To Kill a Mockingbird – I was meant to read it for an exam and I didn’t and I cheated. I was allowed to use a laptop to type my answers because I couldn’t see my writing, so I hid an electronic copy of the book on the laptop.

Joseph Conrad’s Lord Jim, which was one of the set texts for my English literature A-level. I have almost finished it.

My new year resolution is actually to read all the classics and I’m ashamed that I haven’t read everything by the Brontë sisters.

My own biography! Being serious, there’s an Australian novel by Gregory Roberts called Shantaram that I didn’t read through.

Mostly the pain. I don’t want to be trapped in a body that hurts.

I like the idea of being atoms that other people can breathe in, and fabulous worm food.

My kids, and getting some of the stories I had in my head on to paper in a way that wasn’t too far removed from the thing I dreamed about writing.

Imaginative, dull, amiable.

The only job I quit was, aged about 23, subediting a “men’s” magazine. My job was typing out readers’ pornographic fantasies. I started wishing people would reproduce by splitting down the middle.

And when things get tough, this is what you should do. Make good art. I’m serious. Husband runs off with a politician? Make good art. Leg crushed and then eaten by mutated boa constrictor? Make good art. IRS on your trail? Make good art. Cat exploded? Make good art. Somebody on the Internet thinks what you do is stupid or evil or it’s all been done before? Make good art. Probably things will work out somehow, and eventually time will take the sting away, but that doesn’t matter. Do what only you do best. Make good art.