London: Nobel Prize-winning author Doris Lessing has said that winning the award for literature in 1997 has been a "bloody disaster", reports said Sunday.

"All I do is give interviews and spend time being photographed," Lessing said during a BBC radio interview to be broadcast Monday.

Lessing, 88, said that she has been constantly in demand since her win last October and that her writing had stopped as she didn't "have any energy any more".

Her latest book is a memoir entitled "Alfred and Emily" which is partly fiction.

She warned younger writers to use their talents while they still had time.

"Use it while you've got it because it'll go, it's sliding away like water down the plughole," she said.

Lessing's best-known works include "The Golden Notebook" and "The Good Terrorist".

She was born in Iran and moved to what was then Rhodesia - now Zimbabwe - as a child. She settled in Britain in 1949.