I think that in every writer's career - usually early in it - there comes a 'crossroads novel,' where the writer is presented with a choice: either doing what you have done before, or try to reach a little higher. What you only realize in retrospect is how important that choice is. Sometimes the moment only comes once. For me, the crossroads novel was The Shining, and I did decide to reach. I can even remember the exact moment the choice came: it was when Jack Torrance, The Shining's flawed protagonist, is remembering his father, a drunken brute who abused his son mentally, physically and emotionally all the ... ways it can be done, in other words.

Part of me wanted to describe the father's brutality and leave it at that. Surely, I thought, the book's readers would make the connection between Jack's relationship with his father and Jack's relationship with his own son, Danny, who is of course The Shining's psychic focal point.

Another part of me wanted to go deeper - to admit Jack's love of his father in spite of (perhaps even because of) his father's unpredictable and often brutal nature. That was the part I listened to, and it made a big difference to the novel as a whole. Instead of changing from a relatively nice guy into a two- dimensional villain driven by supernatural forces to kill his wife