I know people who've passed every creative writing course under the sun and who are more analytically intelligent and far better-read than I, but who just can't write either fiction or drama. It's like any art-form. In order for talent to be developed, crafted, it's got to be there in the first place.

In everything I write, I seek out something which I term, 'the music'. This is an energy centre which I cannot define and which lies beyond the realm of obvious poetic technique.

I know people who've passed every creative writing course under the sun and who are more analytically intelligent and far better-read than I, but who just can't write either fiction or drama. It's like any art-form. In order for talent to be developed, crafted, it's got to be there in the first place.

I don't buy the 'cynical voice'; I think we've had too much of that over the past few years; it's become deadening. I'm a passionate person, who is not afraid to express emotion in print.

In effective literature, ideas emerge from matter, not the other way around. So I squeeze the dirt for all it's worth and watch the sparks and diamonds fly. Add to this, the lubrication which music can provide, and you've got a workable literary form. Even when we reach the stars, we'll still be gazing down into the gutter.

When I was a child, I used to go wandering - disused railway-lines, old barns, dry-stone walls, strangely Pre-Raphaelite copses - it's much more fun to wander than to be guided, and you could do it in those days with freedom and without paranoia. In similar fashion, I try to allow the reader room to wander, even to meander, to almost lose themselves and their grip of the narrative.

My motto is: write about anything you bloody well like; just make sure you do it effectively. We've all had all the emotions, the rest is research and that leap which some can do and others cannot - it's not really something you can learn, otherwise all academics of literature would be wonderful fiction writers.