It's always difficult to make a beginning, to start writing. For some reason, it is hard, no matter how many books there are behind you. I have to edge myself into it sideways by writing a few letters or notes in my diary, or a few bits and pieces, and then taking the writing almost by surprise. It's difficult to get started because perhaps there is a fear that one won't get it right. That can be quite paralysing; that one won't get what one set out to do.
I try to stay at my desk for the whole morning, even if I'm only fiddling with pens and paper. Sometimes all I do is simply scratch out what I did the day before. I never show anything to anyone until the work is completed. It generally takes me two to three years to write a book.
At the final stages, the work becomes so intense that at the end I am simply relieved and exhausted but also experience a tremendous let-down. I begin to miss the work so much that there is nothing to celebrate. Also an anxiety sets in about whether one will ever write again.
I find that I still follow a pattern that I first set out over 30 years ago when my writing had to be secretive because I had just started. For so much of my life I've been a secret writer. I used to hide everything away when I finished so no one could see what I'd been doing. I still do that. I keep a very tidy desk.
I'm used to always working in the mornings - as early as possible, before I attend to anything else in the day. That's because when I started writing, it was always when the children were at school. I always halted work in the school holidays, so I found my- self trying to have drafts finished by then: it was a natural deadline to work towards. It's very strange, but I still work to the same academic calendar.
At the moment, I'm living in the States. I teach a writing programme in Cambridge, Massachusetts. And I always manage to keep mornings free. I never have classes in the mornings. During long vacations, I go back to India. Home there is Old Delhi, where I was born. But lately I have discovered a small village in Mexico where I work quite well.
I found the house in Mexico through my daughter, who was a student in Columbia. Her professor owns the house and was looking for someone to rent it to. I wrote my latest novel and several short stories there.
The house in Mexico overlooks the valley of Cuernavca. I have a table on the verandah where I work. I go straight out there every morning. Every time I look up, I see the mountains in the valley. It's so peaceful. The only distractions are birds and butterflies flitting through the garden.
I am going back to Mexico to work on my next book because I think it will be set there. I started making notes about it during the winter vacation when I was staying on a coffee plantation in South India. It will be about the life and work of various ex-patriots who are differently involved with the country - as anthropologists and romantics, and missionaries and aid workers.
I still haven't made the switch to the computer. I love working on paper with pen, using large sheets of loose paper. I always look for those very fine nibbed pens; I can only write with them. I'm too nervous to make the switch from paper to computer.
(In conversation with Rosita Boland)
Anita Desai's latest novel, Feasting, Fasting, is published by Random House at £14.99 in the UK