I know how I should work, but I always seem to let it slip. What I should do is hit the desk before I’ve had a chance to get scared of what I’ll find there. What I actually do is almost anything else at all. I know this is bad. If I watch TV in the morning it seems to cut my concentration span by about 90% for the rest of the day.

When I gave up my day job (ITV Subtitling) about a year ago, I decided I needed a dedicated study. The one I have now is small, light and as tidy as I can keep it. I’ve been meaning to buy a filing cabinet next week for about a decade.

I write longhand. Recently, I've been using green Uni•ball pens and see-thru plastic pencils from Muji.

Whilst writing, I listen to music - I like stuff that's fairly even dynamically (no Wagner) and with broken up rhythms: Steve Reich's Drumming; Talk Talk; Victoria; Low, who are my favourite American band; Harold Budd; David Sylvian; Glenn Gould playing Bach.

I have lunch around one. Something boring and easy to prepare, so that I don't have to think too much about it.

I used to time it so that I'd be eating along with Mel and Sue on [Channel Four's] Light Lunch. But since they defected to an evening slot, I've tended to watch bits of things I videoed the night before. Jack Nicholson in The Shining.

[I also play truant in the zombie-infested sewers of Resident Evil II on my PlayStation.]

When I'm not writing I tend to wander around the flat, moving objects senselessly from one room to another. It's not tidying, just moving things.

To try and cut down on the wandering, I recently spent a month working in the new British Library. It was a great. No distractions, apart from the odd person at the next desk along. There was always an odd person.

I tend to show things around only when they're almost finished. It's best not to be put of with people saying (as they always do), 'That sounds just like...'

The last thing I finished was a screenplay adaptation of Beatniks. I have a picture of Francis Ford Coppola up above my desk. He is half way through filming Apocalypse Now. He looks shaggy and shagged. He is pointing a revolver into his temple. I have him up there to remind myself that, however bad it’s going, at least my helicopters haven't been called away to fight rebel insurgency in the south.