LISA JEWELL

I think that not being proactive is a good thing. I like life to unfold on its own.

I don't really get into a writing routine until March or April, when I'll write a few hundred words a day, often in a cafe in the morning after the school run.

'Ralph's Party' was supposed to be a psychological thriller, but I fell in love with all my characters and wanted only the best for them.

For a very long time, I thought everyone I met through the process of getting an agent and a publishing deal had made a mistake. When they agreed to pay me for the book, I thought they would ask me for the money back.

When we were kids, we couldn't wait to have our own rooms, not to have to share anymore. And that is what I love about having my own bedroom. It is mine. My sleep is mine. Both pillows are mine. If I wake up, it is me who has woken me up... It makes me feel like a grown-up. I love it.

Agents and publishers are always looking for something 'different,' a fresh viewpoint and a new voice, not just re-hashed versions of stuff that's gone before.

The older I get, the more I love psychological thrillers.

The only way you can write about a happy family in a drama is to make them unhappy.

Don't do a hard sell or try to tell the agent that you're going to be a bestseller or the next John Grisham. This goes down very badly. If your work is good, then they are skilled enough to know this within a few pages.

My father was a self-employed textile agent, and the shop below his office was an art gallery.

I was made redundant from a job as a PA in a shirt-making company in 1996. I was devastated. I had been there for three years, and it was a job I really liked.

For me, the optimum circumstances for writing a book are those of stultifying routine.

Getting married young was the worst experience of my life. It was horrible - really horrible.

Writing a book is not easy.

I don't think my first book was chick lit.

There's something uniquely unsettling about the unhinged woman on a single-minded mission. Especially when she's the last person you ever imagined to harbour a dark and seething soul.

My mother died in 2005. She was 61 years old.

Publishers have published women's fiction into a corner, and now we are all trying to punch our way out of it. We just have to write the best books we possibly can and hope that, once the pink covers and Bridget Jones have faded from memory, we might finally be allowed just to be called writers.

My marriage is far from perfect. We're not hand-holdy and soft. We are snippy and bickery. We sleep in separate beds because we have no tolerance of each other's night-time idiosyncrasies.

I tried to write about my first marriage in a fictional version but got two pages into it and realised it was too personal. Then I came up with an old-fashioned love triangle, which became the plot for 'Ralph's Party.'

My mother had breast cancer when she was 39.

Ever since 'Single White Female,' the 1990 novel which was turned into a supremely scary film, the idea of a seemingly normal woman who will stop at nothing to get what she wants has become an abiding literary trope.

That whole idea of chick lit being a thing that you just lump all the commercial female writers into - it went on for years.I'd switch on the radio, and I'd hear, 'Two female authors are here to discuss chick lit - is it dead?' and I'd think, 'Argh, no, not again. Are we seriously still having this conversation?'

Whenever I watch any kind of competition, my immediate reaction when they call out the name of the winner is to look at the loser.

People with big ideas worry. They lie awake at night and fret as they try to climb up the social or financial ladder. They probably feel proud of themselves for what they've achieved, but I'm proud of the fact that I've done very little - and hence have little to worry about - and I've still got somewhere.