Personally, I doubt it's ever affected mine too much because I try to derive my ideas and responses from real life. Plus, I'm emotionally dead. Mind you, I'm still holding out that the next time I hear I'm Too Sexy will be the moment I finally find the courage to pursue my modelling dream and do my little turn on the catwalk.

Artists, however, love the notion they can change lives, that their philosophy will be absorbed. And perhaps repeated exposure to art does have a cumulative effect. Then again, perhaps not. The Beatles sang all you need is love yet we still seem to insult, abuse and kill each other with monotonous regularity.

But hey, that's a little negative, even for me. Hell, there must be instances where a work of art has resulted in individuals taking an abrupt left turn. Take that 80s band The The (who sadly missed the chance to call themselves the much punchier An An). One of their songs was an anti-war track called Sweet Bird of Truth. Lead singer Matt Johnson later spoke of getting a letter from a military pilot in which the pilot told him the song had been so affecting that he could no longer be part of the war machine.

Johnson saw it as proof of the work's validity, of how art could influence human behaviour for the better. Of course, the song may well have played a part in the pilot's decision to quit but let's face it any number of factors could have come together for the guy to realise that dropping bombs on little brown people in foreign lands is, well, a bit crap.

But I love the idea that Johnson thought his song had resulted in a personal sea change. What artist wouldn't be thrilled that their creation could be perceived to wield such life-affirming power? Of course, the flipside is that art can also be perceived to damage, poison and destroy, a classic example being a pathetic Catcher in the Rye-obsessive slaying a musical great. Is it possible that a book could be so powerfully written that it drives a reader to murder?

Nah, course not. Art doesn't have that sort of individual psychological clout. And let’s be clear about one thing - creativity is never negative. The likes of Tipper Gore and her well-meaning but utterly misguided cohorts might deplore such heart-warming ditties as Cannibal Corpse's Hammer-Smashed Face but I just see a bunch of tongue-in-cheek blokes getting together and making music. Cannibal Corpse may well sing about extreme violence but that doesn't mean they practise or advocate it. This is not a hard concept to grasp. They're just playing characters and letting off a bit of steam, yer know?

Then again, people have terrible difficulty separating art and artist. God knows why. I know I've had to put up with my fair share of readers who think they know me through glancing at my novels, as if there's absolutely no difference between me and the self-destructive idiots I create. The idea that I use my characters to show where such dodgy attitudes/behaviour can lead never seems to enter their outraged, over-earnest little heads.

Still, I'm not the first to be a tad baffled by the response of some people to his or her work. Just think back a few years to those trials in America where the likes of Ozzy Osbourne and Judas Priest were accused of recording stuff that made fans kill themselves. Let's face it, teenagers have always fantasised about ending it - it’s de rigueur for a gawky sixteen year old with no prom date - but they don't blow their brains out because of a song, no matter how often they play it backwards, in the same way grown men don't quit the air force because a song has a degree of relevance to their circumstances.

But although some people can end up with pretty inflated ideas about a work's influence, it's also not unusual for an artist to start plodding down the same road. I doubt many of them have Oscar Wilde's observation 'All art is quite useless' above their beds. This is hardly a surprise given that artists often beaver away for hundreds (or even thousands) of hours convinced of their work's importance. My art is my passion, it's what I was born to do, I just love it, they will twitter. Gimme a fuckin' break. For the most part it's just something strangers dip into in between eating, working, fucking and sleeping. (For the record, I hate the whole process of writing, with the publication of my books invariably resulting in yet more shame and humiliation being heaped upon my spindly shoulders. If you really wanna grasp how I feel about writing watch/read The Shining in which failed, self-loathing writer Jack Torrance chases his own tail, fruitlessly pursuing something he hates, and utterly unable to abandon the dream in case the next novel proves to be The One.)

Of my five books, there's only been one time I've really gone into a novelist's head - English Toss on Planet Andong's Denzil Dring, a lurid hack who's convinced he's nothing less than a mightily underappreciated literary genius. He dreams up an idea about Nazi gun-toting sharks that can breathe air, have grown legs and can walk on land, certain that completing the book is as vital as solving Third World Hunger. In other words, he's disappeared up his own arse.

Anyhow, Denzil was my attempt to laugh at myself and my occasionally over-earnest endeavours, to make sure I didn't get too carried away with this whole writing business. And on the whole I don't. Hence, this blog post. I'm well aware that some people will read my work, perhaps even enjoy aspects of it, and it won't make a blind bit of difference to anything. They will carry on as before. I can handle that.

It's just I'm worried Denzil Dring might be a better novelist.