A Frenchman once enquired about my writing routine. On hearing my answer, he said, scandalised, that I’d described the life of a public servant, not the life of a writer. I asked what the life of a writer looked like, and he gave a rambling answer that came down to sporadic bouts of impassioned writing, night and day, in the grip of inspiration. So now you know what you should aspire to, if you wish to live like a writer and not like a public servant, and if your writing practice fits my French friend’s template, I’m truly pleased for you.

            As for me, the words only arrive through the dreary discipline of showing up at regular times on regular days and working. In this way, I have even known something I think the Frenchman would call inspiration: it’s blessed and it’s rare and it’s produced by the work, not the other way around. It’s also true that I look on public service as a high calling. I would welcome a society in which writing books was viewed as serving the public, and writers were provided with workspaces and paid wages and superannuation. In any case, my inner public servant requires a steady, undramatic work routine – five hundred words a day, five days a week – and I can’t write without it.