The danger of journalism is that one gets used to writing to be cut, whereas all truly good writing emerges from the attempt to include nothing inessential.

The State - in the form of social security - is the best subsistence patron for the simple reason that the writer, like every other citizen, may legitimately despise the State.

('The relationship between the writer and the State' is the kind of topic that makes me nostalgic for the Cold War. All I will say is that whilst the only political hero I have ever had, Vaclav Havel, produced numerous important plays and essays during his years as a dissident, his writings since becoming President have been pure UN-speak - hardly less banal (it pains me to say) than the speeches of Klement Gottwald. It is probably a better idea to be fucked up the arse by the State than to have it sucking one off.)

A novel written whilst the writer is on a grant from even the most liberal-minded of foundations will be morally hamstrung.

Publishers, as profit-taking intermediaries between the writer and their readers, are more obligatory than the State, less than foundations. As long as a book sells, a publisher will publicly tolerate and privately relish any outrage it may cause.

A writer without a sense of obligation will always be outrageous.

Before I was able to go full-time as a writer I taught English in Prague, worked in Fielder's Bookshop, Wimbledon, and subtitled for ITV and Channel 5.

With understanding bosses, unconventional hours, and a massively supportive girlfriend, I was able to write (evenings, days off, weekends, holidays) whilst holding these jobs down.

Whatever a writer's second occupation, it is important that it doesn't make them hate humankind.

A great many modern jobs - all telesales and shopwork, for example - will eventually make one despise the general public: for their sameness, stupidity, rudeness, etc.

This isn't, of course, because people are hateful per se, but because one is unable to deal with them as individuals. They are never more than one's always-right (i.e., invariably wrong) customers. They are trapped within a very limited situation, and their range of behaviours is accordingly limited.

I once worked for a month in a service station, and never saw an interesting-looking customer. Yet I was fascinated by every single one of my co-workers.

What I most disliked during the two years I spent working as a bookseller was that one bad customer could ruin my entire day. I would get home in the evening, fizzing with suppressed anger - anger that the job itself gave me no means of expressing. I would either start writing whilst still angry or try to calm down by having a drink. But, after having a drink, I would become a lot less likely to work; and, if still angry, I was more inclined to write aggressively (that is against my imagined readers) than affably (for them). I have never found alcohol or anger anything other than harmful to my writing.

Whilst working as a Subtitler, I spent around eight hours a day looking at a computer screen and typing. Once home, I had absolutely no desire to stare at another computer screen or do yet more typing. With so many jobs nowadays based around computer work, this kind of duplication is a real problem for the writer - especially one who writes on a PC.

TEFL is the job I have found most compatible with writing. This is probably because I only taught for twelve to sixteen hours a week. Yet, apart from the hours of free time I gained, there were other clear benefits. In class I was constantly having to clarify and simplify what I was saying. My grammar and spelling improved. I got to live in a beautiful foreign city surrounded by a language not my own. At a certain stage, all this can be invaluable.

Yet is only since signing a screenwriting contract that I have been able to give up the day job.

The advance I received for my first two books was well above the average. But unless I had gone to live somewhere very cheap, it wouldn't have lasted me more than a year.

My criterion for giving up the day job has always been, 'I need enough money to survive for a year. Hopefully, during that year, I will be able to earn enough to make it through the next year. If not, I’ll have to go back to work.'

I live in London. At present I need around £20,000 a year. If I lived in somewhere else, I'd need less. If I had children or a drug habit, I'd need more.