‘I want to recognise the habitual, but not be numbed by it; to retain both first and lasting impressions of a place. It requires both sufficient experience to write with authority, and distance to write with liberty, and without betrayal.’

The profession of ‘writer’ wasn’t listed among the boxes you ticked for careers night… How novelists learnt their craft and made a career of it, to me was an utter enigma.

Writers needs mechanisms to maintain enthusiasm and minimise worry so that they can take full advantage of those moments that afford the freedom to create.

‘Interactivity has been a disaster for writers. Famously susceptible to procrastination, they are hungry for just the sort of distraction the new technologies all too readily provide.’

‘Success’ in literature, a field defined as perhaps no other by setbacks and reversals, can take many forms and arise in the least expected of places.

‘I try to experience a novel as an ordinary reader and give it the fullest chance to exert its power by reading right to the end. I want to see how leads play out, how the author resolves artistic problems as they arise.’

‘I would advise my younger self to get cracking on the mechanics, with discovering what writing can do. Life itself — I would tell her — will take care of your subject, what matters are the tools of your trade.’

A ‘Writers Aloud’ interview on crafting international stories, Caroline’s roots as a foreign correspondent, and the different forms of bravery involved in writing.

On the issue of cultural appropriation, and what novelists might consider when working in that space where fiction and documentary blur.

‘The day I learned there were people who, for kicks, pilfered eggs from the nests of birds on the verge of extinction, I plunged from sorrow into existential despair.’

‘I often find myself drawn to novelists who are also poets; some of their works travel with me to the places in which I write.’

‘Writers don’t need to be prisoners, or exiles, or cursed by elements of their own society to feel an outsider. The biographies of writers are littered with references to feelings of distance.’

’Visiting a foreign city leaves me fantasising about what it would be like to cloak myself in another identity and live in another world’

‘There was always more to marvel at. The creation of emotion. The uncanny beauty of a phrase upon the page. The places you went which you never expected to see.’

Write about what you don’t know. If you are setting out to write a novel, you are in it for the long haul. You better be sure you’ll stay interested.

Hone and hone that draft till the story emerges, the way a sculpture emerges from what was once a block of stone.

It was when this long apprenticeship began to expose me to things that felt compelling that I truly began to write.

The writing life can be a tug-of-war between creation and procrastination; the need to produce, and the hurdles that get in the way.