'The way to tackle writer's block...'

‘The way to tackle writer's block is to not believe it exists. If you run out of steam on something, switch to something else and come back later. Also, I don't get writers block because I am not writing - I am just typing, thinking, pushing into something to see what's there.

I never sit down to produce a novel. I work a line or two, redraft endlessly, improvise. I spend a year or more in this creative state of uncertainty, and one day, I seem to know what I am doing. The book makes itself known to me. After this, my job is to shape it, and bring it to its best self.

Don't worry, there are slow weeks and slow months, there are days when I read my once-glowing pages and find them turned to ashes. It can be a reach. I regularly find myself in a sea of words that I have to rewrite and rearrange, so I can see where the hell I am going now. I don't call this ‘writer's block', I call it 'Monday morning.' It is the place where I live.'

Anne Enright, author of just-published The Wren, the Wren and seven other novels, including Actress, The Pleasure of Eliza Lynch, Forgotten and The Gathering, which won the Man booker Prize in 2002 in LitHub