Writing and editing

'Sometimes writing is easy and sometimes not. You have to be sitting at your desk; if you wait to want to do it you might wait for ever. But you generally find that once you're doing it, you want to. Early morning is best. I write in my dressing gown, because when you're writing fiction the nearer you are to your subconscious, your sleeping state, the better. My theory is that once you dress, that's the end of work for the day. The real world surges in and takes over.

In the afternoon I edit what I wrote in the morning. Morning writing, if you're me, comes out of the creative, woolly, right-hand side of the brain, often just as an effusive ramble. In the afternoon I let the left side - the one that wields his red editorial pen - take over and let him have his way. It's a him. I'm a her.'

Fay Weldon in The Times magazine