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I spend so much time on the screen when I am writing, the last thing you want to do is spend more time on the Internet looking at a screen. That's what I hate about all this technology.

I haven't read a book in a very, very long time because, when I'm writing, I don't like to see other people's work. I don't want to see something great and not be able to use it, and I don't want to have any subconscious influences.

I don't write directly on to the computer because I don't think well facing forward with fingers on a keyboard. I think better looking down holding a pen. And the concentration quotient of pen and paper is higher than when I'm moving words around on screen.

Turn off your email; turn off your phone; disconnect from the Internet; figure out a way to set limits so you can concentrate when you need to, and disengage when you need to. Technology is a good servant but a bad master.

What I try very hard to do is have an hour or so in the morning when I leave the house and don't have my phone with me. I'll go sit in a cafe and read and handwrite in my notebook and not be facing a screen. My head will be clear. I will be able to hear myself think. Because honestly for the rest of the day it's just screens, screens, screens.

I really love writing, but I am very easily distracted: my two cats fighting, a rainbow, a TV show... I have to use every trick to keep myself at the computer.

Because I spend so much time traveling, I tend to do most of my reading on the same iPad on which I write. For me, it's words, not paper, that matter most in the end. This practice has had the additional benefit of greatly reducing the time I spend storming through the house, defaming the mysterious forces who 'hid my book.'

I don't read much when I'm working. When I'm finished work, I don't want a thing to do with words.

I kind of go in waves with reading. Sometimes I read all the time, and sometimes I can't get settled enough to focus.

I find the experience of keeping a journal much more creative on paper than on a computer. When I write, I'm physically immersed in the world and slow down, whereas on screen, I use my senses in a less engaged way - and I skim more.