I'm sitting at my computer even now in my mid-70s at 8am, these days I go and start work, I don't have to do it for a living but I prefer to do it than not do it.
In my younger days I used to set myself a target, say two to three pages before I had a coffee or eight to 10 pages a day, it's not always going to be perfect it might need two or three drafts.
Sometimes the characters run away with me, I have never succeeded with writing a film, I think it's going to be one way and by the time I have finished it, it's something quite different.
I don't like to know the end of the story until I get there - I attack it at all directions - the key is to do a certain number of pages every day.
3 What is it like to know people are still performing your plays on stages throughout New Zealand, and offshore?
I have a play on in New Zealand every two weeks, I used to be on every 11 days, including amateur performance. I enjoy getting along to them and seeing how people have interpreted them.
It's a steady flow, it ticks along quite nicely, it's quite good that you can still earn money on something you wrote 20 years ago. I did go to see Love off the Shelf [while in Hawke's Bay] and it was a good evening.
4 Your play Middle-Age Spread had a 15-month run in the West End, won a Society of London Theatre Comedy of the Year Award and became one of the first New Zealand plays to be transformed into a feature film in 1979 - how does that rank as a career highlight?
Undoubtedly it was a highlight - to have it happen so early in my career was amazing. I have had near-misses for places on the West End but that one actually made it. I had been writing a long time before I wrote Glide Time but it's a wonderful occupation when the going is good.
Middle-Age Spread gave me so much and I earned enough to travel to America for a year with my family, take the kids out of school.
5 How much time do you get to spend in Hawke's Bay and what to you love about the region?
A few weeks a year. My wife comes more often than I do. I would say four or five a year - it's very enjoyable, I can go cycling - in Auckland it's a bit dangerous, but the cycle tracks here are nice and fresh.