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If you imagine writing 1,000 words a day, which most journalists do, that would be a very long book a year. I don't manage nearly that... but I have published slightly too much recently.

Since I make my living as a literary journalist, not a book scout, I spend inordinate amounts of time either reading or writing.

I remain convinced that the most valuable use of time for a newly published author is to write a second book that's even better than the first, and a third that's better than the second, and on and on.

It takes me about three years to write a book. They're very complex, and they take a lot of research, but also because the more popular your books get, the more popular you get, and people want to haul you off and look at you.

At first, I spend about four hours a day writing. Toward the end of a book, I spend up to 16 hours a day on it, because all I want to do is make it good and get it done.

It takes me three months of research and nine months of work to produce a book. When I start writing, I do two pages a day; if I'm gonna do 320, that's 160 days.

I write about five thousand words a day, when working on a book, about three thousand a day if I'm writing a short story. I take long periods off between projects, when I read a lot, garden, and think about the next book or stories.

As a journalist for 35 years, and now author for 20, I've learned that there's always more.

Typically, a book takes me about a year to write.

During a long career in TV broadcasting, I spent a lot of time contributing to other people's creations.