Goodreads asked David Erik Nelson:

How do you get inspired to write?

David Erik Nelson I'm not a big fan of "inspiration." I used to really stress out about it, tying myself up in knots. But when I started making most of my money writing copy, it finally hit me that any art is primarily a craft. I've known plenty of of craftsmen--carpenters and mechanics and plumbers and doctors and so on--and none of them ever worried about getting inspired to frame a wall, replace a serpentine belt, seat a toilet, or sew up a gash. They do the work that presents itself. I do the same.

Of course, I know that sounds like gruff self-made-men bullshit, and presented as I have above it is indeed such BS. I was quick to embrace copywriting as a craft (after all, when you are seeing steady paychecks, it's pretty easy to see that a job is a job), but I struggled with getting inspired to work on fiction for a long time. And then one day I suddenly saw that it was all the same craft, and I was using all the same tools to do it. I stopped worrying about getting "inspired," and started just getting up early: 6am, 5:30am, early enough to be out of bed and coherent and sitting at the kitchen table before my kids woke up. And that's when I work on fiction, 30 minutes at a time, sometimes an hour. I write a page or four a day. I revise the same way (cutting a page or two a session). It's slow--especially as the fiction gets longer--but the stories get done and get revised, and then the get sold. I.e., the system works. To hell with "inspiration."

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