Success comes to a writer as a rule, so gradually that it is always something of a shock to him to look back and realize the heights to which he has climbed.
My first book was poetry, but I didn't write it first. I wrote it third. So my first two books were prose.
I wrote my first short story for a competition and won second prize. Another competition came up and I won first prize. The first story was published in a newspaper. The second went out on radio.
And then I wrote my first autobiography when I - well, it was 23 years ago. And since then I've written about one book every two years.
It took me about 12 years to reach my million-word mark. The challenge now is to continue to challenge myself.
I'm still very much in the apprentice stage of writing. I read somewhere that you need to write a million words before you know what you're doing - so I'm headed that way, but I'm nowhere near there.
I had been writing professionally since 1988.
When I look back at my career as an author, I don't look at the first book that was ever published as to where my career began - I look to the first book that I ever wrote.
I've been a professional writer for 20 years, and there are contours in that time, crescents and troughs.
It took us nine months to write 'The East'; we didn't start writing it on the computer until seven and a half months into it.
I think now I'm up to something like 85 different titles that I've published.
I really only have been seriously writing, finishing things and publishing things since January '91.
Originally I had planned to write just a couple of children's books and then, return the focus on adult literature. A funny thing happened along the way - I kept having new ideas, and then I looked up one day, and 30 years had passed!
I know that sometimes it happens that a novelist is embarrassed about their early works. For me, it's the opposite: I believe 'Durable Goods' is the best thing I've written.
I've been writing full-time since 1978.
Write a million words before thinking about getting published.
There are stories still in existence that I wrote when I was five. However, I did not get published until I was seven.
If I live for another ten years I shall probably have written all that I want to write.
I wrote my first book at eight, all of four pages. At 10, I did a 40-page story. At 12, I wrote two stage plays.
