I should probably start by making it clear that there really isn’t any such thing as a typical writing day. Not for this writer, anyway. I’m sure that many of my peers would differ, but I’ve always been somewhat distrustful of those who claim to have set times to write and regimented patterns of productivity. I see it sometimes, in interviews. “I breakfast at 8.30 then sit down to write for a few hours before taking a short break for coffee and perhaps a biscuit. Then I write until lunchtime when I enjoy a sandwich or a light salad, before settling down to bash out another thousand words before teatime etc etc.”

I simply do not recognise any of that, and not just because I could never enjoy a light salad. Or any other salad, come to that.

It’s not that I have a problem with routine, as such. In many areas outside that which I do for a living, I’m actually something of a stickler for it. It’s just that the life of a working writer, which these days includes all sorts of activities that are not writing, can never realistically be nine-to-five.

This will probably become clearer when I explain that the only place I can actually write – by which I mean get words into a document in a more-or-less satisfactory order – is in my office at home. In the room where I’m sitting currently, surrounded by books, records, the odd stuffed animal and far more Beatles toys than any grown man should admit to. It’s here and nowhere else where what I laughably call ‘the work’ is done. I can’t write on a train or in a hotel room and as I spend an increasing amount of time travelling to promote books I’ve already written, I’m simply not able to write every day. Yes, I usually travel with a notebook, so I can always scribble down an idea if it occurs to me, or a few scrawled lines of dialogue alongside the reminders to buy cheese or pay the gas bill, but no more than that.

All that said, however – and it’s a big ‘however’ – I would argue that actually, I’m always writing the book. Because wherever I am and whatever I’m doing, the book on which I’m currently working is in my head. Knots to be untangled, routes to be planned out, killers to disguise. The truth is that the best ‘writing’ is often done while I’m in the shower or walking the dog, but I’m unable to get anything down until I can get back to my office and the comforting presence of my Beatles ukelele and my Hank Williams bobblehead.

There’s writing and there’s typing.

I would not want you to think I’m not a disciplined writer, because I would argue vehemently that I am. I’ve delivered a book a year for almost twenty-five years and I don’t think you can do that if you’re remotely lackadaisical. If you’re some kind of devil-may-care… flibbertigibbet. While I may not write every day (I may not write for weeks at a time) the book always gets done. On time and with the bare minimum of typos. This is because, while what happens day-to-day varies enormously (an article to be done, a Zoom interview, travel to an event somewhere) I have a pretty accurate in-built calendar, which tells me where I am in terms of the annual writing cycle. I’m 50,000 words in and I don’t deliver for another six months, I can relax a little and ponce about at festivals. I’m 10,000 words in and the book’s due next week…uh-oh! So, I know when I can afford to spend a few weeks doing bugger all or, conversely, when I need to spend five days in my ‘author outfit’ (ratty dressing gown and pyjamas) and get several thousand actual words done.

I know when it’s writing time and I know when it’s showing-off time.

As it happens, I’ve recently delivered a book (the next Tom Thorne novel, due out in 2025) so I can afford to spend the next month or so out and about promoting the second Declan Miller novel – The Wrong Hands – which is published on June 20^th. I’m currently gearing up for a festival in Scotland at which I have two book events as well as a gig by the Fun Lovin’ Crime Writers, which  means that – aside from writing this – today’s typical writing day has consisted of a few hours’ much needed guitar practice, reminding myself of a few jokes I’ll need to tell on stage and wasting far too much time on social media.

Now that I think about it, if I did have anything that resembled a typical writing day, it would largely be made up of eating toast, watching funny dog videos and scouring the internet for more Beatles paraphernalia I don’t need*.

*There is no such thing.