Gaby Chiappe 5

Do you have a set page count you try and reach?

No. Even from the very beginning on Family Affairs, it would take me two days to write the first scene. And by the last day I was writing ten scenes in a day. Not just because my time was running out but because I just got faster and faster and faster as I went through.

That's still the case. It takes me ages to get going, and by the end I've hit a completely different pace and I feel very sure-footed and I'm racing. So no, I don't have a page count. I do sometimes set myself minimums, but they tend to be "If I don't reach this by today I'm really going to be panicking tomorrow." But as I say, the first scene will often take me a really, really long time to write.

Although I used to think maybe that wasn't helpful and I should just whack on, I've now come round to thinking that what you do is you get the first scene or the first two scenes right. You set the tone in your head for what this is going to be. And if you get the tone wrong it's really hard to write it. Or it'll come out wrong. So it's kind of worth it for me.

I think it's very personal. People work in such different ways. By scene count is probably how I do it, rather than page count. My scene count increases pretty exponentially as I go through the process. And it starts again every draft so scene one of draft two will be pretty much as time consuming as scene one of draft one.

What's the best thing about writing for a living?

Well sometimes when I'm finding it hard and I want to go to bed or I want to watch some telly instead of writing some telly I remind myself that I am being paid for something that I would be doing anyway and I would be trying to squeeze into little gaps. And actually I just love it. I find it really hard to pin down why.

When it's going well you feel like a god because you've made something out of nothing. On the occasions when there's been some sort of alchemy and it's worked, you have that feeling of "I made that." It's just the biggest buzz. And if you love what you've made it's a fantastic feeling which is probably why, when you don't love what you've made it's like being given the chance to play god and screwing up.

But that's why the highs and the lows kind of reflect each other, because when it goes well it's such an amazing feeling and when it goes badly it's such an awful feeling. I can't imagine what else I'd be qualified for now apart from growing vegetables.

Anybody who likes writing, the first time you get paid for doing something that you always loved – you can't quite believe that it's happening, that somebody's giving you money. And also because you're doing it for a living you're learning because you're having to do it all the time. You can't wait till you feel creative. You have to keep working at it. So it's a fantastic apprenticeship because you have to be workmanlike about it. And then you learn the joy in the nuts and bolts of it. I think before I started writing for a living and just wrote to please myself that I hadn't really discovered that joy in technique yet.

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