I live in a tiny, tiny part of Devon, outside the village of Iddesleigh - really remote for England. It's famous as the setting for the children's book, Tarka the Otter. Tarka's river, the Torridge, runs through the bottom of my farm. Ted Hughes used to live four miles from my home; I first met him climbing out of Tarka's river, where he had been fishing. We became great friends. The biggest lesson I learned from him is that you never start anything without finishing it.
My back gives me problems, so writing actually takes a lot out of me physically. I tried writing in all sorts of places but nothing was comfortable. Then I saw a wonderful picture of Robert Louis Stevenson in a biography - a picture of him lying in bed among lots of pillows, looking totally relaxed. I tried it myself and now my bedroom is the only place I can work.
I listen to music a lot, but not necessarily when I'm working, usually just before or just after: Mozart and Beethoven, now that I'm getting older. In between, I'm quiet and do the writing.
I write in longhand, with those finenibbed roller pens that you don't have to press too hard with, so it doesn't put my shoulders out. I have a phobia about turning the page and seeing a blank white desert in front of me, so I write very small and I fill the page with smaller and smaller print to delay turning it.
The morning is the best time to get writing done, usually from about 9 to 12.30 p.m. I get a lot of post from children: about a hundred letters a week. It's fatal to sit down with the post in the morning and start reading the letters. For a start, all the letters are referring to books that I've already written, which takes my concentration away from the book I'm working on at the moment.
So I do answer all the letters, but I put it off until I have a couple of free days to do it. You have to reply to children's letters, because they ask questions, rather than just telling you they've enjoyed the book.
The best compliment I ever got from a reader was that she had two favourite writers - one was me and the other was Jane Austen! This new book, Kensuke's Kingdom, was kick-started by a letter from a boy who had read an earlier book, The Wreck of the Zanzibar, about a girl on an island. He wanted me to write a book about a boy on an island.
Treasure Island is my favourite children's book ever, and I'd always wanted to write my own version of a desert island story, which is what this new book is about. I write picture books as well as longer texts. Picture books are the hardest of all things to write. It's like writing poetry. It's so hard to get it right - to have an idea and to refine it down to so few words.
I try everything I write out on my wife. I can tell instantly if I've hit gold or not. And I have four granddaughters, between the ages of three and 12. They live in London but I see them a lot. Children aren't very good at covering up their faces and being polite. If they look bored, they usually are bored. So they're good judges.
The Harry Potter books helped lift the profile of children's books. They did what The Secret Life of Adrian Mole did - books for children which were read and loved by adults too: they crossed that threshold.
Once adults take up a children's book, they acquire it and make it their own: it isn't purely a book for children any more, so although they have lifted the profile of children's books, lots of people think of Harry Potter as adult books now. As if we can't admit a children's book can be written for children and still enjoyed by adults. That's a pity.
(In conversation with Rosita Boland)
Kensuke's Kingdom by Michael Morpurgo is published by Heinemann at £8.99 in the UK and is reviewed on Page 11 by Robert Dunbar. Michael Morpurgo is among a number of writers taking part in the Children's Books Ireland autumn conference which continues today at the Church of Ireland College of Education in Rathmines, Dublin.