Is there any particular ritual involved in your writing process?

I always write my first draft in bound notebooks with a proper fountain pen – I have quite a collection of pens as I buy a new one for each book. I don’t use ink cartridges. I have bottles of ink, which I mix to get the exact shade I feel like writing in. I wrote The Sending in the most beautiful green Waterman pen with green ink, and now I have an unusual and beautiful square pale blue pen. I have mixed a blue ink with a touch of violet to write my next book. I always write in moleskin notebooks that come in packs of three and in three variations of a colour. My favourite place to write in all the world is in my little study that faces the sea over a remote bit of the Great Ocean Road in Australia, preferably with a crackling fire going – I much prefer winter as a season. In Prague, where I live some of the time, I write in the kitchen of our apartment where the sun comes in, and where it is warm enough for my cat to deign to keep me company. But I also do a lot of writing in cafés. I like having life happening around me because writing is such a solitary business.

What tips do you have for budding writers?

Always choose a topic to write about that you actually feel something for. Not a topic you think will impress people. I have run lots of writing workshops in schools and I often notice that people will choose ‘important’ topics. Never make the mistake of thinking the importance of a topic will somehow elevate your writing. In fact your writing has to live up to the topic and, more importantly, your life experience has to feed into it. I remember once there was a class of 12-year-old girls and one of them chose to write about an old alcoholic man dying on a park bench. She felt that was tragic and important and of course she was right, but she did not have any life experience to help her explore the topic. She was not old, she was not a man and she was not an alcoholic. She might know someone who drinks a lot or she might have seen a person in a park drunk so how could she possibly know what brings a man to such a pass? You will write best about things that you know deeply, and you will write best of all if you genuinely care about the topic – if it matters to you. You will write brilliantly if you write about something you don’t understand and use the story to help you delve deeper into it … Great writing is first and foremost an inward journey …

Is there one book that you wish you had written?