By the seat of her pants

Writing a novel is proving much harder than I remember. The last time it just seemed to 'come out', whole and perfect, onto the page. However, when I think back more carefully to those halcyon days, I do recall that I tended to enjoy one good day's writing to four dire.

These days I spend hours at my desk Googling "that difficult second novel". There are hundreds of thousands of websites dedicated to the

subject. However my major breakthrough came yesterday when I stumbled upon something from Kingsley Amis: novel-writing is no more than "the art of applying the seat of the pants to the seat of a chair". And obviously doing away with any connection to the internet. It's been a big help, and from today that will be my way forward.

My main problem now is the seat of my chair - it's not nearly comfortable enough. And the desk. I don't like my desk; it's too cluttered, so I've moved downstairs to a side table.

I spend hours at my desk Googling the phrase ‘that difficult second novel’