A reader of one of my blogs asked me what I do to prepare to write, how do I get in the mood, how do think up a piece ahead of time. I didn’t know what to tell him. All I do is start typing on the keyboard and the writing just happens. It’s never planned or thought out, I never sit down and think about what I’m going to write. It just gushes out. Everything you see is first draft as is, though sometimes I go back and tighten a sentence or two, but that’s pretty rare. The piece comes to a structurally logical conclusion, I hit post and forget about it. That is my writing method. The writing thing switches on and then switches off again. There’s almost no thinking on my part involved. It does its little thing in its corner of my brain and leaves the rest of me alone. If I Iet it run riot it gets too obtrusive and fucks shit up. But I let it out once a day or so. Two or three times a day and it sets off my epilepsy. So I leave it on a very short leash. A few hundred words at most. Hit the on switch, let it run for an hour or so and hit the off switch. That way both me and the hole in my brain where writing happens are happy. The hole gets to gush words, and I get to ignore it.

So I decided not to tell the guy anything.