Craig Cliff is a Wellington-based writer. His short story collection, A Man Melting, won the Best First Book in the 2011 Commonwealth Writers’ Prize, and he published the novel The Mannequin Makers in 2013. I this interview he speaks about the ways he finds time for writing, the different motivations behind the writing of short fiction and novels, and the writing of his short story ‘Parents in decline‘, published in Griffith Review 44.

I know you’re working from home today, but you mentioned earlier that you work four days a week. How do you balance work and writing?