Goodreads asked Kathleen Jowitt:

How do you get inspired to write?

Kathleen Jowitt My writing is, first and foremost, about people. I'm very interested in how people work, how they interact with each other, why they act the way that they do. And so most of my inspiration comes from people.

Which is not to say that my books are about real people. Even where I'm riffing off a real situation, the characters that I put into it are imaginary. But, deep down, we're all human. I ask myself, 'what would happen if there was one person who X, and they met another person who Y, and one of them had a friend who Z...?' I use my own feelings and see how far I can extrapolate them, and where I have to stop.

But I'm very aware that I'm part of a tradition, that people have been writing about people for a very long time. I argue back with books that I've read and hated - or even read and liked, but disagreed with. 'But what if this person was really like that, what if it wasn't just a misunderstanding? What then?' That's not the book that the original author wrote, or even wanted to write, so if I want to know then I have to write the answer myself.

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