In the Times Damian Whitworth interviews David Peace.
When he is writing he is “at his happiest, even when writing the things that I write. The act of writing is good for me”. If the writing isn’t going well he seeks refuge in his obsession with the number 9. “I rely on it more when my confidence is low. If I am not confident that what I have written is good I will count up the number of words I have written and if it comes to a number divisible by nine I think ‘great’.” He chuckles. “There’s all kinds of weird rubbish.”