I was out having a coffee yesterday with my parents when I plotted out an idea in my mind for novel number nine. I'm not sure why I thought about it just then. I got the setting, the title and a number of characters sorted. I just hope my parents didn't notice me drifting off for ten minutes.

I know that currently, I'm only writing novel number three and it's going to take a while to get to number nine but at least I've got the next few years planned out (literary-wise).

I've read about people hoping to find inspiration for their writing by moving to the countryside and living in a house with a view. I'm afraid it doesn't work that way (unless of course you want to write about someone moving to the countryside or write something about a view). Inspiration often arrives at the oddest moments.

For me it's usually while I'm not thinking about writing; like yesterday's coffee excursion. Often I'm in the bathroom at night, cleaning my teeth, and suddenly a scene I'm having trouble with works itself out. Even this morning, while shaving, a scene coming up in LONG SHADOWS played out in my mind and it was all I could do to finish shaving so that I could go and write it all down before I forgot it; sitting there in my bedroom with pen and paper and bits of wet toilet paper on my chin, stemming the blood flow. (Now I could use a derivation of that in a book somewhere. Switch shaving face to shaving balls and the scene is instantly funnier. Boom; inspiration.)

Of course one can't always rely on sudden inspiration. The majority of the time you just have to sit at your desk and keep working through ideas/problems until they're solved. For me, the act of putting pen to paper ignites my mind. For those of you that have read NOTHING VENTURED, I had real trouble with the scene in the butterfly house. I firstly created an annoying child character to follow Lou and Diana around the area but it just wasn't funny enough. I kept rewriting but eventually had to step back and think afresh. I wrote copious notes and eventually came round to bringing in Josie and Suze from DRIVEN TO DISTRACTION for a cameo appearance. Finally the scene worked. I'd found the right inspiration but only after a lot of effort.

And that is why I think relying, say, on a view for inspiration is a bad idea. It's a distraction rather than a help. My desk faces the wall in my office so that I can focus purely on my work. Of course the thought of coffee or that the fridge is just one staircase away can still cause loss of concentration, but if inspiration has struck; I'm not going anywhere.