“I like to say there are three things that are required for success as a writer…” Michael Chabon tells Writer’s Digest, “talent, luck, discipline. It can be in any combination, but there’s nothing you do to influence the first two. Discipline is the one element of those three things that you can control, and so that is the one that you have to focus on controlling, and you just have to hope and trust in the other two.”
I have decided to heed Neil Gaiman’s advice, which is actually Daniel Pinkwater’s advice, on curing writer’s block. “He goes down to his study,” Gaiman says of Pinkwater, “and sits down in front of the computer, and he has to be there for a certain amount of time. He can either write, or he can do nothing, but he can’t do anything else. No reading books, no doodling, no browsing the internet or making phone calls. He can write, or he can just sit there. Pretty soon, he gets bored of just sitting there, so he writes.”