I love research so much that I do an enormous amount; it helps put off the moment of starting to write the story.
I learnt that I must never finish a book with nothing else to do.
I've learned never to try and force words to come.
My primary tongue, I would call North-West Mercian.
Everything I have ever written has been in the same chair, in the same room.
If you are going to write, nothing will stop you, and if you are not going to write, nothing will make you.
My great-grandfather was a self-taught man, and his library was extraordinary. I read the lot.
I loathe crowds. I especially don't like cities. A city involves biomass. And biomass gets to me.
My attitude is that if anybody of any age wants to read a book, let them, but I do think that no child would want to read 'Boneland.'
My mother read nursery rhymes to me, and my grandmother told me folk stories, but as a child I had no interest in writing whatsoever.
As far as the world was concerned, from 1979 to 1996, I didn't publish any original material; it just wasn't there.
