None. It’s just about rolling your sleeves up and getting on with it.

But there are things that help – like being curious and interested n all the stuff going on around you, and scribbling down ideas from snippets of conversation.

Writers are like magpies – they gather scraps of ideas like scraps of treasure.

I research a lot – and I don’t mean sitting in dry dusty libraries. I interview people. I go places – particularly places where my stories are set. I make loads of phone calls. I act things out – pretend I am the character I’m writing about.

For instance, in Trick of The Mind one of the characters runs away to London – so I did that too. Well, not quite – but I got a train ticket and went up there, pretending I had run away.

Things like that help me see the world from my characters point of view. I can make myself experience what it’s like to be cold. Lost. Hungry. Alone.

I still read a lot, although when I am in the thick of one of my own books I can’t read someone else’s work. Bits of it start to ‘trickle in’ to my own writing, and it affects the story in a way that I don’t want it to.

Writer's minds are very open – they have to be to let the ideas in – but that means they can sometimes get too caught up in things that get in the way.

There are techniques you can learn to help your writing feel fresh and fast paced, and its good to be involved in writing groups so you can get honest feedback on how well your writing is progressing. Some common ‘flaws’ that inexperienced writers make is that the characters aren’t strongly developed enough, or the story itself is flat with too much unnecessary detail. Another common mistake is that the story takes too long to get started. Have a look at your favourite books and see how those authors achieve the quality that hooks you in. Or if you find yourself ‘skimming’ through another part of the book because it’s a bit boring, make yourself read it through again and try and work out WHY you tried to skip it out. Very often it’s because the writer is indulging themselves – telling you things that don’t really matter, or getting too lyrical and descriptive with no action. Learning how to balance the pace of writing is one of the finer skills, and it takes most people a while to learn to spot this in other writing, and even longer to apply it in their own!!

When I first started writing I wrote loads of books, probably about eight a year – I’ve had over thirty books published. But I’ve slowed down a lot now, mainly because I am writing longer novels which take more time to write.