I really like the writer's life. But I feel a degree of guilt about it, which drives me on. I know so many people, including most of my friends, are getting up early to go to thankless jobs they hate. I feel incredibly privileged, like I should be doing much more with all this generous time I've been given, and that gets me a little stunned at times, even intimidated. I don't think I've some god-given right to be a pen-pusher, yet I love it dearly and it's deeply important to me. That makes me terribly motivated, you might say ambitious, in the sense that I've been so fortunate. I don't want to mess up the chances I've been given.
No writing day has ever felt the same as any other. I have no routine - I wait for the urgency of the writing to force itself out. After 40 pages the momentum of the narrative should push you on: If it doesn't, I don't see how it's going to do that to the hypothetical reader. My wife is from Co Wicklow and I've lived in Ireland for over two years but I only got a study ten months ago, the first in my life. It's a terrible luxury and an awful mess, with a distractingly beautiful view. My first novel, Morvern Callar, was written when I was working shifts in Scotland, so there could be none of this "I must begin writing at 8:55 a.m. with a cup of Kenyan ground, in my powder blue smoking jacket." My writing had to fit in around my job. Taking into account my generous beer allowance, I didn't have money in those days. I used an old manual typewriter and it's true that I found several layers of milk of magnesia just as effective as Tippex! I think this got me into the habit of being able to write, more or less anywhere. I must confess I used to phone in sick to work some days just so I could type all day. "Flu symptoms" was my by-line, since it seemed to cover a multitude of ailments.
Then came the day when the work had to be typed into the damn computer and re-drafted, but a lot of the first novel and These Demented Lands and The Sopranos was written in pubs, hotel rooms, on trains, in different parts of the house or other people's houses, or even on the beach in Spain. Especially with the earlier sections of a book, I can write anywhere. I like cheap hotel rooms - they have a monastic quality and help me concentrate. Good hotels contain too many temptations. I work in intense bouts. For about three weeks I'll work hard. I'll start maybe about midday but I'll work through till around three in the morning. Then I'll get up and start work at midday again. A little music to start with, but if things go well I soon don't bother to put in another CD. I really enjoy it - I'm not punishing myself.
It's not hack writing, but you have to ease off sometimes, go watch a movie or something. Walking is important. Then, after about three weeks of that, I'll be really happy with what I've done and I'll go and get drunk or something for three or four days and then come back - it's a brilliant life. But you must have total immersion in it, so that when you're thinking about this page, you're also thinking about four pages earlier and eight ahead, all at the same time. Sometimes, towards the end, it can feel pressurised, like having to get the essay in. It's not real deadlines - it's deadlines in your head that you want done with this beast you've created, and there is a slight chance you're sick at the sight of it. Yet when you get to read the whole thing from first page to last when the hangover's cleared , and if you like the book, then it's an unspeakably great feeling.
Alan Warner's most recent novel, The Sopranos, is now out in paperback