Kept falling in and out of it [sleep] like out of a boat or a tipping hammock.

The process of rewriting is enjoyable, because you're not in that existential panic when you don't have a novel at all.

Forget the boring old dictum, 'Write about what you know.' Instead, seek out an unknown yet knowable area of experience that's going to enhance your understanding of the world and write about that.

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.

So history is fertile territory for me and I think I could feel happy with any period of history, provided I had the right sources and the necessary time for the initial research.

Listen to the criticisms and preferences of your trusted "first readers".

In the planning stage of a book, don't plan the ending. It has to be earned by all that will go before it.