Show 17: the original chick-lit novelist on how she writes...
“It’s 10 in the morning and I’ve just done the school run and handed the baby over to the nanny – my editor’s nanny, actually – and I walk into my study. It’s the first time I’ve ever had my own study: for the last nine years I’ve been working in little corners of cramped bedrooms, so I still get a thrill every time I walk in here.
My computer is both my friend and my enemy: my friend when I’m working well, and my enemy when I’m finding ways not to work. The internet provides so many distractions, not least Ebay: I have a very bad Ebay habit, and I can spend several hours on it on a bad day.
I’d love to be the sort of writer who churned out 15,000 words a day and then went and had a gin and tonic and a game of tennis, but unfortunately, I’m not as predictable as that. At the beginning of a project, I can sometimes only manage 200 words a day, but when I get to the end and I’ve built up momentum, it can be as many as 5,000. I don’t do much in the way of research. If I can’t find it on Google, I tend not to bother with it, but as all my books are set in London, I find my A-Z really useful. Sometimes, I have to take myself away from my computer completely and do it the old-fashioned way, with a notepad and pen, as a way of kick-starting myself.
I work surrounded by lots of pictures, and the linchpin of my occupation as a writer is symbolised by this book; my Writer’s Block. It’s a little book that’s full of little tips to kick-start your imagination, and it represents something that’s hugely important to me: a little online community that I couldn’t do without.”