First find your bone

At university, the guy in the study next door was a scientist and amateur poet. He was dating a boy who wore eyeliner and plus fours, and many was the night he spent on the dorm landing sobbing tearfully as he beseeched his lover through the keyhole to let him in. One night we came home to find one of his poems tacked to his door. I've never forgotten the first line: 'Voices. I hear voices ...' You'll be reassured to know he's now working for NASA on the space programme.

Let's be honest - writing is not a normal job. (One of my favourite comments from my lovely mother-in-law is that 'Neither of my children married normal people' - meant in the nicest possible way). A writer friend said over lunch a couple of days ago that if she doesn't work, she gets crazy. Certainly I'm certainly never happier or more conscious of experiencing 'flow' than when writing. At the moment I have the next three books in mind, and I'm really looking forward to having the time and space to get the words physically down. It's feeling a little crowded in there. Whether you hear voices, or daydream whole other worlds and places writers certainly have a rich interior life. Put it this way - it's never lonely.

If you haven't read 'Writing Down the Bones', I really recommend it. A lot of the book covers finding your 'bone' the thing that you return to again and again, the thing that bugs you, and fills your thoughts. Personally I don't so much have 'voices' thank goodness as snatched images. It's a bit like seeing a film before it is made, an amalgam of the real and imaginary. The 'bone' that started the first book was an image of a young woman sitting on a battered old trunk in an empty studio. Instantly I wanted to know who she was - was she arriving or leaving? Where had she been, where was she going ..?

The characters I'm drawn to tend to be people like this - restless, nomadic, creative. I've been lucky to meet some extraordinary people over the years, people who have led fascinating lives, and they have often provided the spark for my fictional characters: the Charlton Heston-like war photographer who took surprisingly delicate photos of Iraqi shepherd-boys, the retired costume designer who worked with Fellini, the college friend who dated a pop star and starred with Gerard Depardieu ... these are just three real people who caught my imagination and started me writing the first book. The house pictured above is one of my 'bones' - I grew up in an isolated village that is the highest point between Dartmoor and Exmoor. It was wild, remote and beautiful. The house had been built as a gift for a woman who took one look at it and said she could never live there. This house is as much a character in the first book as the people. It was a magical place to grow up - of course once I hit teenagehood I couldn't wait to get away. I wanted to live in every capital city in the world, starting with London. No doubt most of my work is an attempt to get home again. Keep your eyes, ears and mind open - there is inspiration all around you.