Writing fiction is no different: "I will write a paragraph sometimes and I will have to call David into the study and say: 'David, do you mind if I just read this to you?' And it's not because I think he's going to give me expert guidance. He's incredibly patient because he'll be in the middle of something else and I'm hopping up and down with impatience: 'I have to read it to you right now!'" Samson says that when she's working she is like a woman possessed. The characters go about their ordinary lives in her head, doing the banal stuff that they would do between appearances in her novel. Describing how she combines motherhood and writing, she has written about the way the boys would wait to ambush her on the way to the bathroom. "On more than one occasion, I climbed out of the study window and peed on the lawn."
The summer is given over to enjoying her children and in September she will start again. Anyway, she says, her writing is good for them. "I never want that thing of saying, 'Everything I gave up for you.' I never want to say that to them. I never want to say to them: `I could have written a novel if it hadn't been for you.' That would be terrible."