One of the things I’m doing on this Venice trip is checking detail. This is, before you ask, ridiculous. It’s the kind of detail no one’s going to spot. So why do I do it? Because detail is important to me and it’s my name on the book. I have the <em>right</em> to obsess like this. OK?

This is the kind of ridiculous detail I’m talking about. Close to the climax of the book a character gets off a boat near the San Basilio vaporetto stop on the Giudecca canal and thinks about the basilica of Redentore across the channel, a place that has some special significance to her and the story.

In the draft, written in the UK, she can see Redentore from the place where she gets off. I wrote that knowing full well that just maybe that’s not possible. So last night I set out to check.

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Guess what? I was right. You can’t quite see <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Il_Redentore" target="_blank">Redentore</a> from there. It’s just round the corner of the canal, out of sight. So clearly I had to rewrite the section. But it got better than that. Standing there made me think about the scene itself again and I realised I needed to explain just a little more – one sentence, that’s all – about what significance that thought had for the character. Now she isn’t seeing Redentore but she’s aware it’s there, just out of reach. That gives me a little more to play with than if she <em>could</em> see it. At least I hope it does.

That’s just an example of the kind of small thing I try to put into the book at this stage. They strike me at the oddest of times, and very rarely while I’m sitting at the keyboard. I’ve learnt now that inspiration strikes when you least expect it. Some means of recording it is essential. A notebook by the bed if you’re the sort who wakes up in the eureka moment in the night.

Usually for me it happens during the waking hours – when I’m out somewhere, sitting on a bench, mooching, doing something else. The godsend I have now is the mobile phone. I use <a href="http://www.rememberthemilk.com" target="_blank">Remember the Milk</a> on it and just make a quick note. By the time I get back to the apartment that’s waiting on the computer. I know what to do.

Just a few more tonight and then I think this book will be done.