Novelists are geniuses when it comes to looking at trees. We’re very good at staying still and seeing what comes next….
If staring ever becomes an Olympic event I’ll be bringing home the gold. While other people go to work, I stare out the window. I stare at my dog. I stare at blank pieces of paper and paragraphs and single sentences and a buzzing computer screen. Hours and hours of my day are spent with my eyes glazed over, thinking, waiting, trying to figure things out. The muse is a sweet idea, like the tooth fairy. The muse supposedly comes down like lighting and fills your fingers with the necessary voltage to type up something brilliant. But nobody ever made a living depending on a muse. The rest of us have to go out and find our inspiration, write and rewrite, stare and stare and stare until we know which way to turn.
— Ann Patchett, What Now? p. 43-45