When I was about 14 and got my first drum kit, I wanted to be a drummer in a band like the Police.

First I wanted to be in the circus, then a tap dancer, then prime minister. I have failed at all three.

A trade union official.

I wanted to be like my dad, who was an academic, because he had an office packed full of books, always had loud music on, and seemed to get to do what he wanted.

Right now, we need writers who know the difference between production of a market commodity and the practice of an art. Developing written material to suit sales strategies in order to maximise corporate profit and advertising revenue is not the same thing as responsible book publishing or authorship.

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.

As I got up in my 70s, stories began coming to me more and more rarely. I finished the novel Lavinia at 78. I no longer have the stamina to undertake a new novel, even if I wanted to. So, here I am, an old writer who loves writing – what have I got left to do?

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.

Sometimes it just seems like the more women tell the truth, the less men want to hear it.

And as time went on, I began to disagree with some of the things I said in the first book. Or I wanted to work out some things better.