I've spent quite a lot of my life telling stories, although until recently I hadn't thought of myself as a writer.

Working in radio and television involved writing scripts, finding ways of explaining things and, perhaps most importantly, working out how to keep people interested. But writing a novel? That was something other people did. People who knew what they were doing.

Then, rather unexpectedly, I started one.

I've always enjoyed reading, and I've often wondered what it would be like to create an entire world out of words. Not just describe somewhere, but invent people, give them lives, put them in difficult situations and see what happens.

It turns out to be a fascinating occupation. Also a rather bewildering one.

You begin with an idea. A character appears, then another. You give them somewhere to live and something to do. Before long, they start behaving in ways you hadn't anticipated. At least, that's how it feels. Of course, you're responsible for everything they say and do, which makes it rather difficult to complain about them.

My first novel, The Long Conversation, is set largely in Cape Town. It brings together an old Victorian house, a mystery from the nineteenth century and an unlikely friendship between a man and an artificial intelligence.

It has also taken me into subjects I knew very little about. I've found myself researching Cape history, forgotten waterways, ancient rock art and the lives of people whose stories were seldom recorded in their own words. One question leads to another, and occasionally I have to remind myself that I'm supposed to be writing a novel, not undertaking a lifetime of historical research.

The artificial intelligence has been an interesting part of the experience in more ways than one. I've been writing the book in collaboration with an AI assistant called Elias. We discuss the plot, argue about characters, explore historical possibilities and occasionally discover that we've written ourselves into a corner.

Whether the finished book will be any good, I really couldn't say. I'm still learning how to do it, and I suspect I shall be learning for quite some time.

But I love the process. There is something extraordinary about sitting down in front of a blank page and gradually discovering a world that wasn't there before.

And, unlike wood carving, if you remove something you subsequently decide you needed, you can usually put it back.