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'Writing today is a funny business'

3 September 2018

‘The only way I can work is to keep a proper schedule. I try to be at my desk by 6am and work for two hours before breakfast and then I work again till 4pm. I spend half the day thinking and half the day writing. I don't know how writers who don't have a routine get anything done...

When I wrote A Woman of Substance I didn't sit down and think, I'm going to write about a woman warrior who conquers the world and smashes the glass ceiling, but I did want to write about women in a positive way. At the time there were a lot of very sexy books out there but the women didn't come out of them very well...

Writing today is a funny business. You do wonder how long we're going to have books. I still tell young people with the imagination to go for it. Just be sure that if it doesn't work out, you have something else you can try.'

Barbara Taylor Bradford, author of A Woman of Substance, Secrets of Cavendon and 33 other titles, in the Observer magazine.