After my family leaves in the morning, I'll make my first coffee of the day and then I head upstairs to go to work. At least, that's my plan. I'm not going to check email. I'm not going on Facebook, or sneaking a glimpse at my Instagram feed. No. I'm not going to down that road. But with multiple devices, by the time I get upstairs [to my study] I may well have heard my iPhone ding and - it's Pavlovian.

How do we live the writer's life? There's only one simple answer: 'we write.'

I don't know why this is, but I really believe that things don't happen when we're trying to will them into being. They don't happen when we're waiting for the phone to ring, or the email to pop up in our in box. They don't happen when we're gripping too tightly. They happen - if they happen at all - when we've fully let go of the results. And, perhaps, when we're ready.

Everything changes. The more I try to hold on to the moment, the more it slips through my fingers.

It is only with distance that we are able to turn our powers of observation on ourselves, thus fashioning stories in which we are characters.

I used to act in television commercials when I was a kid and a young adult.

I think there's something about a writer's disposition, that is, even if unaware, always slightly in a witness state.