One professor of literature, and author of two scholarly treatises on a certain Pulitzer prize-winning American author, once asked me how it was that I managed to finish finish so many novels while holding down a full time job and being a father of a large family. I told her that in order to compile words on paper, I get up around 5 AM to write.
She rolled her eyes in disbelief, thinking that the idea of such early morning writing was so ludicrous that it must be a joke. I assured her that it was no joke. When a person is afflicted with the need to tell a story they will sacrifice an extra hour or two of sleep in order to accomplish the end result of a short story or a novel.
My daily goal is one thousand words, five days a week. Sometimes I manage a little more, sometimes I manage a little less--and some weeks I manage to do six days a week of writing. At this rate I can write a couple of novels and a couple of short stories a year. Eventually, this adds up. For me, it has added up to sixteen published novels (by this time The Gantlet Brothers: Sold Out is on the virtual stands), quite a number of published short stories, and another half million words which can be compiled into collections like Weird Worlds of Joel Jenkins or other short story collections like next year's impending Lone Crow Collected, which is over one hundred thousand words of stories about said infamous Native American gunfighter.
The point here is that writing a novel isn't a sprint where one must chain themselves to their typewriter or word processor for three or four weeks until their masterpiece is brought to fruition. Like most endeavors, it is accomplished through steady and consistent effort. Anyone who wants to write a novel can, by sitting down and writing just one page a day, have a complete novel by the time a year is finished.
I've tried to quit writing many times and there have been short periods of time that I have actually been successful at quitting, but eventually I relapse--because storytelling is an addiction as visceral and real as a drug or alcohol addiction. The only difference is that at the end of the day I've got a novel to show for it instead of a hangover and sclerosis of the liver.
A serious writer will carve out a little bit of time out of their day to put a few words to paper. It's not about finding the time of day that I am most creative and pushing everything else aside so that I can write during that period where I am at my creative peak. For most of us that's impractical. For me, morning is the only time where I can fit in writing around my other responsibilities like family and putting food on the table. So, by sheer necessity, morning becomes my most creative time of day.
I don't wait for my muse to arrive. I order her to be there when I start typing. Sometimes she's a little late, but eventually she gets there.
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