In this series Ink Sweat & Tears talks to practicing writers about their process and craft.

1. Where do you write? (do you have an office, room, bus or train journey that you find yourself and your writing? etc)

A goat-shed half-way down my garden. I evicted the goats before moving in. The goat-shed looks from the exterior like a child’s drawing of a house. Having to walk, even a little, to work each day is useful; as is having to leave the room at the end of a working day and lock up.

2. How do you write? (into a notebook or straight onto a computer? etc)

I use notebooks of different sizes and types. Big A3 artist books for mapping the sound-structure of longer poems and the architecture of longer lines; A4 notebooks for drafting stages of poems; A5 notebooks for keeping on top of work while I’m walking or travelling; and two laptops – one for creative work that stays in the goat-shed (no internet connection); and one for everything else (internet connection). When working on prose or reviews I tend to move between the two laptops almost every half hour. When working on poems I stay with the first machine until I’m finished or can’t progress further that day.

3. Roughly how much time do you spend each week on creative writing related activities? (writing, editing, correspondence & submissions – give a daily average if possible)

Five to six hours, and sometimes a good deal more, but I work very intensely and very fast when needed or when the mood takes me. Fallow periods are never really fallow; they are times when the mind’s reservoir needs to fill and that means very long walks, and lots of speaking to myself. So, although I might not be physically writing at those times, I’d say I am writing: pre-writing. When I am engaged on a major writing project, I think about it most of my waking time, even sometimes when I’m with my children and family. I’m not ashamed to say so because that’s just how I am and have become. My children and family aren’t neglected in any way. I cook a lot (and I cook quite well) but it’s only another form of ‘writing’.

4. What time of day do you usually write?

I used to be a Barn Owl, but now I’m a Little Owl – a daytime hunting creature. I work from 9.00 onwards to 4.30 and a little casual revision from 10.30-12.00. I have small children; I have built my schedule around them; their school and nursery times and meals; reading and bedtimes. I have been in the past a single parent, and have been fortunate also for the last decade to be married. Having children has had the most disciplining impact on my writing life and habits. The pram in the hall (in my case the baby-rucksack) means you have no choice but to seize the time available to you, stay in the room where you write, and get on with your work while and when you can.

5. Do you set yourself a daily target for writing?

In prose, yes, and I reach it. I think 1200 words of nearly-completed prose is a good target. That means many drafts and writing-through as part of that day’s work. However, I increased my target on a recent prose book of 110,000 words to 2,000 words a day and, since I was writing every day, began to hit heights of 4,000-5,000 words per day. I went a little crazy though.

With poems the whole sense of the venture is different and can be a case of feast or famine. Some poems have taken years to write. The music of the poem has to form from somewhere first. One shorter poem in The Invisible Kings (Carcanet, 2007) took twelve years to write (and get right), whereas the long poem ‘Kings’ took only ten days: the whole shape of the music swam through my body. A poem recently published in Poetry Review called ‘Spinning’ is 100-lines long, and full of movement and register-shifts, yet took less than 90 minutes to write as a first and final draft. But I expect I had been writing (and listening for) such a poem all my life, and something called it or sang it into being. At such times I feel strongly that gift is as much a matter of discipline and practice as it is of natural talent. It is about listening and paying attention, and seizing the moment when it’s presented.

6. What does it feel like to write?

I know that when I am not writing I feel unwell and useless, and need to go for very long, fast walks in order to flay myself into feeling fully alive. At best, writing is act of disciplined and sustained ecstasy.

7. Are there any stimuli that will usually trigger you into writing?

I have produced quite a lot of work over the past three years and the quality of it has got better I hope. I put this down to my contracting Diabetes Type 1, which means I’m insulin-dependent/doomed. It means a possible curtailment of some years of life. Things have become more urgent. Yet I’m super-active and much more physically fit than I used to be before a virus destroyed my pancreas. A combination of an awareness of death drives me hard (my father died at 41, an age I’ve since passed). It must be obvious that the natural world is a constant revelation to me, and has been throughout my working life as an ecologist. The natural world and its music is my whole life I think.

8. Do you work in silence or have background noise? If you do have sounds, what are you listening to now?

Right this second, there is a grey squirrel rootling around in the loft space of the goat-shed above my head and I don’t want it hibernating up there, so I have just led it out. Now it’s raining and I feel for the squirrel.

I work in total silence when writing poems, but I play music loudly when writing prose. I find Arvo Pärt’s Alina highly conducive to creating varied musical prose sentences. I have a lot of contemporary classical and classical music on hand, and also a huge amount of rock music that’s built up over years.

You know, that damn squirrel is back again, scrabbling about in the roof space, and this time it won’t be scared so easily! It’s my Daemon come to visit…

9. What are you working on now?

I’m working on several projects. I’m writing a new book of poems for Carcanet while also proofing the collection that’s due out in November called Enchantment: a book I’m very pleased with. There are long poems, poems as short stories, and some magical realist story-poems. I think it’s my best book; I loved writing it and people at readings have really responded to the poems. I’m also co-editing a book called The Cambridge Companion to Creative Writing with an Australian poet called Philip Nielsen. He’s been great to work with – staunch and supportive. The chapters are just coming in this week: amazing stuff from A.L. Kennedy, Ron Carlson, Michelene Wandor, Fiona Sampson and Chris Hamilton-Emery. That’s due out next year and will put some cats among the pigeons. I’m editing an anthology, writing various poetry reviews for various places and thinking about a huge project involving the regional voice in poetry. The problem is with a huge project like this is that I need to raise about half a million pounds to carry it out though. In the end I’ll just do it.

David Morley’s next book is Enchantment (Carcanet, Nov 2010). His poetry has won 14 awards. His previous collection The Invisible Kings was a PBS Recommendation. His ‘writing challenges’ podcasts are among the most popular literature downloads on iTunes worldwide. He writes for The Guardian and Poetry Review.