It’s that time of year when I’ve bought a new paper diary and start thinking about goals for next year. I’m looking backwards as well as forwards, peeling back the layers with the benefit of hindsight to work out where I should go next.

When the Covid pandemic arrived in the UK in March 2020, I was writing my third literary fiction novel. It had a dark theme about motherhood and was difficult to write in a year that included pandemic worries, lockdowns, homeschooling our ...