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One of the biggest mistakes people make is to think that what you need to write a novel is imagination, creativity and a facility with words. Yes, you need all those things, but a novel is a highly complex organism that needs to be dealt with in quite a logical manner.

Before you can write a novel you have to have a number of ideas that come together. One idea is not enough.

A novel is a big thing. It's difficult to hold the whole story in your mind, especially when you've finished a first draft and are still giddy from the flow of creative juices.

To make it interesting and worth doing, writing a novel has to be a leap into the unknown. I have to be unsure if I can write it; otherwise, I won't want to.

I'm not the most prolific writer in the world, and, sadly, writing a novel involves a lot of effort.

You have to have heart's passion to write a novel.

With a novel, you're the director and the screenwriter and everything else, except that you have to write it knowing it will all be performed inside the head of the reader. So it's a difficult and lonely task.

I just realized quite early on that I'm not going to be the type who can write a novel every two years. I think you need to feel an urgency about the act. Otherwise, when you read it, you feel no urgency, either. So I don't write unless I really feel I need to, and that's a luxury.

I'm a very organised and rational and linear thinker, and you have to stop all that to write a novel.

The good thing about writing a novel is that you're creating an imaginary world and can take a break when you need to.