Hi Jo! As a writer, how do you get through the rough patches of writing a book? I mean getting ideas and a simple plot is easy once you get inspired but how do you manage to turn that into an actual complex book? And how do you get through writer's block?

Jo Baker I think it's patience, and postponing the idea of finishedness. In my experience nothing is ever finished - so keeping on thinking things through and daydreaming stuff, and adding - there's a layering that goes on that isn't necessarily obvious (in fact it shouldn't be obvious) to the reader. I don't finish a section and then move onto the next - I'm weaving through them with every redraft.

I have yet to suffer from writers' block. I don't want to jinx myself, though, and say I don't get it - I just haven't had it yet. I've always just kept banging my head on the desk - metaphorically speaking - till something happens. Writing, even if it's nonsense - filling up ages. Something eventually emerges that makes some kind of sense.

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