Goodreads asked Robert Detman:

How do you get inspired to write?

Robert Detman It’s often not about inspiration. It’s just having good habits, though inspiration is always welcome.

I have solid habits that I picked up from years of wanting to see my work published. Initially, this was to write a certain amount of words every day. It wasn’t so much how much time I put into it, though I did put a lot of time into it, but how many words I cranked out. The reason for this is that when the writing is going good, you can get into the flow and forget word count, as well as time, and at the end of this writing, you usually end up with more than you anticipated. Then the editing part comes in, which is another type of challenge. When you’re lucky, you can see the outline there of something wonderful.

Lately, however, with a seven month old baby that demands much of my former writing time, I have to squeeze in time to write. Usually this means finding an hour or half hour of quiet and just writing.

The simplest way to “get inspired” for me is to put myself into a quiet space and just think with a pen and journal in hand. It never fails to yield something I can work with.

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