I have always been a runner, but I haven’t always run. When I was a child, I had the freedom to run around fields and streets all day every day without worrying about where I was going or when I’d be back. When I was a young person, I ran for my school and I ran for a club; when I was sixteen, I ran an awful long way and I ran it fucking fast. After that, I pretty much stopped running for twenty-seven years. But now I am running again – pounding out a few miles, a couple of times a week. I have always been a runner but now I am a runner who runs.

You may always have been a writer, but perhaps you haven’t been writing. Maybe you wrote, as a child, because children have that freedom, to write straight from the heart without analysing, debating. Perhaps you lost the habit soon afterwards; maybe you have tried to find it again a few times. Or perhaps you have been writing, but failing to find your stride. The truth is, whether you haven’t written anything for twenty-seven years, or whether you have been writing and not liking what you have written, you are still a writer. Today you can start to write again. You will become a writer who writes.

The fact that I didn’t run for so long is irrelevant. I was still a runner in my heart, in my mind, in my body. But now I’m running again, lord I love it. I feel more myself when I am running and, when I’m done, what I feel is a happy exhaustion. A happy exhaustion following a logical coming together of heart, mind and body.

It doesn’t matter whether you have been writing for years or not; if you’re a writer, write now. You will feel more yourself – more complete. Bring together all of your life experiences, your intellectual journeys, your love stories into this, your writing. Make it all make sense to you, on the page. Make your writing the logical conclusion to everything that has gone before: this is what it all adds up to, now.

Running isn’t something I do because someone else suggested it; because someone might see me; because I’m competing with anyone. I loathe the idea of running against anyone else, or with anyone else, even though I am as competitive a person as you could find. My running has nothing to do with anyone but me, and that feels good. Pushing myself as hard as I can – testing myself – that’s what counts. I know what speed I’m aiming at. (‘Fucking fast.’) I’ll run where I like.

Writing shouldn’t be something you do because someone else suggested it, or might notice, or because someone else is writing and you think you’d do it better. Push yourself to write as well as you can – test yourself – be your own critic. Your own satisfaction is what matters here. Don’t be too impatient to share your work with others. Be your own best reader; please yourself. Know what you’re aiming for. Write what you like.

Running regularly builds stamina, muscle, lung capacity: the more I run, the better I run. I can breathe like a diver now: when I get into my stride, I can hold my breath in my lungs – take the oxygen down low and keep it there. I try new routes (dirt track, towpath, road, grass, middle of the street, long straight, field); new soundtracks; times of day; distances; speeds; shoes. I play with it, experiment, enjoy it.

Write regularly: build stamina, imaginative capacity. The more you write, the better you will write. Try writing short stories, scenes, snatches of dialogue; play with modes, settings, styles, voices. Try writing for different fixed periods of time; at different times of day; try writing a certain numbers of words a day; try plotting; try writing without thinking. Play with it, experiment, enjoy it.

I like to run alone. That time, pounding along, is a time for Sorting Through, for kindling dreams, for building ideas, for unearthing memories, for weighing regrets; for deciding life is too short for regrets. I run in the world and I love the world and the world loves me. Look what I saw when I ran a couple of weeks ago: the sea, the wildflowers, the empty clifftop path.

Writing is a solitary game – set your own goals. Writing for yourself and yourself alone, is an opportunity to Sort Through, to kindle dreams, to build ideas, to unearth memories, to weigh regrets: no, sod regrets. Do not regret anything because you’re writing your own world, the world you love and the world that loves you. What’s to regret? Be a writer and be who you want; know what you know; say what you like. The road is yours if you can find it.

Now I have accepted that I am a runner – that running is essential to me – I have made a habit of it, carved a space for it in my life. If you know that you are a writer – that writing is part of who you are – then make a habit of it, carve a space for it in your life. Make no room for regret.

Tie your shoes; turn a new page. Let’s go. Who knows where we will end up.

(Yes, I put the me into metaphor didn’t I?)

We readers live extravagant lives in our heads but we’re not just huge brains in unfeeling blobs, we’re bodies too and we read with our bodies as well as our minds. Yes, I think it makes a difference to the experience of reading a novel, whether you read it whilst holding a heavy hardcover in your hands, something weighty in value, something chunky enough to demand to be held with care and respect or you might drop it on your leg and gouge a little dent; or whether you read it whilst gripping a paperback – an object designed to be thrown into bags, dunked into the bath, to survive good loving, to be a friend in fair weather or ill. And so yes of course I think it makes a difference to the experience of reading whether you read on a screen or off a page; whether you turn the page of your book by licking your finger and touching it to the paper, rough like dry skin; or whether you do it by prodding or swiping and dabbing a button down.

