Writing is a strange synthesis between the two parts of your mind: the analytical side and the side that knows nothing at all, and you have to allow the dreaming side free rein.

There is something about the unexpected that moves us. As if the whole of existence is paid for in some way, except for that one moment, which is free.

A novel usually takes me two years. A year to research and plan and dream. Then a year to write.

At the moment, I'm toying with a new idea for a book, but fully engaged with writing screenplays, so the book idea - which needs empty space in my head - is barely formed yet.

Respect the way characters may change once they've got 50 pages of life in them. Revisit your plan at this stage and see whether certain things have to be altered to take account of these changes.

I can inhabit any character in a way that is difficult to do successfully in a contemporary novel.

Any setting can potentially acquire this vividness. It slowly arrives during the period of research, until it is as immediate to me as my own real surroundings.