With less than three weeks to go I have started packing for my grand adventure. As well as puzzling over how to cram three months worth of everything into a single 25 kg bag, I’ve been gathering my writing tools.

Inspiration is going to be essential, and before I hunch down over my keyboard I’m going to be getting bucketsfull. For the first two weeks of my jaunt I shall be ‘on holiday’, powering down my work brain and having adventures.

First of all I shall realise a dream I’ve been harbouring for 30 years. With my dear friend Amanda, I’ll be cruising up the River Nile, gazing in awe at the pyramids, imagining myself as a temple maiden of Hatshepsut in the Valley of the Kings and taking tea on the balcony of the Cataract Hotel in Aswan where Agatha Christie was wont to weave her whodunnit plots. Amanda and I have some travel form, having previously jaunted together to Club Med in Noumea and the island paradise of Lankawi and I’m agog with anticipation for this next chapter.

Once I’ve had my fill of Egyptian antiquities I’ll be flying to Prague to rendezvous with HWB. We will explore this most beautiful of cities, and nearby delights such as Cesky Krumlov and Hutna Kora, before locomoting our way through Munich and Lyon en route to Carcassonne. So, being a well-prepared traveller I’ve packed a couple of essential items in the form of travel guides (thanks heaps for these Mariella!).

As previously stated, once we get to Carcassonne it will be game on and I will need to draw on every possible tool available to support my ambitious daily writing targets. I have previously written about some of the tricks of the trade that writers employ, and I’ve adopted some of these and created several of my own devising. First of all, let me introduce you to my ‘Inner Critic’.

The idea is that inside every writer lurks a nasty, toxic spoil-sport who whispers disparaging remarks about work-in-progress in the authorial ear, crushing literary confidence and stymieing the flow of brilliance. By creating a physical representation of your Inner Critic and keeping it on your desk you can remind yourself to disregard these self-whisperings of doom and press on with the creative process. I had a lot of fun making this dude, and he will sit prominently in front of me in Carcassone. I shall blow raspberries at him if he starts playing his tricks.

Building on the ‘a writer writes always’ theme, I am packing equipment to ensure that I am never without the means of jotting down snatches of dialogue, scenes or other bit of inspiration that might fly into my head at odd moments. Journal – check. Coloured pens – check. Authors notebooks (thanks Rachel!) – check.

I am also an advocate of the inspirational quote. I once created a little handwritten book with hundreds of the best quotes I could find by luminaries ranging from Lao Tsu and Martin Luther King to Marcus Arelius and Omar Khyyam. The book opens with this one from Goethe: “Whatever you can do, or dream you can, begin it – boldness and genius, power and magic in it.” I’m on the job Goethe! But my very favourite is this one which I’ve had printed on my mouse-pad:

The quote book also features quite a few words of wisdom from one of the most inspiring authors I’ve ever read, a bloke called Dr Wayne Dyer. Some call him a ‘self-help’ author, but I believe he is a master of insight and a powerful teacher. He is of the ‘what you think you create’ school of thought, and a key message of his that leaps out for me is this one:

The idea here is that you need to train your heart and mind to believe that your success (whatever it may be) has already happened. You need to see it, touch it, feel it, smell it, live it. You cannot allow thoughts of failure to obtrude – if you think about failure that’s what you’ll get. I’ve laminated this piece of wisdom and it will also sit on my Carcassonne desk, next to my Inner Critic.

So, what I intend to create is a published novel imprinted by a major house, and acclaimed by authors whom I humbly hope to emulate. I had a most entertaining afternoon designing the cover of my book (with apologies to Harper Collins and Marion Keyes for my temerity in appropriating their endorsement):

And finally, at the risk of scornful mocking, I’m going to reveal that I’m not above reaching into the woowoo draw in my efforts to leave no inspirational stone unturned. The colour blue has long been associated with imagination, intuition and inspiration and is the colour of the throat chakra (the home of self-expression) in the Vedic tradition. The power of blue in creativity has even been scientifically proven. So, I’m packing every item of blue clothing I own along with my collection of lapis lazuli adornments, the gem stone associated with truth-telling, insight, wisdom and written and spoken communication. Fully kitted out …