The novelist on the privilege of working from home, the benefits of eavesdropping and why he and his grandson love to play ‘throwing writers at the radiator’

Sometimes I think I am very privileged. Setting my own hours. No traffic jams going to work. Just walk down the carpeted hall to the study. It’s the only room in the house I have as I want. Books pertaining to writing above the computer. Dictionaries of all sorts – Brewer’s, Medical, Scots, foreign words, missals, bibles. The room is through-other. Untidy. Little columns of stuff build up on the wooden floor, never to be moved again. Newspapers with articles that at one time seemed to be of vital interest.

Occasionally they avalanche. An Old Man of Hoy is built from sketch books and art materials. For me, painting is an exercise in disappointment.

The desk top has a central clear working space. I use two tables in an L shape. With me in a spinny-round black chair in the elbow. One of the tables was a mistake – I ordered a small coffee table and this big dining table arrived for the same money. I never said a word. Fiction written at this surface is aware of its own deviousness. But it is also true. I remember when teaching, seeking from a class a definition of fiction and this girl saying, “Sir, sir. It’s made-up truth.”

I don’t write fiction every day but I generally write something – diary, emails, notes towards something. For a time I had a banner above the screen that said this kind of thing was garbage – “Only writing is writing”. Then that seemed too hectoring. I replaced it with Wittgenstein’s “in art it is hard to say anything, that is as good as saying nothing”. But that was just too frightening. So I ended up with Isak Dinesen’s humane “write a little every day, without hope and without despair”.

I keep a notebook in an out-of-sight pocket – and note down very occasional overhearings. Two girls pass me on the street and there is a sound glimpse, “If I was you…” The basis of all fiction revealed and they are gone.

To get the day started I would add anything eavesdropped to the computer. Or it could be a phrase or a pattern of words. I was talking at the Seamus Heaney HomePlace [an arts centre in Bellaghy] some weeks ago and a Heaney brother said the audience “looked like a September flight to Malaga”. That goes straight in.

Midwinter Break by Bernard MacLaverty review – marriage under the microscope Read more

I love new words and am old enough to have to write them down. They bring ideas in their wake. Recent entries from other languages: kintsukuroi – the Japanese art of repairing with gold so that the broken artefact becomes more beautiful for having been broken. Uaigneas – the Irish Gaelic word meaning loneliness, sadness, regret for things past. Ochlokinetics – the study of how people get in each other’s way. The science of crowd control. Some words draw attention to themselves by their ugliness. A computer word like embiggen – as in “click to embiggen”. What’s wrong with enlarge?

Part of my problem is that I am a collector and my wife is a chucker-outer. But this does not apply in the study. Some years ago in Dublin I bought a finger doll of James Joyce to set on the mantelpiece. I loved the idea of entrepreneurs making money from their most famous writer without having read a word. On later visits I bought Oscar Wilde and Ernest Hemingway, to be companions for Joyce above the fireplace. Much later when my grandson (2½ yrs) came to visit he discovered magnets in their heads. So we have devised a game we call “Throwing Writers at the Radiator”. As they stick we have to shout their names out. You can say what you like but the wee boy will be better educated than many.

I have a crowded mantelpiece – geodes or, to the grandchildren, plain stones with glittering innards, awards, a Mexican death skeleton dancer, a geodesic dome, a Victorian microscope from my lab days useless because the eye piece got lost during a house move, a tin of Royal Baking Powder whose label demonstrates infinity to me but makes it no clearer. A chunk of amethyst dug out of a stream on Achill Island during our honeymoon. Beneath the mantelpiece hang wind chimes.

When I’m at the desk – no music. Music is far too important to be listened to while doing something else. You should be on the edge of your seat listening to music. Somehow nowadays the word “relaxing” gets used about music. Nothing could be further from the truth. (Once when I asked a four-year-old granddaughter what music she liked, she said, “Lee-raxing music”.)

I like to be in the vicinity of the desk in case anything happens. But mostly you have to make it happen. I try to move whatever I’m working on forward a little each day. In the beginning I had targets varying between 500 and 1,000 words a day. But it depends on the genre. If it’s a screenplay you can maybe get 10 pages done a day. If it’s a short story it might be 10 words.

If there is a stickiness or hesitancy to the writing I kid myself: “Don’t try to make it good. Just try to make it. Tomorrow you can rewrite it better. The thing is, you are writing. Anything can leap on to the page before you know it.”

• Number of hours: does it matter which way you’re facing?

• Words: my word count tab is broken and any figure outnumbering my fingers is lost to me

• Time wasted: weeks. And that is every day

• Drinks: they equate roughly to the number of words written. Earl Grey, 2. Coffee: pour boiling water on powder kind, 3; bought in a cafe well away from the desk, 1. Camomile tea, 1 – instead of a bottle of Islay whisky

• Midwinter Break is published by Jonathan Cape. To order a copy for £11.24 (RRP £14.99) go to bookshop.theguardian.com or call 0330 333 6846. Free UK p&p over £10, online orders only. Phone orders min p&p of £1.99.