What i”ve realised since I started writing is that when you get a flash of an idea, you need to write it down immediately. If you don’t it’ll vanish into the ether, never to be seen again. You always think you’ll remember it but you seldom do.

Last night, in the middle of the night, I woke up with an idea. It was a mere seed of an idea but I knew that unless I got it down there and then, it would disappear, so I switched on my light, punched a few words into my phone, forgot about them and went to sleep. I discovered them the next day. It was a nice feeling as I’d totally forgotten that I’d even used my phone.

This harnessing of ideas, tying them down as it were, is merely the first step. The next is to jump straight in and write the story. I’ve kind of come to realise that as soon as you’ve got the idea, you have to write the story and not stop until it’s done. It’s all too easy to stop and correct what you’ve written, or change a few words for others, but if you do this in the early stages, it’s likely that you’ll mess up the flow. I firmly believe that you need to get the story down, as stopping will affect the quality of it. It’s tempting to correct as you go along but I don’t believe it’s the way to do it.