Nell Leyshon was so unsure of the quality of her first two novels that she threw the manuscripts on a bonfire in her Bournemouth back garden.

"I knew that if I burnt everything, every trace, there could be no going back and that I'd have to start again. It was very exciting," she told me.

She sees the destruction as part of the learning process.

"It was not the way I wanted to write. It was too lightweight.

"Writing is a craft and it's hard won. It takes seven years like an old fashioned apprenticeship.

"It's like being a carpenter - a metaphore I always use about myself. I was learning to write and learning about myself. Learning where my passions lay."

It certainly did the trick. Leyshon was soon writing with renewed fervour creating more mature work that seemed to rise Phoenix-like from the ashes of her early experience.

Today, at the age of 45, Nell Leyshon is one of Britain's most successful writers.

Her novel Black Dirt was long-listed for the prestigious Orange Prize and she has a series of critically acclaimed radio and stage dramas to her credit.

One of them, Comfort Me With Apples, completes a five-night run at Lighthouse in Poole this evening.

It won Leyshon the £30,000 Evening Standard Award and an Olivier nomination when it was first produced two years ago.

When the new national tour of this brilliant observation of changing times and the state of the English countryside and its people opened at Lighthouse earlier this week, Leyshon was present to give a pre-show talk.

In conversation with Bournemouth-based artist, writer and broadcaster Sally Winter, she discussed her career and working methods before inviting questions from the audience.

Topics covered included her work as a writer with a specific regional voice (most of her work is set in the south west), her working methods across a variety of diciplines and and her position as one of Britain's few successful female playwrights.

Her success continues. She has just finished adapting Daphne du Maurier's short story Don't Look Now for the theatre and is currently completing a new play, Glass Eels, which is due for production this summer. There are other projects too - essential to the Leyshon work regime, which often involves writing for 10 hours a day.

When one audience member asked how she dealt with writer's block, she didn't miss a beat.

"I switch projects," she said.