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Q: You’ve suggested people just write if they want to be writers — but do you have any tricks you’ve used on yourself if you’re feeling lazy? What do those negotiations look like?

A: Making rules. Rules like: you can sit here and write, or you can sit here and do nothing. But you can’t sit here and do anything else. Making that as a rule for myself is a really good one. With that as a rule, if you don’t feel like writing, and you go to your writing place — and you’re allowed to not write, you’re absolutely, 100 per cent allowed to not write — but you’re not allowed to anything else other than sit round, staring out the window. And staring out the window not doing anything gets so dull so quickly, that you might as well write.

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Q: Versions of the three Furies keep popping up in your work — can you talk about what you’re thinking when you bring back a familiar trope? Fans love it, of course … they want to see things you’ve done already …

A: Fans, by definition, always want more of the last thing that they love. And I’m not the kind of writer who’s very good at giving it to them. I’m very good at giving fans what I love. So I guess I’m most fortunate in that people on the whole are prepared to wait, prepared to check things out. I love Elvis Costello, I love him as a songwriter, I love his music. I also know that I don’t have to love everything he does. If he makes an album that doesn’t chime with me, that doesn’t mean I’m not going to buy the next one. I’ll buy the next one because I know he’ll be doing something else. I hope I’m one of those authors where people turn up for Stardust, and the next thing I do is American Gods, about as far from Stardust as you can go. And the next thing is Coraline, which is a completely different order of things. And then the next thing is Anansi Boys, which is sort of set in the American Gods world, but it’s basically a wild, farcical comedy. And then there’s The Graveyard Book, and then The Ocean at the End of the Lane. And they’re similar, because they all got written by me — but the weirdest thing was having Ocean at the End of the Land and Fortunately the Milk come out within a couple months of each other, right? You don’t look at those and think, if you like Fortunately the Milk, you’ll like Ocean at the End of the Lane.