Writing a novel is a great pleasure, but it’s also quite a responsibility: it won’t ever exist unless you put the hours in and coax it out from wherever it is. When I think too much about my novel deadline (which is looming pretty large and ominous on the horizon now!) I get flashes of fear – I feel like I’m pulling the story out of me on a string from some deep, dark place. Sometimes the string snags on something and it seems as though if I tug it too hard, it might break. That’s frightening. So then I have to walk away, go to the sea or climb a hill, take my mind elsewhere and let it recharge.

A lot of people have a fear of writing. Students come to me and say: ‘I’m frightened that what I’ve written won’t be original.’ Or: ‘I’ve completed my story/novel/poem but I’m afraid to try and get it published – what if nobody likes it and it’s a giant flop?’ I try to get students to write through the fear, break the ice in their own heads by using techniques such as flow writing (writing fast and wild, without hesitating), as this enables contact with the unconscious mind rather than allowing ourselves to be stifled by our critical, editorial function. Once creative writing students start to produce pages of writing and discover the knack of picking out the gems from the dross, their excitement at what they discover often effaces any fears they might have had.

I ask my students (and myself, of course; that’s the handy thing about teaching writing – it encourages you to practise what you preach), What amazes you? What hurts you? Where does the emotion in your freewriting lie, and which topics does your writing spiral back to again and again? These are the ones to work with.

Here’s a good start to intense writing: ‘My greatest fear is…’ Now write without stopping for eight minutes. Be prepared for anything. Some people say they can only work with fear driving them forward. I think of it in two ways: Either fear is what makes the story remain embedded in its deep, dark place, in which case, chase it away, or else fear is the beating red heart of the story, in which case, let’s write about it!

One of the most interesting discoveries over the past weeks has been noticing the way that people who know me very well and have now read the book suppose they know which scenes/characters have been lifted from my own life. One person said he recognised my husband in Taos; a tall, steadying travelling companion. Two others differed in their opinion of which of my childhood friends Poppy was based on, whereas the truth is, I invented her off the top of my head purely to bring a ray of light into that grim episode of Mia’s life and didn’t associate her with anyone I’d known. On another, non-personal level, one friend recognised a snippet of Bollywood song lyrics she’d sent me in a travel-diary email she wrote while backpacking in India with her young daughter, while another will certainly recognise Alida’s computerised baby dolls, as she has used them in her own sex-education job.

I think people have fun playing this guessing game when they know the author – I do it myself – but fiction writing is rarely as clear cut as it might seem. For me, it’s an intricate weaving process and I’m just as likely to steal a character trait from a five-second piece of dialogue I catch while passing someone on the street, as I am to daydream that character trait into existence without ever knowing just why or how it occurred to me.

It’s probably safe to assume that for every new person who reads a novel, a different version of it will spring into existence, because whether we know the author or not, we each apply our own memories, associations and impressions to the fictional world we’re immersed in. It makes me smile to think of Breathing in Colour multiplying in interpretations as it starts to be read by all these individuals, each with their own personal take on it. I like this interaction: my imagination fusing with the reader’s personality and life experience, triggering an imaginative response to become something absolutely unique.

Now I understand what people mean when they say a book is no longer your own once you publish it!

When I’m writing fiction, and especially novels, the imagery tends to swamp me at some stage. With Dreamrunner, which I’m writing now, there’s a strong theme of the sea, foaming water, dolphins, waves. And just look at how watery this website has consequently become! If I’d set up the site while writing Breathing in Colour, it would have a far more Indian feel to it, for sure. The navigation buttons might have been elephant-shaped. There may have been henna designs snaking across all the pages. I enjoy the fact that my imagery sweeps me away each time. I keep dreaming of the ocean: glittering waves rearing high. A recent one was shaped like a melting Dali watch.

My publicist at Little, Brown asked me if I’d be willing to write short stories on commission, as well as features and interviews, in the months building up to the publication of the first novel. I agreed to everything she suggested except the stories, because I’m so bound up in the novel imagery that I feel I can’t risk being kicked away from it by having to immerse myself in new characters, new imagery, a new fictional world. I think I could do it if it weren’t for the deadline pressure, because I wrote quite a few short stories while writing the first novel during a three-year doctorate. If I had two leisurely years to write this novel, I could take the occasional week-long break and split away from it to write something completely different. Writing articles doesn’t affect my novel writing because it uses a different part of my mind. It’s factual, neat – nothing like the rush of emotional imagery and fabrication that my fiction is made up of.

Imagery, for me, is absolutely key to novel-writing, and I do whatever I can to keep mine safely flowing. I do things I never normally do, like going to the zoo – this is a trip I plan to make soon, despite not liking the fact of caged animals, because the little boy in the second novel needs to go there to watch the dolphin show. Or daydreaming as often as I can, inventing scenarios and seeing how they pan out. And dreaming intensely at night, which gives me fresh, alive imagery to work with.

What’s your current imagery? Is it a fire-blackened street, tiger eyes watching from a tree, shoals of golden fish? I’d love to hear a sentence or two from you.