What’s your excuse for not writing? Mine is lack of a secluded writing yurt that I can retire to when things get too crazy around the apartment. Or I tell myself that I’m too tired and that my writing will suffer because of it.

Scott Meredith said that most writer’s excuses are “just as make-believe as that fiction you write.” And then he offers this advice:

If you will force yourself to work out those book ideas without waiting for inspiration to slosh you across the back of the head, and if you will force yourself to write one sentene after another despite the fact that the picture is awry, and the pencils are blunt, and your family is making an awful racket, and you’re writing in one corner of a bedroom instead of in a big soundproof study, and you had a big night with the boys last night, and the stuff looks awful as you write it—you will find, when you examine it a day or two later, that the material you’ve produced is exactly as good or bad as the material you normally produce, or would produce under ideal conditions.

I think that Meredith is right on this account. The conditions for living life are rarely ideal. So if writers waited for ideal conditions in order to write their books, then nothing would ever get written. We wouldn’t have need for bookstores because all the publishers would be out of business as their writers waited for the Rapture and cleansing of the earth before things would be ideal enough to start writing that manuscript.

Meredith also suggests the need for a writing schedule. Stephen King in his book On Writing suggests the same thing. He says that you can train the muse. I suppose she gets a little jealous when you do creative things without her, so if you sit down to write at 9pm every night, then she will get the idea and start showing up at that time.

I’ve been at this for almost two months now—the writing schedule, that is—and the muse certainly does show up at 9pm for me every night. And she beats me over the head with a big book of ideas until I sit myself down in my chair and start writing.

In ancient times, the muse inspired people. In our day, the muse is more than just that. If you train her right, she will help make writing a habit for you.