You keep your past by having sisters. As you get older, they're the only ones who don't get bored if you talk about your memories.

I'm mad about gardening. I have an allotment on the other side of Hampstead Heath, and I keep three hens in my garden.

Discover the times when you're most creative - mornings, nights, afternoons - and clear the time to work then. Many writers find the mornings are best, and the afternoons are only good for editorial corrections, or getting the washing done. Others can only work through the night, drunk.

You keep your past by having sisters. As you get older, they're the only ones who don't get bored if you talk about your memories.

Once a character has gelled it's an unmistakable sensation, like an engine starting up within one's body. From then onwards one is driven by this other person, seeing things through their eyes.

But it's also true that the person who risks nothing, does nothing, has nothing. All we know about the future is that it will be different. But perhaps what we fear is that it will be the same. So we must celebrate the changes.

I was never a lonely child who sat looking at the rain sliding down the window.