As a writer yourself, you will know that lots of writers have given accounts of their craft. This doesn’t tend to progress much beyond the foothills of rocket science. They shut themselves in rooms without distraction, they stick to strict schedules and they eavesdrop on unwitting people. As someone slightly lacking in discipline for the first couple of points of writerly consensus, I embraced, for a while, the eavesdropping advice. And I have to say, this doesn’t always end well.

Like other writers wishing to capture ideas and observations, I too carry a notebook and pen everywhere I go. Get a small notebook – not so small you can’t fit much on one page – in an unobtrusive shade of beige, plus two biros. When I started out, I bought a pack of bright pink notebooks with ‘Britney is fab’ – reduced in Lidl – and a pencil with a pink feather on top to match. This may have seemed lacking in seriousness, and so many people commented on the pencil that it kind of blew my cover. Plus I didn’t have a sharpener. So beige and biros is the way to go, I think.