For instance, "interactivity" is one of those neologisms that Mr Humphrys likes to dangle between a pair of verbal tweezers, but the reason we suddenly need such a word is that during this century we have for the first time been dominated by non-interactive forms of entertainment: cinema, radio, recorded music and television. Before they came along all entertainment was interactive: theatre, music, sport - the performers and audience were there together, and even a respectfully silent audience exerted a powerful shaping presence on the unfolding of whatever drama they were there for. We didn't need a special word for interactivity in the same way that we don't (yet) need a special word for people with only one head.

I expect that history will show "normal" mainstream twentieth century media to be the aberration in all this. "Please, miss, you mean they could only just sit there and watch? They couldn't do anything? Didn't everybody feel terribly isolated or alienated or ignored?"

"Yes, child, that’s why they all went mad. Before the Restoration."

"What was the Restoration again, please, miss?"

"The end of the twentieth century, child. When we started to get interactivity back."

First of all, realise that it's very hard, and that writing is a gruelling and lonely business and, unless you are extremely lucky, badly paid as well. You had better really, really, really want to do it. Next you have to write something. Unless you are committed to novel writing exclusively, I suggest that you start out writing for radio. It's still a relatively easy medium to get into because it pays so badly. But it is a great medium for writers because it relies so much on the imagination. You will learn a tremendous amount from it, and maybe get some useful exposure.

Writer Alice Steinbach picks: Persuasion by Jane Austen.

"Prepare to lose yourself in this smashing story of love lost and then regained in the nick of time - all plotted, of course, in Austen's usual brilliant scenes of social comedy and mores. Add to that the author's delightful ability to spot from a mile off the slightest hint in her characters of such bad habits as pomposity, self-delusion and prejudice. But Persuasion goes further than other Austen novels. The love story is deeper, the characters slightly older, and it tackles in a very bold way the morally ambiguous nature of persuasion in all its forms."

Author Sujata Massey picks: Absolute Friends, by John LeCarre

"The best thing that can happen to a successful writer is for him to continue taking risks - and John LeCarre has done that exponentially in his most recent books. This novel tells the life stories of two male friends, both retired spies, who are called back to duty after 9/11 for one last mission. The book raises serious questions about the new world order, and will alternately make you laugh and cry over the changing fates of its believable, endearing characters."

Author Laura Lippman: Betsy and Tacy Go Over the Big Hill by Maud Hart Lovelace

The summer I was 11, I took this classic to Bethany Beach, along with six books by Walter Farley, having forgotten that I wasn't particularly interested in horses. I ended up reading Betsy and Tacy over and over again that week. I still re-read all Lovelace's work once a year.

Ever since my first book, She's Got Issues, got published, the first question everyone asked me was, "How do you think up your characters?" At first I lied. I said, "Um . . . I don’t know, I guess they're a composite of people I've met over the years." I thought that sounded good. I've heard other authors use that line, so I figured, what the hell.

But the truth is . . . I hear voices. I can easily imagine how frightening that must sound to people who don’t. That's why I typically keep that information to myself.

A while ago, I just couldn't take it anymore so I went into my bathroom with a tape recorder and put together a tape of voices that are constantly vying for attention in my head. You can't imagine the racket I live with on a daily basis. But I never complain. Mostly because I'm so grateful that my affliction never developed into the other kind of "hearing voices." Schizophrenia has got to be infinitely more distracting.

When I made my CD of voices, I started with cartoon characters and then I moved on to friends, relatives and neighbors. Before long, I had a little story going about someone who was eavesdropping on their neighbor’s conversations which were accidentally being picked up on their baby monitor. The idea of me making a tape of voices started out as a joke. The next thing I knew I had a CD and my husband was playing it at parties as soon as I left the room. He’s much funnier in person.

Anyway, once I got the voices on tape, one by one, they all seemed to disappear. But then, another whole crop of voices took up the little vacancy and before I knew it, I was putting them down on paper. My whole book is about people talking to each other. I take full credit for writing it but the truth is all I did was write down what other people were saying.

The 30ft (9m) sculpture, The Writer, will be on Parliament Hill for four months before returning to Italy.

The tribute to the loneliness of writing is meant to inspire visitors to the heath, which has associations with writers Keats and Coleridge.

Leslie Mare, from the Corporation of London which runs the heath, said: "People seem to love it or hate it".

"Heteroflexible" is someone who is usually -- but not always -- heterosexual.

"Supersize," the fast food menu word for big portions, can now be both an adjective and a verb, as in "supersize me."

And to "go commando" means "to wear no underpants."

At times, it helps to think of writing as carpentry. That way, writers and editors can work from a plan and use tools stored on their workbench. You can borrow a writing tool at any time. And here's a secret: Unlike hammers, chisels, and rakes, writing tools never have to be returned. They can be cleaned, sharpened, and passed on.

"The Second Lifers have been holding a competition to see who can design the coolest in-game ebook for my launch, and the finalists are in. Each one is amazing, a worthy re-think of what a book means in the virtual world. Just looking at the sketches for these things makes me go crosseyed with futurismicness."

