Sunday, as I was on my way to a cafe to write I noticed my attention to what I was doing went in and out of focus. That can be dangerous when you're accident prone, as I often am - Dear Red Room landlords - just send the dry cleaning bill to me. Ooops. - but it's also something that is a "writer" thing for me. The experience of moving from the real world to the internal one of the novel. When I'm deep into a novel, I spend more and more time internally, finding I have a lot of imaginal nourishment stored up in there. I can be like a bear hibernating and I like being in there. But I occasionally have to venture out out into the real world - shifting my focus outward, for a specific purpose.

I don't mean answering when spoken to, or watching television, or making sure I don't fall off the kerb. The external focus is to do research, look something up, read something pertinent, or scan for "creative food". The adage to "stop and smell the roses" which can mean stopping to appreciate life, to slow down etc., for me can mean a hyper focus on something in the real world that will help me detail something, or delve more deeply into the created world. It might be watching people at a bus stop, their body language towards each other, or the expression on someone's face or the choices they've obviously made getting dressed that morning. I feel myself . . . looking for something, not even knowing what it is until it comes across the radar and feels like a match. Then I go back inside. And close the door of the ice cave for a while longer.

And what do you do?