You've probably heard the advice - if you can be put off being a writer you probably shouldn't be a writer - there are days/weeks/months when I think 'that's it, I'm done, enough is enough'. The worst period, a fair few years back, saw me go 19 months without writing a single word. Somehow I ended up on a train to go and see my mate Jan Lindgren to go and shoot some stuff one morning, and ended up with nothing to read and a note book and wrote the lines: 'The magician stared at the mismatched pair of gloves in his hands. The left glove was of white silk, the right was made of black leather. Closing his eyes he offered a prayer to a God he hand long since stopped believing in, and held the black glove to his lips. Exhaling slowly, he filled the glove, his breath giving it a miraculous life of its own. His first breath conjured the faintest outline of feathers in the soft leather, the second gave them definition, shape and form, while the third stretched out the tip of the thumb until it formed a hard beak. Again and again the magician breathed into the glove, inflating it with the spark of life, until the soft leather had turned forever into the flesh of a living, breathing, blackbird.' I had no idea what the story was, only that after 19 months of nothing I was writing again. That story, Bury My Heart at the Garrick, won the Writers of the Future Award. It was the last thing I ever intended on writing. My farewell, shut up and go away writing bug thing.

That was 10 years ago. In the time since I gave up I've written 5 original novels, collaborated on 5 more, written 10 media tie-in novels, written 2 computer games, and around 50 short stories and novellas. And every morning I wake up thinking I can't do this job. Every afternoon I sit at the computer crippled by doubt. And I lie to myself and make bargains with the devil and try to find a few words that day just to add to the pile, and think that life would have been so much easier if I'd never written that paragraph up there, because after 19 months of not writing I was almost out... but like a junkie it reeled me back in, and I'm not one of these guys who gets pleasure from writing. I actually find it really incredibly difficult. I agonise over getting what is in my head onto the screen. I don't ever so much as crack open one of my books once it's published either, so I don't even get that afterglow of Ahhh published, to keep me going. In March it will be 7 years since I quit my day job and writing became my livelihood. I can look at my shelves and see 'success' and yet like I said, every day I get up thinking 'failure'. I don't believe a single nice thing readers say about my stuff, but I do believe every single nasty thing. I think that one day I will quit. I'll just stop putting myself through it every day. I've talked about it a lot. Those feelings are always worse during the winter, as I suffer from Seasonal Adjustment problems, which makes it even harder...

So when that advice comes up and it says if you can be put off you probably should be, I kinda think yeah, because I wouldn't wish the self doubt, the self loathing, the agony of seeing yourself as a failure no matter what others see, upon anyone who wasn't stubbornly determined to put themselves through it.

But I know I've got at least three original novels to write before I do quit... and by the time I'm done with them there will be three more... and even if I'm not publishing and haven't become flavour of the month, I'll still be writing. Because I can't imagine a life where I don't.