“One Bagatelle, and I’ll raise you a novel,” Megan had tweeted back.“Writing for tea? Now that would have been a solution for the British empire,” Laura returned.“Writing for me,” Megan had typed.“I’ll write you a tea fortune.”“No deal. I want a novel. September sounds good.”

“Have tea, might write,” Laura returned.”

“Hooray! I finally finished making a new book cover. Now I just need to write the book. The cover is the image of a man hanging, so perhaps I’ll write a romance novel.”

“Plenty of people were writing novels; in fact, if one did a survey in the street, half of Edinburgh was writing a novel, and this meant that there really weren't enough characters to go round. Unless, of course, one wrote about people who were themselves writing novels. And what would the novels that these fictional characters were writing be about? Well, they would be novels about people writing novels.”

“Are you ready for me to read?” I took her outstretched cup and placed it on the bedside table.“I was ready ten minutes ago. If you wait any longer I’ll have time to write a novel meself.”

“You never learn how to write a novel. You just learn how to write the novel that you're writing.”