You came to me with an impressive word count of 170,000 words. What kept you motivated whilst writing? Any productivity tips for your fellow writers?

Interesting question, at one time my work was featured in a film made by the British Productivity Council. However I am not sure that means I know anything about writing productivity.

The current word count is around  500,000 words. At present all you have seen is book one.

I did  a three year course in profession writing and I continue to mix with other authors. i am only too aware that many of them suffer from writer’s block. It is something which has never bothered me.

I believe that the difference is that I work a normal working week  9-5 Monday to Friday

To me writing is a job.

I do not wait to be inspired. I start work at nine every morning and I only take half an hour for lunch.  In fact I do rely on inspiration but it often emerges from some routine writing task which has to be done anyway.

A weakness is that I prefer the research and scene plotting more than I do writing itself. Therefore I ration the time spent on these activities.

Rules are meant to be broken however.

I do not write words until the plot is well defined. If I become dissatisfied with the plot I stop writing. Then within that plot I identify key scenes. Under the influence of a drama teacher I create a story board  and draw images of the characters taking part in these key scenes.

When the plot is again well established I start writing again.  This early writing is the 10% inspiration, the revisions  are the 90% perspiration. A cliche, but it is true.

I enter into deadlines with third parties; with my son who is also my Webmaster, with my readers, with my editor, Clair Wingfield. To meet deadlines it is necessary to have internal milestones which must be realistic but challenging.

Because of the underlying structure, passages, complete scenes or even chapters can be moved around for maximum effect.

You discovered  the repetition of the scene where the girls are studying Aristotle, which is a case in point. In this instance I had mistakenly copied the scene rather than moving it. I think it had been moved several times.

The rapid movement of “Don Fernandino” when we decided  there was a need for a break in “the Devils Agents” was another example of how structure can help.