Picture the scene: The gig went brilliantly. The band troop backstage, sweaty and exhilarated. The sound of applause still ringing in their ears, they crack open beers and think about the night of partying to come. Then, as the rest of the band head for the after-show, the singer quietly makes his excuses and heads for the tour bus. There, he takes out his laptop and starts tapping away, meticulously reworking that tricky ending to chapter five.

An unlikely scenario perhaps, but not so far-fetched: recently there has been a spate of musicians publishing novels, in what appears to be an increasing trend for crossover between the two creative disciplines.

Thankfully, we're not talking about Sting or Bono here. The musicians who are turning their hand to fiction are all working on the fringes of mainstream music, either in indie bands or the country or folk genres.

Wesley Stace, who records country music as John Wesley Harding, and Willy Vlautin, singer with the acclaimed alt.country outfit Richmond Fontaine, have both recently published second novels, while Joe Stretch and Rodge Glass, frontmen with the indie bands Performance and Burnt Island respectively, have books out soon. The best known of the bunch is probably Louise Wener, the former singer with the Britpop darlings Sleeper, whose latest novel hits the shelves in June.

But why is this happening? On the face of it, the worlds of being in a rock band and writing novels seem poles apart - one involving collaboration, instant gratification and very public displays of ego, the other being reclusive, isolated and very much long-term in outlook.

“They're very good jobs to sit side-by-side,” Stace reckons, “because they act as fantastic antidotes to each other. With music, you can write a song in the daytime then play it at a gig that night and everyone claps and tells you how great you are. Being a novelist is thankless - you sit at home, no one applauds, and at the end of the day you might've got no work done at all. I think they balance each other out nicely.”

This idea that writing novels is a check to the ego-driven rock star mentality doesn't really wash, though, because what's more self-centred than cutting out the collaboration of a band and sitting down to create your own fictional universe?

“I think there's something more egotistical to writing,” Wener says. “It's completely autonomous in a way that being in a band isn't. For me, being creative alone is absolutely wonderful after being on tour with a bunch of guys; it feels totally liberating.”

“It's heaven compared with being in a band,” Stretch agrees. “It's psychologically hard being in a band, all the arguing to get things done. My writing tends to be about self-loathing on the whole, rather than hating the keyboard player.”

These musicians-turned-novelists claim to have always done both disciplines. Willy Vlautin admits to writing several novels just for friends and bandmates, while Stretch considers himself“a novelist who's interested in singing and songwriting”, although he was first known as a musician.

Perhaps all that's happened in the lives of these creative types is a shift in emphasis. All of them are past the first flush of youth, and maybe it's an inevitable change of focus as they get older, a desire to create something artistic with more permanence than a three-minute rock song?

“I was angry and confused at 21, and it made more sense to be in a noisy rock band, screaming a lot,” Glass admits. “My family would joke that my sensible back-up plan to being a famous rock star was being a famous writer. I didn't really wake up until I was 25; I was too impatient to concentrate on getting anything long-term done. These days I find writing a far more satisfying way of expressing myself.”

Interestingly, none of the novels emerging from musicians are autobiographical. Stace has written two voluptuous historical romps, Vlautin's powerful, sparse tales of American smalltown life are reminiscent of Raymond Carver, and Stretch and Glass both produce intriguing left-field literary fiction. Wener might have drawn on her experience of the blokey world of indie rock for her first novel, but her new book - about a female explorer in the 1930s - relies on good old-fashioned research.

All are undeniably accomplished writers, and there isn't a whiff of indulgent side-project about their work, something which might have been present had a more famous star decided to dabble. Despite the lack of autobiography in their novels, they all admit to blurring the lines between songwriting and fiction. Vlautin and Stace have produced albums inspired by their written work, while the rest are happy to ignore any demarcation between the disciplines.

“When I'm writing a novel, a line will come out and I'll think, ‘That could become a song on its own',” Stretch says.

“There is overspill,” Glass agrees. “A lot of my songs are like fragments of stories. It's as much about how you are perceived as anything else. Artists generally don't think about partitioning what they do, whereas often other people find it hard to get their heads around the fact that you can do more than one thing.”

Annoyingly talented creative polymaths? So it seems, and they're revelling in it. “Some things in your head turn out to be melodic and some turn out best written on paper,” Stretch says. “So what? Brilliant! It's a great life!”

Northline by Will Vlautin
Faber (out now)

Friction by Joe Stretch
Vintage (March)

Worldwide Adventures in Love by Louise Wener
Hodder & Stoughton (April)

Hope for Newborns by Rodge Glass
Faber (June)

Pop stars who dabbled in fiction

Leonard Cohen
Before regaling us with risqué ditties about Janis Joplin and unmade beds, Cohen, below, did what any self-respecting beatnik would do: wrote free verse and experimental novels. His most famous, Beautiful Losers, is a stream of obscenity-splattered visions, starring a 17th-century Mohawk saint.

Bob Dylan
Is his 1971 work Tarantula prose-poetry, poetic prose or prattling poppycock? Sample sentence: “Now's not the time to get silly, so wear your big boots and jump on the garbage clowns.” You decide.

Bruce Dickinson
The Iron Maiden frontman took a break from bringing his daughter to the slaughter to think up the aristocratic farce The Adventures of Lord Iffy Boatrace in 1990. Such is the unblinking loyalty of Maiden-ites that it quickly sold out its print run.

Madonna
The erstwhile material girl's kabbala teacher suggested she share her “spiritual wisdom” in books for children. Unfortunately she took his advice, and the bland cutesiness of The English Roses series was born.

Steve Earle
The respected country singer's terse short story collection Doghouse Roses is full of junkies, hitchers and rockers - and is actually pretty good.

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