Fatal distractions numbers one to 10: feeding the cats; making a cup of coffee; hanging washing on line; putting more washing into now empty machine; making more coffee to replace the cup that's got cold while hanging washing on line; flicking through dictionary looking for tantalisingly useless words; similar exercise with King James version of Bible - there must be inspiration in the good book; watching blue tits swinging off bag of peanuts in the garden; birds remind me of cats, feed the cats again. Finally give up and go and have a lie down.
Sleep. Now that's a real source of inspiration. Best moments of the day are waking up, very slowly, watching the beam of light which creeps through the crack in the shutters and meanders around the bedroom. Gradually becoming aware of the sounds of the world outside. Rain sluicing off the roof and into the gutter, the 46A bus grinding up York Road from Dun Laoghaire, my sweetheart's deep breathing beside me. And realising that those knots of plot and character left tangled and messy at the end of yesterday's work have somehow untied themselves and are laid out now like bright skeins of embroidery thread, ready to be drawn together again.
But how to get from bed to desk in this state of perfect readiness, ideas minted afresh, the imagination finely tuned? My family have grown accustomed to the silent creature who wanders around the kitchen, drinking tea, eating muesli, eyes averted. They look at each other and shrug. She's at it again, their expressions say.
I wrote my first novel Mary, Mary in my daughter's bedroom. She had gone to Russia to ballet school and I had moved myself and my computer, my piles of notes, lucky charms and talismans, into her space. I sat at her desk, where she had slogged over the Leaving Certificate, week after week, month after month, as I wrote my story about a mother's grief for her lost daughter. Oh no, I can hear her say, she's not me, that girl, she isn't. And of course, Mary of the book is not my daughter. But being in that room did help me to crystallise those emotions, so much that often I would have to escape, and walk and walk and walk. Down the West Pier, gulping in lungfuls of energising salt air, the wide pale sky and clear light reflected from the sea sweeping away the pain and unease that writing the book often gave me.
THEN my daughter came home, and now I write in a room in a house in Belgrave Square in Monkstown, a brisk 10 minutes away from everyday life. A desk, a chair, and a bed. Another imaginary world. A second book to be written. Could I do it again? A knot in my stomach every morning as I sit down, but still the delicious excitement of the first hour and a half when it all happens. Words flow, sentences form themselves with ease, the world within seeps out onto the page. And the reward? To lie down and sleep, exhausted.
And what of the rest of the day? Afternoons are for fiddling about. Changing bits and pieces, reading and re-reading aloud what has been written so far. And then the escape. To the supermarket perhaps, to reenter the world of real flesh and blood.
And the evenings? A slow build-up to sleep, that state of grace that will once again set free the imagination in readiness for the next day's work.
And so it starts all over again.
Mary, Mary is published this week by Town House at £6.99 in paperback