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Sometimes a manuscript is like bread dough. You have to abuse it.

It's always the paragraphs I loved most, the ones I tenderly polished and re-read with pride, that my editor will suggest cutting.

Asking myself, 'Is this any good?' is pointless. It just slows down my writing, and I can't tell anyway. It's always the paragraphs I loved most, the ones I tenderly polished and re-read with pride, that my editor will suggest cutting.

If you here require a practical rule of me, I will present you with this: 'Whenever you feel an impulse to perpetrate a piece of exceptionally fine writing, obey it - whole-heartedly - and delete it before sending your manuscript to press.'

Sometimes I can spend as long revising a manuscript as I spent writing it in the first place.

I've been so mutilated by a lot of articles. I know I haven't said a lot of things I'm quoted as saying in the papers.

I have a very long pre-writing process where I'm jotting down ideas in a notebook and ripping out relevant newspaper articles - a long fact-finding mission.

Often I sort of work up and down the manuscript. I sometimes used to go ahead of myself to see what was going to happen next, to make certain it fits what was going to be happening soon.

But today the quickest way to save your bottom line is to cut off research.

I don't do any research. It's all about gut. Editing - it's always about gut.