Bryan Stevenson.

Mum and Dad, for staying true to their love; sister, for combining integrity and humour; brother, for never being afraid; and my best mate, for showing true loyalty.

My mother. She’s 85 and rather than diminishing with age, she keeps surprising and growing more marvelous. She finds fun when most are jaded, wonder when most are cynical, and is curious when most are bored. She gave me life and continues to show me how to live it daily. And I know that everyone who meets her thinks the same.

My mum, for bringing up three lads.

As many times as necessary. With one story or novel, this may be five false starts and six or eight or ten full rewrites, beginning to end. With the next, it may mean just going back through it and over it fiddling details until I think it’s as good as I can get it.

But I will be horrified by the way I say kind of and like, and I keep qualifying everything. That’s very feminine. I would like to say it plain, but it always comes out with all these silly qualifiers.

Either you’re listening out for the kids or you’re writing. So I wrote when the kids went to bed. I wrote between nine and midnight those years. And my husband would listen out if the little guy was sick or something. It worked out.

But when people say, Did you always want to be a writer?, I have to say no! I always was a writer. I didn’t want to be a writer and lead the writer’s life and be glamorous and go to New York. I just wanted to do my job writing, and to do it really well.

For a serious writer seriously concerned about any moral, social, political, environmental issues, it is a major concern. I’ve been wrestling with it ever since I was 18.

If you’ve got a book that’s writing itself, let it! Follow it as far as it takes you, as hard as you can. Forget the willpower business.