said. “I don’t want to just throw out any sort of book. The graphic designer I’m working with, Carla Emery, she is phenomenal. We’re just about down to the end of her formatting it. It just has to get proofread and sent off to print so I’m truly hoping that by sometime in July the book is out.

“I’m not sure if I am to sell it in stores. I think I have a large enough following where I could easily let them know and just pretty much do it on my own. But I haven’t decided yet.”

Throughout it all, Ms Darrell has been inspired by the response from her readers.

“Although we sometimes feel like we’re so alone when we’re going through our tough situation, there’s always someone else out there going through something. It’s why I always try to find the positive in a negative situation – we all could use each other to get through these experiences we go through. We’re never alone.

“I draw from God. I’ve just always been a positive person. I try to see the good in things and the good in people. I’ve always just tried to make a difference in the things that I do. That’s just my platform in anything that I do whether it’s my writing or my businesses or whatever – just to make a difference.”