I get up between 7 a.m. and 7.30 a.m. I make coffee and go straight to my desk. I always like working in the early morning and I don't like there to be any gap between getting up and going to my desk. I work until about 9 a.m. Most of this work is making notes for the day and jotting down ideas about what I'm writing. Then I have breakfast with the baby, our youngest of three. After that, I settle down to the harder work - the less inspiring work: developing the story, revising what is already done. I write paragraphs and passages an infinite number of times. I start with an idea and take on lots and lots more bits. I've never written something straight off in one draft only. I read a poem or maybe an essay if I'm bored but I will never read any other fiction or newspapers in this time. I have music on all morning as I don't like the silence. Early in the morning, I'll listen to a symphony, something by Mahler, Beethoven, Mozart or Debussy. Later, I'll listen to a quartet.
I don't have writer's block now: time is getting short so I don't bother with that. Writer's block is usually due to other reasons/problems like needing to do other things or being depressed or needing company, which manifest themselves in a refusal to write or speak. If I write 1,000 words in a day, that would be a lot. If I write 400 words, I'm pleased. Most of the time is spent cutting, rewriting, moving things around. I might even end up with the same 400 words I began with in a better order. It's hard to say how long it takes to finish something. The Buddha of Suburbia took 18 months to write. But I'm usually working on different things at once - a movie and a novel. I like to leave things and let them stew and then go back to them and get a fresh perspective. Films are quite difficult to write as they are more fiddley. The scenes are shorter and you have to write instructions for the director.
I knock off at 1 p.m. Sometimes I'll do interviews in the afternoon or casting for a film I'm working on or editing a film. Other times, I'm with the children. I'll pick them up from school, go shopping, play with them - do the normal bourgeois day. Although I'm not writing in this time, I'm often thinking of ideas or trying them out in my head. I don't usually go back to my work in the evening. I'd have supper, watch a movie or go to the pub. It's a great luxury being a writer. I just go upstairs in the morning to work. I don't have to get the tube. It's a lazy, pleasant kind of life without a lot of stress or tension.
(In conversation with Sylvia Thompson)
Midnight All Day by Hanif Kureishi is published by Faber at £9.99