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How do you prepare yourself for writing? How many hours do you spend writing, compared to what you spend thinking about it?

Well, to me, the most important thing is my routine. I don't wait for new ideas or inspiration to come out of the sky. I sit down at my desk every day and I write for about an hour a day. That is when I'm doing the first draft of the book. I'm making up the story and trying to figure out who the characters are and what happens and how they get from place to place and chapter to chapter. With each subsequent draft — I normally do about five drafts of a book — I am able to write longer. I know the story better, and so the second draft, I might write an hour and a half. The third draft, I might write two hours a day, then maybe three or four hours a day for my fourth and fifth drafts.

I understand your dogs don't let you write for too long.

It used to be after two hours they would say, "Okay, it's time for a walk." But now they have taught me to take them for a walk before I even begin writing. When things are going well, when I am really excited about what I am writing, I usually think about what I am going to write while I am on the walk.

So how much thinking do you do, compared to writing?

It's hard to answer because I don't just sort of sit in a chair and think. When the story is going well and I am really into it, part of my mind is thinking about it all the time. And probably even when the story isn't even going very well, I'm sure part of my mind is thinking about it all the time, because I will often be stuck at a part and not quite sure know what I am going to write next and don't consciously think about it. But the next morning when I wake up and take the dogs for a walk and sit down to write, suddenly I have all these ideas and I have to wonder where they came from. So clearly some part of my mind has been working on that problem.