If I’m asked, ‘Do you suffer from writer’s block?’, which implies it’s legendary, I always want to deny that I do, the admission making it a real thing, an inevitability.

The word ‘block’ is the one to avoid. It sounds large, hard and permanent, whereas it’s often temporary, a flimsy curtain. I admit that not being able to find a way through the story you want to tell is nasty. The feeling that you’ve lost your way, and will never find the story you thought there was to tell. Despair can set in quickly, colouring much of the rest of life. Often when struggling I want to push the whole idea away, but I know that’s not how to tackle the stoppage. I have to remind myself that as long as I keep the central theme and the characters in mind, go back to what I’ve already written, something will come. Often it is they, the characters, who I cannot ignore, for I brought them ‘to life’. They keep prodding me to talk to them, to go back and re read what’s already written, to find the key to unlock the next plot point, their reaction, whatever it may be.

It’s holding to the memory of those other times when I’ve managed to push that curtain aside. The reward of the realisation of how to go forward is almost worth that original terror. For that is when the sun comes out, the light, not a light bulb lit, but the warm glow of the sun.

Do all authors suffer writer’s block?

It was therefore with pleasure that I watched a repeat of a BBC ‘Imagine’ programme presented by Alan Yentob in 2012. He was interviewing Ian Rankin who, too, admitted to those times when what was going to be his best ever novel got stuck on page 62. Here was this gifted, much published crime writer, talking of just those times when there appears to be no way forward, but when with faith and perseverance, solutions appear and the novel carries on to a satisfying ending.

I’d also always assumed that crime writers began with a detailed plot. But not so with Ian Rankin. He collects scraps of ideas, observations, bits of conversations until there comes a time for them, or some of them, to coalesce and a central theme begin to emerge.

This is exactly my method. My latest novel with Bill and Betty, came from exactly those scraps, the ‘what if’ of a woman finding a man having been mugged lying on the pavement outside her gate. Older strangers whose backgrounds involve having a child foisted on them in some way. What does she do? What does he admit? Her experience resulting in a grandchild she adores, his resulting in a surrogate grandson who he doesn’t want to acknowledge. Why?

Stay with them, it’s only temporary

I cannot leave them so will have to keep believing that in those tricky times all the light will shine again.