Everyone I know hates me. They tell me as much, all the time. To be honest, I can see exactly where they’re coming from. If I wasn’t me I’d probably hate me too. Full-time writer, no commitments apart from delivering the next book. No dependants to support, no partner to accommodate. Best of all – or worst of all, depending on your point of view – provided I can find the funds (and I’m afraid I usually can), there’s nothing to stop me from kissing the cat goodbye, packing up the laptop and relocating to – well, just about anywhere, and just about whenever I feel like it, for as long as I decide. To all intents and purposes, I’m living every would-be writer’s dream.

See? You hate me now too. I understand.

Let me hasten to add that my trips are not always overseas ones. In fact, I’m as likely to hop into the car and drive a couple of hours down the road as I am to take my place in a Ryanair queue. Two years ago I spent a month on Valentia Island, off the Kerry coast. Since then I’ve been to Schull and Union Hall, two jewels of West Cork. It just so happens that earlier this year I chose to spend two weeks in a slightly different location, one that was a little more exotic, if not any lovelier, than Ireland. I’m talking about the south of Italy, down around the heel, in the region of Puglia to be exact. In the town of Monopoli, to be more exact.

And I really enjoyed it. Apologies.

Monopoli is about the size of Ennis, population in the region of fifty thousand, and it’s by the sea. I stayed in an apartment in the old part of town, and from my rooftop terrace I could see a chunk of the Adriatic, and most of the cathedral’s bell tower, and the ridiculously picturesque old port. I went running along the prom in the mornings, passing all the old signori sitting in their overcoats and looking out at the sea. I ate pasta and pizza and gelato with impunity. I went shopping for cheese and tomatoes and olives in the local market, even if I could understand only about one word in every ten I heard from the stallholders. I nodded and smiled, letting on I knew exactly what they were talking about, and they did the same whenever I tried out my half a dozen Italian phrases on them.

If it makes you feel any better, the weather was iffy for the whole of my stay. Brighter, certainly, than Ireland, with more blue in the sky, and more sightings of the sun. But the sun wasn’t that warm – I had to buy a heavier jacket for when I wanted to sit on the terrace, and a hot water bottle to keep me cosy at night – and there was plenty of cloud around too; and one night we had the kind of thunderstorm I’d only ever seen in the cinema, usually featuring in a film with ‘storm’ somewhere in the title.

But overall it was just lovely there. And I was doing it for the writing, of course. Writers really need to travel for the inspiration, right?

The thing is – and here’s where you’re definitely going to want to sling me off the nearest cliff – what I’ve mostly learnt from travelling around is that being in a new place doesn’t necessarily make for a better book. It might add a bit of depth; things I saw and did in Monopoli will hopefully flavour some future tale – but in my experience, words come out when they’re good and ready, regardless of where the writer happens to be. It’s undoubtedly exciting to put yourself in a different space, it’s fun to be tapping the keyboard in an unfamiliar location, but I have yet to find the destination, however exotic or picturesque, that’ll shorten the route to a book. As far as I can see, creating characters and putting them into a story involves the same determined slogging and sleepless nights and interminable tweaking and deleting and rewriting wherever you are.

I hope I’m not putting new writers off here – in my experience, and notwithstanding the effort involved, there’s nothing as rewarding as that feeling you get when you’re knee deep in your characters’ lives, the story is moving along and you know that it’s only a matter of time and persistence before you reach that magical final paragraph – and what a feeling that is.

So if you’re dreaming of putting pen to paper there’s really no excuse for not giving it a go: you don’t have to pack a toothbrush and update the passport. All you need is to be receptive to your surroundings and open to the possibility of finding inspiration in whatever comes your way, and you have as much chance of producing good writing at your kitchen table as you do in a Donegal thatched cottage looking out at the Atlantic, or on the balcony of a Greek apartment that’s redolent with the scent of jasmine.

I know where I’d prefer to be, though. So I’ll continue to hit the road whenever the fancy takes me, and pretend it’s purely for the sake of the next book.

I’m a bit annoying like that.

Roisin Meaney set her first SUNLOUNGER story – Buon Viaggio – on the Amalfi Coast. Her SUNLOUNGER 2 story – A Blood Lily From Moses – is set in Kenya.