The desire to write grows with writing.

I learned never to empty the well of my writing but always to stop when there was still something there in the deep part of the well and let it refill at night from the springs that fed it.

I'd say that after my father passed my writing changed it went deeper. Most would say 'matured' but I don't think I'd use that word in relation to my progress. I think 'change' is a little more accurate.

I was born left-handed but I was made to use my other hand. When I was writing 'Famished Road ' which was very long I got repetitive stress syndrome. My right wrist collapsed so I started using my left hand. The prose I wrote with my left hand came out denser so later on I had to change it.

Becoming a mother cannot help but change things. An author's life is reflected in their writing whether they want it to be or not and parenthood is one of the biggest life changes there is.

I read and walked for miles at night along the beach writing bad blank verse and searching endlessly for someone wonderful who would step out of the darkness and change my life. It never crossed my mind that that person could be me.

If you are a writer you locate yourself behind a wall of silence and no matter what you are doing driving a car or walking or doing housework you can still be writing because you have that space.

Writing fiction is for me a fraught business an occasion of daily dread for at least the first half of the novel and sometimes all the way through. The work process is totally different from writing nonfiction. You have to sit down every day and make it up.

In recent years I've been writing because I'm fortunate enough to work in the world of food television to travel and taste and learn about cooking from the best chefs in the business.

The reason is that they define how I have gone about my business. I have trusted to intuition. I did it at the beginning. I do it even now. I have no idea how things might turn out where in my writing I might go next.