I have a writing friend whose discipline puts mine to shame. My discipline? I haven't got any.

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Celebrities in turn select favourite pieces of poetry and prose, interspersed with reminiscence about their own careers. Hannah Gordon was first – a tiny Scotswoman I remembered from ‘Watercolour Challenge’, a programme I was addicted to when it first aired. Contestants painted scenes in UK beauty spots for five afternoons, overseen by Gordon, and on the Friday an expert awarded a prize of a box of paints.

The chosen poems, and details of Gordon’s experience at a dour boarding school, were delivered in her characteristically gentle style, although the opening poem, ‘Albert and the Lion’, read by Michael Pennington, needed a more robust sense of humour.

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Literary criticism - you've got to laugh, haven't you? - and how opposing views, to me, are reassuring.

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The House of Sleep is set in a clinic and research centre for sleep disorders that was previously a student hall of residence. Although it relies on a number of coincidences to reunite the characters from the past, it's a cracking read.

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I thought I'd start writing under a pseudonym - how about J.K.Rowling?

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The seed of an idea that grows into a story. The fact that, however much you plan, some seeds take root where you least expect. The backache and sheer hard graft. The dreadful dependence on powers (like editors and weather) beyond your control.


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Neil Gaiman, ValMcDermid...and me.Writing ideas...where DO they come from?

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My heart doesn’t skip as I approach the stationery store. When I turn on my computer, it’s only to play games. I envisage gruesome deaths for each of my characters – and I’m writing a love story. The thing that gave my life meaning is making me sick.

Typing my symptoms into my search engine, I’m told it’s writer’s block: a badge of artistic sensitivity – or an excuse for procrastination best treated with a kick up the backside. Helpfully, the Oracle offers some writing exercises designed to get me back in the swing.

Yet I hesitate.

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It's the same every time I start writing, creatively or otherwise. The thought that flashes through my mind - or lingers for a while - is 'I CAN'T DO IT.'

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We've been spoiled with serious American dramas in London recently. Works by Arthur Miller, Clifford Odetts and Tennessee Williams all prod the underbelly of the American Dream. They give more to chew on than the usual tourist-pleasing musicals.

Pulitzer Prize-winner August Wilson's name is less well known. He wrote a cycle of plays that set out to explore over ten decades the experience of people who lived in an area of Pittsburgh where he was brought up. It's a perfect vehicle for our home-grown Lenny Henry, fresh from his triumph as Othello.


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