I was in Venice for the summer, rereading William Golding for a lecture I had to give at the University of Exeter. For some reason, though I am a great admirer of Golding, I needed a break. In any case, the lecture wasn't to be delivered for six months. I wrote a couple of poems. Then I thought, why not finish the novel? I invented a new ending to replace the one I had mislaid and I set to work. If you live next to a canal in Venice, as I do, it is like living next to the M25. From 6 am, barges are delivering castles of yoghurt to the sailors at the Arsenale. So it's early to bed and up betimes. 

I was at the desk by 6.30, writing till 11.30, breaking for lunch, having a siesta, then writing again from 4 till 7.

There are satisfactions peculiar to the novel. It shares with poetry the pleasure of exactness — capturing a mood, a facial expression, the way something looks, the qualia of experience. It also shares the beauty of getting the language to sing. Your ear doesn't go deaf just because it's prose. Think of the opening sentences of Lolita. A little scale of musical syllables created from the name, Lo-li-ta. Poetry, however, isn't anything like so close to fantasy. I think the novelist taps into childhood play, the frame of mind that says, "I'm a policeman, you're the baddy." Kids take it from there. They improvise with their imaginations. Novelists are equally primitive, equally sophisticated, when they pretend. All adults know this pleasure, actually, and practise it in sexual fantasy. We know how absorbing that can be. Novelists are releasing the same endorphins. Fiction is a recreational drug. But highly addictive. I've written two novels now and I'm planning a third.

My novelist friends have all been sent proofs of my forthcoming novel. Not my idea. I think Advance Praise is unhelpful. Reviewers like to make up their own minds and resent being coerced. So I discouraged them. So far, only Ian McEwan has responded. I'm not sure what this means. Most likely, the silence is polite and Pat Kavanagh was right after all. I haven't written a novel. I only think I've written a novel.