I write in the morning, first thing, before getting out of bed. But much of my thinking about what I am going to write is done on a walk after dinner. This isn’t a matter of striding out across the moors, or along the foreshore in the moonlight, you understand. I live 300 yards down a private lane. Don’t get ideas of a gated drive leading to a Palladian country house. It’s a Pembrokeshire farm lane, owned by our farmer neighbours who never use it, and my evening walk consists of marching up and down between towering hedgerows, occasionally diverted by birds in the overhanging ash trees, or the sight of the first snowdrop, but mostly I’m just stomping along, back and forth, working out the next day’s writing session.
Being of a certain age, I tend to do my thinking out loud. Even when shopping at Tesco’s, which has begun to lead to anxious mothers steering their small children away from the strange woman who’s complaining loudly, to no-one in particular, about the lack of Typhoo tea and lime juice.
However, when I’m taking my after-dinner walk, I can be certain of being safe from any audience, which is very liberating. I can keep conversations between my characters going for half an hour without interruption and it does help to make dialogue more realistic. What I hadn’t appreciated was that I must do quite realistic tones and accents while I’m at it, because today, as I reached the farmyard turning point on my walk, in the middle of a violent argument between a brother and sister, I found I did have an audience – my neighbours, staring at me in alarm, and peering beyond me, in search of the drunken thug who was obviously chasing me.
I am not sure that saying ‘Hello, lovely evening, isn’t it?’ in my best Lutonian accent (despite the drizzling rain), really persuaded them that all was fine. They were exchanging worried looks as I wheeled back down the lane. But at least I’m fairly sure that my brother/sister argument is reasonably convincing.
