There are questions that I am frequently asked at author talks and events.

What is your writing routine? How many words do you write in a day? Do you plan each chapter? Do you share your writing with a group?

And I am sure I am not unique – that all writers are asked these questions and somehow a clear answer is no doubt expected.

Perhaps some writers are able to say: Goodness yes! I never leave the house until I’ve polished off 1,420 words – before breakfast, of course!

Just as others reliably say: I plan every chapter before I start so I know exactly the direction of the story. It’s the only way ….

But of course it’s not the only way. Just as the discipline of writing a certain number of words a day only works for some.

There are other ways of completing a novel, believe me.

For I am, I confess, rather a random writer. More of a case of the spirit is willing but the flesh is weak kind of a writer. The story, the characters, the ideas for the novel are perpetually there in my head but I write in short blasts rather than in lengthy sessions.

I don’t shut myself in my small study and refuse to leave it, prisoner-like, until sunset. Even if the day job did not call, I really would find no inspiration in such a routine. And when I get stuck in the middle of a sentence or am uncertain where the next one should take the reader, I get up and do something mundane – wash my coffee cup, brush the stairs – and find a thought and solution swiftly swims into view.

Just staring at the screen, stuck mid sentence, is far less productive for me than doing something else for some ten minutes or so.

And looking at the habits of renowned writers is really quite revealing – and consoling.

Everyone is, undoubtedly, different.

E.B. White, American writer of that delectable children’s book Charlotte’s Web says:

I am able to write fairly well among ordinary distractions. My house has a living room that is at the core of everything that goes on …there’s a lot of traffic. But it’s a bright and cheerful room and I often use it as a room to write in.

On the other hand, the late Maya Angelou had a very different attitude about the ideal place to write:

I keep a hotel room in my hometown and pay for it by the month. I go around 6.30 am in the morning …I’m usually out of there by 2. Then I go home and I read what I’ve written that morning.

Ernest Hemingway said:

I write every morning as soon after first light as possible. There is no one to disturb you ….you write until you come to a place where you still have your juice and know what will happen next and you stop and try to live through until the next day when you hit it again

And when it comes to how much planning writers do – mine is minimal – I am in Khaled Hosseini’s camp when he says:

I don’t outline at all. I don’t find it useful and I don’t like the way it boxes me in. I like the element of surprise and spontaneity, of letting the story find its own way.

Yes! I so agree with this! It’s how it works for me. If I do try and plan, I find that in the writing process that plan is swiftly ditched as the story dictates and finds its own momentum. That might sound pretentious but it’s not – it’s just what happens in the business of creating fiction – at least to me.

When people ask me: do you know exactly what is going to happen when you write the first page I always say no. I know how the novel is going to start and I know how it is going to end. But the route from first page to last is not mapped.

The novel chooses and negotiates paths along the way.

Or, you could say, I navigate my way through imagination and instinct.

This weekend, Troubador, the publishers who have produced my first four novels, hold their annual conference in Leicester.

It is always a vital, inspiring and vibrant event where writers get to network, discuss, compare and contrast their experiences. I love it. It’s a chance to be reminded that other people who appear entirely sane on the surface, devote endless hours, days, weeks, months and years to writing about entirely invented people in totally constructed situations.

I am not the only one.

No doubt as we drink coffee, attend seminars, talk over lunch, we will compare methods and approaches to writing.

And I am sure there will be as diverse an approach in evidence as there are writers present.

After all, writers depend upon their imaginations to create their fictional world.

And each of those is private, personal and entirely unfathomable!