When I do readings, I’m very often asked the same question – ‘Are you writing a book at the moment?’

Almost always, the truthful answer is ‘yes’. I started to write seriously in 1999, and since then, I’ve always been pretty much ‘writing a book’. But this morning I woke up and had a few horrible thoughts:

* I’m not writing a book at the moment

*I haven’t written anything for a few weeks

My computer screen looks a lot like this lately:

(and a third horrible thought has just come to me – I hope my publisher isn’t reading this post!)

Anyway, the shock of all these thoughts drove me out to my back garden, which is where I always go when I need to calm down.

There I saw the broad beans and garlic that I sowed a few months ago. They grew really well at first, but for the last two months they haven’t budged – it looks like they are just sitting there, doing nothing.

Garlic, apparently doing nothing!

Broad beans, relaxing in the sunshine.

But then I realised that I was only looking at the surface. I know that, deep under the soil, my plants are building up strong roots, so that when the weather warms up again, they’ll be ready to burst into life.

So I’ve decided that’s also what’s happening inside my head. Even though I haven’t written a word lately, my mind has been busy. I’ve been planning a sub-plot for a third Eva book, and I’ve been thinking very hard about a time and a place to set the third Friends Forever book. I know that once I get back to writing, all of this mental groundwork will make my work much, much easier.

So I’ve decided not to panic ……… yet!