The Historian, which hits stores Tuesday, spans five decades and nearly a dozen countries as it follows its characters on a life-and-death quest for the truth about the medieval ruler Vlad the Impaler and the Dracula myth he inspired. The manuscript sold at an auction last year for $2,050,000 -- a rare windfall for a first-time novelist, for whom an advance of $25,000 to $200,000 would be more typical.

"It was really a shock to make some money writing a book," Kostova said during an interview in her Ann Arbor home -- a yellow bungalow with pansies out front and a blue yard sign urging "Peace." "When you're a literary writer, you don't write to make money, and you understand that probably there will be very little money ever in it," said the 40-year-old author, who speaks in a gentle voice and chooses her words deliberately.

In 1972 -- the year in which the novel opens -- Kostova's father won a grant to teach in Slovenia in what was then Yugoslavia. He took the family with him. They spent much of those five months traveling. Against backdrops overflowing with history and beauty, he told his girls Dracula stories loosely based on Bram Stoker's classic novel and Hollywood depictions. "These tales weren't at all horrible. They were pleasantly creepy, watered-down for children," Kostova said. "Once I heard one, I wanted to hear more."

Fast-forward 20 years, and Kostova -- at that point a published author of short fiction, essays and poetry -- is standing on a mountain in North Carolina on a hike with her husband and their dog. Suddenly, she has a vision of a father telling Dracula stories to his daughter. "And then I thought, but what if at the end of each of those tales, she suddenly realizes that Dracula is listening as well," Kostova, 40, recalled. "I was creeped out and ran to my knapsack and got my notebook and started writing notes."

[Y]ou're going to do right by her. You have to. Sure, you can't write an obituary -- they won't even let you be in charge of movie listings, for crying out loud, even though you could do it twice as well as that pothead they hired last year -- but you do get to come up with a headline for that Anne Brancroft obit that came over the AP wire. And that's no small matter, you think to yourself.

There's that part where Simon and Garfunkel croon, "Here's to you, Mrs. Robinson." Why not just that? Here's to you, Mrs. Robinson. It's so simple, but it says everything.

You get your stuff together, get ready to head home. But first you want to check out the competition. You don't normally want to know what other headlines are out there, but it's different this time. It means something this time. On Google News, you discover that a lot of people liked your headline -- there are variations of it all over the web. Doesn't matter, you figure -- it just means it's the best. You're just about to shut the computer down when you stumble onto a headline from the Belfast Telegraph. As it dawns on you what it says, you feel something in the back of your head snap. "The Oscar-winning actress who hated being called "Mrs. Robinson" dies aged 73."

You look back at your headline, now posted on the Web. Too late to change it. Everyone would think you the fool if you tried.

I claim that that's how you design a novel -- you start small, then build stuff up until it looks like a story. Part of this is creative work, and I can't teach you how to do that. Not here, anyway. But part of the work is just managing your creativity -- getting it organized into a well-structured novel. That's what I'd like to teach you here.

But here's the problem. It takes time to make a living from arts and letters. It really helps to be unencumbered in your 20s. In the past, these folks would live in group housing, make money waitressing or driving a cab, and squeeze in their creative stuff wherever possible. Many would save a couple thousand bucks and take long trips abroad. They were free to invest in themselves, and it paid off.

It's much harder to invest in yourself this way if you emerge from college with big debt. Or graduate school with bigger debt. The 20-somethings I know are diving for money right away. Many of them know that good money at 25 leads to dead-ends a decade later. It's no secret that those entry-level jobs in banks and brokerages are vulnerable to computers and body shops in Bangalore. But while they'd love to follow their passions, too many of today's young cannot afford to postpone paydays. Sounds strange, but being a poor struggling young artist or writer is all too often a privilege of the well-to-do. Everyone else has to make real money.

"If the world is telling you you're successful, but you don't feel it, you might as well have failed," he says.

He quit his law firm to float around the globe, looking for a venue in which to develop a series of novels around a hard-boiled hero. Settling on Thailand, he began frequenting Bangkok's red-light district, waiting for just the right cop to walk into a bar and inspire him. To pass the time he befriended the bargirls. His big break, as he describes, came when one of them took him home.

"The Bangkok novels are not the work of a young man," he says. "I couldn't have done it without knowing how the world works." Practicing family law in England taught him about the "grueling, wrenching, downright sadistic" nature of human relations. Practicing criminal law in Asia taught him about the grim reality of the streets.

He claims there is no better subject than the gritty city he has adopted. "There's no cushion of gentility here. Life is raw. The people don't lie. You tell me a better place to be a writer."

Hughes says she is receiving financial support from the publishing, business and film communities and that her magazine will be funded through "private donors, grants, subscription revenue and advertising." She declines to offer a specific goal for her subscriber base, but aims for a higher number than at The Paris Review. An annual subscription will cost $30 US, for four issues, while individual copies will likely cost $10-12, compared to $40 a year for a subscription at The Paris Review and $12 for a single issue.

"I think there's a healthy rivalry among literary magazines," says Hughes, who adds that she does not see herself in competition with her former employer. "It keeps us on our toes, and creates an energy and momentum that's valuable to everyone."