[about A Tiresome Colleague]: He Could Bore

[about A Tiresome Colleague]: He Could Bore For Scotland.

I Started Writing Novels While An Undergraduate Student, In An Attempt To Make Sense Of The City Of Edinburgh, Using A Detective As My Protagonist. Each Book Hopefully Adds Another Piece To The Jigsaw That Is Modern Scotland, Asking Questions About The Nation's Politics, Economy, Psyche And History ... And Perhaps Pointing Towards Its Possible Future.

I've Always Written. At The Age Of Six Or Seven, I Would Get Sheets Of A4 Paper And Fold Them In Half, Cut The Edges To Make A Little Eight-page Booklet, Break It Up Into Squares And Put In Little Stick Men With Little Speech Bubbles, And I'd Have A Spy Story, A Space Story And A Football Story.

I'm Often Asked How I Write Books, But I Don't Think My Approach Is Suitable For Everyone. If I Walked Into A Creative Writing Class, All I Could Say To Them Was 'i Tend To Make It Up As I Go Along.' I'm Not Sure That's Brilliant Advice.

I Used To Think That: Whenever I Heard That Someone Had Taken 10 Years To Write A Novel, I'd Think It Must Be A Big, Serious Book. Now I Think, 'no - It Took You One Year To Write, And Nine Years To Sit Around Eating Kit Kats.