I am writing this in Stockholm, where I am hoping that I will not have to spend tonight on the floor of my bathroom, wrapped in a tangle of hotel bedding and towels, trying to find a place where there is neither traffic noise nor air conditioning.

Last night I was doing quite well, lying with my head under the washbasin and my feet round the loo, until I woke up dreaming of grilled kebabs. The under-floor heating had switched itself on. Wearily, I dragged my mouse nest into the built-in wardrobe, which is where I had to spend most nights on my spring tour of America.

I have done five hour-long interviews today, two photograph sessions, and given a public lecture to 600 people. Now, everyone has gone, and I am left with room service of lukewarm tomato soup and the one and only bit of happiness; a glass of chilled champagne.

In previous days I have been at the Gothenburg bookfair, staying in the improbable Gothia Towers, looking for my Batmobile, and wondering why the sign outside my window says “VALHALLA GATES 2-7”. Is this what Wotan would have wanted? For those of you who think that “bookfair” sounds like a combination of favourite writers and toffee apples, I have to tell you that it is plastic pot plants, recycled air, joke food, crazed journalists, interview rooms with no windows, prison strip-lighting, and a minder who knocks on the door to say “time’s up”.

It feels like Bingo, like a brothel, like Bedlam, like Big Brother.

The Icelandic woman who came to interview me had not read my books and had only the vaguest notion of either me or the English language, so I told her that my father worked in a doormat factory, my mother was a spy, and that I wrote only crime fiction.

I am bracing myself for trouble.

When the fair opened to the public, things were better. At last, real people and real readers: “Yes, my name is Sven, sign here please.”

Another woman approaches. “Yes, my name is Brita”, and before I can stop myself, I reply: “Like the water-filter?”

The ground should swallow me up.

In the evenings I drag myself to the gym around the corner and look at bodies — boys, girls, it doesn’t matter to me. Just when I am the colour-of-shrimps-with-everything- yes-this-is-Sveden, a man in a “God is love” T-shirt hurries over to the lat pull-down, and says “Yes, my name is Erik, please write for me on this page.” But I can’t, because the book is by Kathy Acker. “She’s dead,” I tell him. He doesn't really believe me, and somewhere I don’t believe myself because she was my friend and she was a good writer, and her books are still here, and. . .

It is raining. It is dark. The wind on the 21st floor of Gothia Towers batters at the glass like a warning; time is precious, time is short.

This year I have travelled somewhere every month for my work. I have slept in cupboards, signed books, signed bodies, knickers, (not mine), a wall, a dog. I have talked about why art matters, why language is power and how stories can change the way that we understand the world.

But I am beginning to think it is time to do that very old-fashioned out-dated part of my job and actually sit down and write another book. The crazy thing about the new breed of touring travelling writer is that you could spend years lurching from one event to the next, across cities and continents, forgetting why you came here, or that somewhere there is a desk and there is silence.

In the Odyssey, Ulysses is always in danger of forgetting to “remember the return”. The battles, the conquests, the booty, the exploits, are only a way of going home. True, he has to go the long way round, but if he is fatally seduced by what he encounters on the way, then he is lost.

When I am working and exhausted on tour, giving interviews, genuinely enjoying meeting readers, but caught in the sea-sick lurch between the wrong kind of solitariness and too much razzamatazz, I can convince myself that this is my duty, my responsibility, my opportunity even. But in reality, the work that matters is getting the words down on the page, chasing something, catching something if I’m lucky, because every word written is a net to catch the word that has escaped. It is time to stop travelling and remember the return.

www.jeanettewinterson.com

Explore Books

• Book Extracts

• Book Reviews

• Books Group

• Audio Books

Times Recommends

• The 100 Best Books of the Decade
• The Times picks the 50 best paperbacks of 2009
• The conversation: James Ellroy