Here's a query someone posed on Facebook the other day. I was boasting about getting the revision of <em>The Fallen Angel</em> out of the way and the fact I'd wake up on New Year's Day with a blank page in front of me. Jane Burfield from Toronto asked, 'I have many times when the blank page is scary. What do you do when first sitting down?'

Good question. Let me try and answer it.

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I suppose the honest answer is I was fibbing. I never really sit down with a blank page in front of me. I spend a lot of time at the computer, more than I need probably (damn Twitter, damn Facebook, a curse be upon the Interwebs at large). But I really don't waste hours seated at the keyboard thinking, 'What on earth am I going to write now?'

That's not to say I don't find ideas at the computer. Sometimes I'll pick up something in a book or a newspaper and want to find out more. I have a stack of titbits of information stored away in <a href="http://www.evernote.com/" target="_blank">Evernote</a> filed as potential story threads one day. Using the computer and the web as an information source -- albeit a very unreliable one -- makes a lot of sense to me. It's wonderful at that most of the time, perhaps a little too generous if anything because it can eat up whole days in pleasurable research.

But in terms of 'What will I write today?'... nah. It's inevitable that writers have to sit down and face a blank page. But to do that with a blank mind too doesn't work for me at all. I'd rather be somewhere else, thinking, reading, travelling, talking to people, listening, watching their faces, wondering.

So there's the truth. I only sit down to write something when I have some kind of idea -- sometimes fuzzy, sometimes clear -- what it is I want to attack. If I haven't a clue I'll go and do something completely contrary (walking the dog being one of the easiest and most enjoyable). I've also had some damned good ideas while riding my John Deere lawn tractor, keeping down the grass or doing general chores around the garden.

It's hard to go digging for book ideas. I think you have to lead the kind of life -- mental and physical -- that invites them to come near then snatch the little horrors and keep them somewhere safe.

That's not going to happen if I spend long hours seated in front of a computer screen, waiting for inspiration to hit.