Imay not have the time toblog quite as often now, asI am working on a novel.

Although I can just about walk and chew gum at the same time, I forget whereI am in a novel if I don't keep myself on track.

Thetitle for my new novel is: 'Red Emeralds'. Buried deeply in the recesses of my mind, I know why I've chosen this title andit's part ofa tangled thought process. It's to do with the Indian Army.I'll tell you moreanother time. Don't mean to be a tease, butno one writes in a vacuum.

This is whyit's pointless telling students to write what they know about. How cananyone write about what they don't know, whenit's hellish hardto write about the back of your hand, if you think about it, which you probably don't.

Misconceptions about writing abound:It'sa pass-time, something you do when you can't think ofany other way of fillinga couple of hours. The only thing that's stopping mostpeoplefrom being best-selling novelists is that they've got to work, ie: to earn money, as though writers don't have to, either.

Of course, if you are apublished novelist, you are considered to have made shedloads of cash. Never mind that only seven per cent of novelists make enough money to eat every day.

Thinking of the book title: 'The loneliness of the Long Distance Runner', I could substitute the word 'Writer'. Yes, it's lonely and you've got to believe you will make it to the end, with a few spurts left in you, otherwise no-one will spareyou a glance.

Onefriend saidI was fortunate in being able to write at any time. Technically, this is true,but I can think creatively only at night. (I must have been a cave dweller in some otherlife, sitting in darkenss most of the time.) 'Oh,but if you can write, you can write', she persisted.

A creative stimulus is having a reader who likes your work. (I wrote poetry for the MA course, because the poetry tutor happened to walk into a lessonand saw some poetry I'dwritten for another class and began reading it closely. I immediately decided not to write the proposed novel and swapped to poetry, not having written another poem before. (Weird, what?)

I listened to Alison Pearson, who has sold more than a million copies of 'How Does She Do It?'talking In Patrick's Restaurant, Mumbles.Alison said that when urged by friends to write a book, she hadto tell them she did not havea story to write about (until her runaway success, of course).

This is the problem. Success breeds success. You have a best-seller? What do you do? You write another, simple as that. (Alison did - as a teenager, sheloved David Cassidy, so hey presto! she put it all down on paper). This is how it works, though Eysenk said it works best like this: success, failure, success, but let's not go into that now.

I have a theory; the writer is like a musical conductor: your task is to keep the musicians together (the charactersin the story) and keep the beat going (the pace and the excitement). If you can, you might have a best-seller. Good luck!