The reason I write, first and foremost, is to earn money and to pay my electricity bill. I realise how fortunate I am to be able to do this – in 2018, the average writer in the UK earnt just £10,500 – and I also realise how precarious such a life is, with publishers squeezing the advances paid to authors, and newspapers and magazines forever cutting the rates paid to journalists.

But I don’t write simply to eat. I like writing. It’s my thing. It’s a compulsion… Read on