I wouldn't be writing the kind of stories I write if it weren't for Oliver Sacks. In the time after university when I was struggling to find my voice and to know what kind of stories I wanted to tell, his work opened up a door inside my head.

In the world of Oliver Sacks, lines blur between the scientific and the spiritual, the body and the mind, the metaphor and the reality. It is a world in which the impossible can be described in dispassionate medical terms; in which the mundane functions of our bodies are shown up as wildly miraculous. He understood that wellness and illness are not just physical matters, but existential ones.

Much will be written elsewhere about his enormous intellect, his good humour, his endless curiosity, and his  compassion for his patients. I want to thank him for the gift of his wonderful stories; for proving, definitively, that there need be no divorce between the scientist and the artist. Doctor Sacks went in search of healing for the whole self.

It's a month to go until publication day. My copies of The Immortals are stacked neatly on my new bookshelf. (My old bookshelf, along with every bit of shelf and spare floor space in my living room, is full of books.) I have completely banned myself from doing any more re-reading, because by this stage it simply doesn't help. What's written is written.

My feelings about my own finished work change faster than the weather. This week I'm kind of ambivalent. The book is probably OK: my publisher said it was OK and I pretty much felt it was OK when I made the final changes a few months ago. Right? But the characters feel distant from me and my emotions are tied up elsewhere - with the new book I'm writing, and with the five or so future books I'm playing with in my head.

This distance is a good thing. If my experience last time is anything to go by, it's what I need in order to get through the shock to the system that comes with your very private fictional world being made public. Like Arthur in Hideous Creatures, I experience stress (and distress) very physically and intensely, and about two weeks before Hideous Creatures came out I felt my lungs close. My chest felt as though someone had closed a fist around it, and I had a very shaky doctor's appointment that went something like this:

Me: I can't breathe and I think I'm dying.
Doctor: Are you a student? It's probably exam stress.
Me: I'm not a student. And it can't be stress, it's definitely physical. And life-threatening.
Doctor: Why don't you take a hot bath, light some candles, and come back in a few weeks if you still feel this way?
Me: Can't I just have a quick MRI? Or some blood tests? Or you could refer me to-
Doctor: It's stress. Bye, Good luck in your exams.

By the time publication day came, I was breathing in little tiny gasps, and felt so ill that I almost called my publisher to say I couldn't come to the launch party. The morning after the launch party, my breathing went completely back to normal. It was stress.

The great writers keep writing about the cold dark place within, the water under a frozen lake or the secluded, camouflaged hole. The light they shine on this hole, this pit, helps us cut away or step around the brush and brambles; then we can dance around the rim of the abyss, holler into it, measure it, throw rocks into it, and still not fall in. It can no longer swallow us up. And we can get on with things.

- Bird by Bird