This week’s blog comes from the multi-talented Phil Rowlands. Some detailed tips here which all aspiring writers should note. (I’m also very jealous of his shed!)

How I write:

For me, it all starts with an idea, a story I’d heard, something I read in a newspaper, a love, a passion, a tragedy, a news report.

One example was an article I read in a discarded newspaper on a train from London to Cardiff. It was about a Sunni shopkeeper, captured with other Sunnis at a Baghdad market by Shia militiamen and lined up in a front of a firing squad and how his life was spared by the man who was to execute him. It was an intriguing story. I decided to track down the journalist and after several months met up with her in an underground bar in Sloane Square, Chelsea. She gave me permission to develop…