A Connecticut Yankee in King Arthur’s Court by Mark Twain. I absolutely loved this book in part because of the very idea of it. It encouraged my imagination making me think what else I would make happen for a modern man finding himself back in medieval times. What would his modern knowledge enable him to do back then? In a way Twain was ahead of his time with the time travel genre. Oddly enough, though, it didn’t encourage me to read more sci-fi for some reason. I think what really appealed to me was the satirical nature of the book. Hank, the hero, tries in vain to turn feudalism and the monarchy on its head and introduce an idea of democracy. It has been the subject of numerous stage and screen adaptations none of which have been particularly successful. My younger self would find this very strange and I often wonder why it is so.

I’m reading Bleak House at the moment and loving it. I’m revisiting the classics having just finished Northanger Abbey and next up is Middlemarch. Partly inspired by the recent Guardian top 100 novels list. Having said that Michael Connelly is never far from my bedside—in novel form obviously.

I go for daily walks along the Regents Canal near where I live. It provides good thinking time early in the morning before the crazed/psychotic lycra clad cyclists come along at speed, bell ringing and blowing whistles to clear the way, terrorising all the pedestrians. I was a member of the London library for a few years which I adored. There was the
triple headed inspiration from those who’d worked there in the past and walked through those very same stacks, from Dickens to TS Eliot, surrounded at arms length almost, by millions of books to refer to, to those working there around you which was an encouragement in itself.

Simple – write every day, it doesn’t matter how much or how little. Just write. I myself don’t believe in word counts or word targets, I think they are intimidating. It’s better to work to time or a period of time. You’ll know when you’ve written enough. You’ll begin to recognise when the creative reservoir has run dry for the day. I also think that writing the same amount of words every day leaves you in danger of making the rhythms of your prose predictable and repetitive.

You make your own luck. Don’t be jealous of your peers and contemporaries. In some sense it’s inevitable you will be but it’s invariably destructive and serves no good purpose. Always have belief in what you do and if you work hard, do the graft, ignore the moments of frustration which might often feel they outnumber the moments of pleasure and satisfaction it will probably all come good in the end.