My writing companion is Tamsin, my golden Labrador, and, as she can shoot lethal, baleful looks at you for hours on end if she hasn't been walked, out of necessity my writing day begins with a two or three-mile trek. Rain, hail or shine, we trudge along, me looking like a yeti in my 17 layers if it's cold. We belt down a meandering country road in Wicklow, stopping to say hello to Joey the pony and feed him an apple. Home, shower, coffee and I'm at my desk re-booting the computer and re-reading whatever chapter I'm working on with Tamsin at my feet. From the study window I can see the mountains and watch the antics of the fat pigeons who look like B52s with their enormous bellies and who waddle around the garden. But once I've started writing, I don't really notice the view anymore; I see what I'm writing, picturing it in my head.
I'm working on my fourth book now and I still think it's incredible the way writing takes over and you sink into a trance. Sometimes, my brain is working so hard that my fingers can barely keep up. I type and type and end up exhausted, happy and dying for a cup of coffee. Then again, on other occasions, it's like pushing glue uphill, and I begin to think of all the other things I could be doing at those moments - even cleaning out the fridge becomes alluring. Naturally, as soon as I stop writing, I decide that I won't bother with the fridge after all.
I listen to music, very low, when I write. My favourite CD is the soundtrack to Forget Paris. It's all mellow jazz with the most fabulously haunting sax version of Come Rain or Come Shine. I've written three books listening to that. I'm getting adventurous now and listen to Brian Kennedy among other CDs but when I get stuck, I stick Forget Paris on again. It's so comfortingly familiar. I'm not normally superstitious but I am hideously so about writing.
When I moved and threw out the old table on which I'd written Woman to Woman and She's The One in favour of a very nice maple desk, I became terrified that I'd never be able to write another word. Which is where the journalistic training comes in handy. I simply told myself to shut up about the damn desk and write. After working in a busy newsroom for years, you learn how to do that. The muse is often noticeably absent just hours before copy deadline, but you have to write anyway.
I love writing fiction and it's an incredible way to earn a living, but it is still work. You're at your desk for five or six hours, writing, re-shaping, editing, re-editing and hating yourself for not being able to make a particular passage work.
I know when I'm burned out and then I stop, do a word count and write it into my writing diary. Writing a book a year means you have to be ruthlessly disciplined. My diary shows when I've been slacking. Then I reward myself by settling down to read someone else's book.
Never Too Late, Cathy Kelly's third novel, is published this month by Poolbeg