Seven sensible steps to success as a writer
Step 5 (continued): Dreaming...

The cultivation of the new words in the fertile recesses of the mind continues not just during the waking day. Frequently I’ll dream them.

Sometimes they'll be very vivid dreams, with the words appearing almost as a kind of sub-title on a cinematic screen.

Other nights the words and images reaching for the surface will be far more gentle, like the first green shoots appearing through the spring soil.

But always they are growing. So that when I get up in the dawn next morning and tiptoe to the keyboard, the next words are already there.

Two or three hours … and the new day’s composition is done. Fresh words are seeded in the mind, to sprout and bud during the next twenty-four hours. To be transferred on to the page the following morning. Day by day...

Until at length you can say your book is done.

Next: writing tips for everyone.