• Think about what you want to communicate. Don’t sit down and think, ‘If I can just knock out something that is industry standard and get it published, then my life will be wonderful.’ Writing is a form of communication. You have to have something to communicate.

• Plan everything. Plotting is like planning the perfect bank robbery. You need to take care of all possible contingencies so you don’t get caught out.
Avoid adverbs – but don’t be afraid of them. My entire professional life at university seems to be telling students not to use adverbs, and I then open my book and there’s an adverb.

• Look for the substance behind the feeling. My students come in quite well-versed at doing emotional metaphors with no reason behind them. What is underneath it that’s driving your desire to write it down?

• The really interesting thing is: what do we really care about? Not when we look at ourselves, but when we look at the world. What do you see that confuses you, and how do you interact with the world?

• Don’t feel that you have to write to a timetable. Find out what suits you and follow that timetable. At the moment I am spending my time playing my guitar and hanging out with my friends. The new book is coming together in my mind. There is no point in me getting up at three in the morning to write because it is not ready.

• Always think of the reader. I really want the reader to have a good time, which is why I spend so long plotting.

•Work in your own way. The last 10,000 words of The End of Mr Y I wrote in a weekend. I was, by that point, just so into the book that I couldn’t tell the difference between my life and the book anymore. I was completely mad.

• Maintain the energy in your writing. Sometimes I read something back and think, ‘I know I wrote that at two in the morning and it is first draft, but it has edge and I am going to leave that there because of the energy.’

• Don’t bother with ‘morning pages.’ All that Dorothea Brande stuff – there is too much emphasis on writing about your childhood or using the most emotionally overwrought crap you can.

• Don’t go to workshops. The workshop is the death of writing. No one should ever attend a writing workshop ever. I can guarantee you that Tolstoy or Shakespeare never went to a writing workshop.