Writers know that the brain is influenced by physical acts; that the imagination can be fettered or freed by the body. They try writing in all positions, all rooms, all lights, all devices, all positions, until they find the one that works for them. Some write in the cocoon of bed, propped up; some at an empty desk, like an old-fashioned secretary; one of my authors writes sitting up straight on a hard chair, typewriter balanced on her knee; several will only write in longhand; all choose their keyboard, their screen, their pen, their paper, their chair, with the utmost care and attention. In order to take what they need from their minds, their bodies need to be in a state of neutral passivity, as comfortable as a body can be; or in a state of agitated action, fingers flying; or flowing like script from a pen; or tapping, with a repetitive action that demands the life on the screen be all the colour, all the excitement, the writing room can offer.

I do more than half of my writing on my iPad these days and what sweet relief it was when I switched to the new model a few months ago and had to buy a new keyboard with it. I hadn’t realised how tired I had become of the old black keys I’d had – lord we’d seen too much of one another over the past year and they didn’t compress enough, I tell you! When I press a key I want to feel it go down, you know what I mean? My new keyboard answers me with some sweet dull thudding as I type on, a modern sort of clack. And it’s grey, not black, no longer for me the sticky old black of the long insomniac nights. Good riddance, disobedient black* keys!

Oh how I loathed those sidebar page turn buttons on the early ereaders, the unsatisfying unclickiness of the dull little tabs. I’m turning a page, goddammit, I want to feel something moving. How my body recoils from stabbing at a glass screen too, it’s like touching wet unvarnished wood to me or licking a burnished metal spoon, ugh. Like trying to put your finger through a closed window or tapping someone who won’t bloody wake up. So, hurrah for the swipe! Closest mimic of the act of turning paper pages we have, the whoosh of the swipe requires real movement for us, so we’re not just sitting there reading without moving a muscle, literally; we have to join in, help the author out. The gesture from right to left spurs us on in our fantasy world – as though we’re riding a wave, when it’s as good as it gets; as though we’re being carried away by a story, almost, in a galleon. (Oh of course I’m fanciful, I didn’t get where I am today without fancy.)

Which emotions are freed by swiping? Just as walking and running shake out our thinking and aid creativity, surely the little swipe turns a cog somewhere which turns a wheel. Just as turning a paper page and holding a stack of pages in one’s hand fires a piston. Does the swipe speed us on in our read (surely more than the plodding pace of stabbing at a button or a screen)? What impact does the percentage-read tally as opposed to a page number have on our experience? The percentile predicts the ending: You have read 39% (that means I have 61% left…). How much do we miss the tangible pleasures of folding over the corners of pages, of scratching a pencil across paper rather than highlighting favourite sections? I’m not mourning these rituals – I still have them – I’m not deploring the electronic experience. I’m just asking: what difference does it make to readers?

If you’re considering publishing a book primarily in digital format, consider how ebooks are bought. Firstly: free samples are downloaded. You have to deliver, hard, in the first few pages. Your book will be in a crowded marketplace and there will be no heavy paper, no beautiful font, no tactile jacket to seduce the reader. Your book must lure the reader in and trap them. Think about pace: if you’re writing genre fiction, consider shorter chapters, shorter sentences, to encourage eager swooshing. Look at the (genre) bestseller lists: what sort of books do well in e-format? Why? Are there any common themes or traits? What is this marketplace?

Publishers have responded to the popularity of ebooks with beautiful physical objects. Books in the English language markets have surely never been more individualised, better curated, lovelier objects? When a publisher and a designer start to consider how to package a novel, they start with the text. To where does this book transport the reader, and how? What metaphorical gifts are embodied in this story? They consider what experience they want the reader to have, not only when they read the book, but when they pick it up, when they hold it, when they lick their finger and touch the paper. How should the eye be pleased, before the heart is engaged, the mind enthralled? Shall we sit, cocooned in bed, to read this book? Shall we stand, on a train, hanging onto the rail, swaying? Shall we read, walking, not looking up? Shall we swoosh, shall we dab, shall we tap? Shall we feel the weight of this novel? Shall we consider it our friend? Shall we read by the fire? Shall we lie by the pool? How shall we write, how shall we read?

* I can’t write of Black! Black! without thinking of this…and this… and so, as this is my last blog of the summer, let me wish you happy holidays and leave you laughing until you cry with me. We crawl on our knees towards our doom! See you in September. Well, you’ll see me.