Waves, sky, trees, Essrog - I was off the page now, away from the grammar of skyscrapers and pavement.

I'm gregarious with writers and never with manuscripts . . . I [like to] create the illusion of seamless perfection, so I alone know the flawed homely process along the way.

You don’t have the slightest idea of what it means to write a scene and a character in the English language, with images and words chock full of received meaning.

But the day I can't shrug off a twinge of self-pity, is the day I'm washed up for keeps.

I'm learning to hate the sound of my own voice.

The level at which my OCD enters my writing process isn't that I slap the keyboard - it's more along the lines of a compulsive need to swap syllables around, rework words and sentences - I revise for the pleasure and satisfaction of it, rather than out of a sense of duty.

Writing is a private discipline, in a field of companions.