Hard work, sitting there appearing to do nothing.

The novelist William Boyd explains how he writes:

I write my first draft of a novel in longhand. I have found the perfect pen that goes by the bizarre name of a Rotring Tikky Graphic with a 0.2mm nib. It suits my tiny, near-illegible handwriting and I always write in spiral-backed marginless A4 notebooks – I try to keep my fetishes to a minimum. There are two desks in my study but I always seem to write on the one with the computer, perhaps because it has a view though it's an unexceptional one: a curving side street of terraced houses in Chelsea. Just out of sight is the house John Betjeman used to live in. 

When I first started my life as a novelist I seemed able to write for hours – six, seven, eight – no problem. Now, writing my 15th novel, I can only manage three hours or so before brain fatigue sets in. It’s just like a plug has been pulled out of a socket and I have stopped – as if a battery has died. Maybe this decline will continue inexorably as I age further, but, anyway, three hours is not bad, and I always seem to manage a thousand words or so. I write every day – if I can; there is a life to be lived as well, after all – weekends included. A thousand words a day, seven days a week, is a good rate for me. 

After I’ve finished the longhand draft, I take a break. The cocktail hour is looming. Wine, TV news, conversation, family, friends and food distract – a bit. Interestingly, I don’t require isolation or silence while I write – I can be interrupted by the phone or a knock on the front door – I just switch off and switch on again. Most evenings I’ll return to the study at some stage and type up that day’s writing on the computer.

 A novel takes me about a year to write after approximately two years of figuring it out, plotting and researching. The working day, as the book progresses, takes the form of a slow crescendo. It doesn’t start any earlier, it just goes on longer – the inner owl takes over and, as the novel reaches its endgame, my evening session can go on past midnight into the wee small hours. Paradoxically, the more you’ve written of a novel, the more you find you want to write.