It is ten o’clock at night and, having been up since six as usual, the blank page is staring at me with something akin to mockery. The post is due out in the morning and is, as yet, unwritten. Even worse… it has been a very busy day and I haven’t had chance to even think about what to write. The only thing to do is start; what then comes will be as much a surprise to me as to any reader.

That is the way I prefer to write, listening to the dictates of imagination, itself a blank page upon which we can write absolutely anything. Some writers plot every twist in a story, others just have the vaguest idea and write to see where the words lead them. Either way, their tale is born first in the imagination and, no matter from where it takes its inspiration, it…