Yesterday I was carrying out my promise of 500-1000 words a day, painfully, I was tackling a section I have been avoiding because it's pretty harrowing, when I suddenly, for the first time in four years I thought – my god, I think this is no good.

Honestly, I have had slumps and so on, but I was always convinced the story I am telling is not bad and has potential. Suddenly the risks I was taking looked like they could be juvenile, the violence in it so interminable and pointless – really the whole thing quite dour.

I am printing out and giving it to a friend who reads lots and was in publishing, I need some honesty and I trust her to do it. What a feeling, to think you have wasted four years on a piece of nonsense.