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The Russians have a saying: if you stranded at sea in a rowboat of course you should pray to God, but don’t stop rowing. There are a lot of misconceptions about this wonderful muse who gives inspiration to creative people and sends them running to their desks to joyfully turn blank pages into beautiful prose. Don’t get me wrong; there is a muse, but she usually doesn’t show up until you’ve dragged yourself to your desk, against all odds, and started to work. Then maybe, sometimes, she comes to help. If not, you just keep at it, sometimes worried that it’s all a useless effort, but no matter what happens you keep at it.

People have tried different things to this end. Some write for a set amount of time each day, or write for a set period of time. Some write a chapter a day, or a certain number of pages or a certain number of words. Robert E. Howard used to imagine that Conan was standing behind him ready to lop off his head if he didn’t keep writing. Whatever works. For me, the primary tool is target word count.

I try to set a tough but reasonable goal depending on my schedule. For a while it was 2000 words per week. Currently it is 1000 words per day. The nice thing about writing every day like this is the continuity and momentum that drives you along and makes the work easier. Some days I don’t finish those 1000 words until 9pm, or I write them half asleep in the chair, but I get them done. On the best days I’m done before lunch. I have better luck if writing is the first thing I do. I wake, I eat breakfast, then write. If I get distracted anywhere along the line, it can very easily turn into a long day.

Do not fall into the trap of thinking that you need inspiration to begin, or a clean desk, or a full night’s rest, or just the right pen, but find out what works for you. All you need is to just start and keep at it. It’s so simple, so beautiful, and often so damn difficult. But if you do it you will accomplish something. And sometimes, often when it seems least likely, the muse will come and bless you.

What are some of your favorite books? The question always seems to come up when I tell people I am a writer. Usually I mumble something or other and try to steer the conversation elsewhere. It’s very hard to think of these things on the spot, mainly because there are too many for a concise answer to be complete. But to put the matter to rest, I’ve put together a list here for anyone who might be interested.

Please note that the list is not at all scientific. I just thought about it for a while and wrote down what came to mind. The list doesn’t include random collections of short stories or poetry so a few of my favorite authors are not represented. And it doesn’t include non-fiction, although a few may be considered memoir.

Each of these books has stuck in my mind for one reason or another. Some are beautifully written, others are simply impossible to put down. Some are triumphs of the imagination or the intellect. Some are heartbreaking; some are mind-blowing. And some just struck a chord and have remained in my thoughts, worthy of remembrance.

So here they are, a few of my favorite books:

Narrow Road to the Interior – Basho
The Martian Chronicles – Ray Bradbury
A Clockwork Orange – Anthony Burgess
Tarzan of the Apes – Edgar Rice Burroughs
Foucault’s Pendulum – Umberto Eco
Middlemarch – George Elliot
Mona Lisa Overdrive – William Gibson
The Forever War – Joe Haldeman
Victoria – Knut Hamsun
Beowulf – tr. Seamus Heaney
The Sun also Rises – Ernest Hemingway
Dune – Frank Herbert
Mythago Wood – Robert Holdstock
Against Nature – J.K. Huysmans
Snow Country – Yasunari Kawabata
West with the Night – Beryl Markham
The Road – Cormac McCarthy
Moby Dick – Herman Melville
Tropic of Capricorn – Henry Miller
Nausicaa of the Valley of Wind – Hayao Miyazaki
Hard Boiled Wonderland and the End of the World – Haruki Murakami
Akira – Katsuhiro Otomo
Gateway – Frederik Pohl
The Prestige – Christopher Priest
Gravity’s Rainbow – Thomas Pynchon
Hamlet – William Shakespeare
Holy Fire – Bruce Sterling
Dracula – Bram Stoker
Perfume – Patrick Suskind
The Mosquito Coast – Paul Theroux
Lord of the Rings – J.R.R. Tolkien
The Aeneid – Virgil
The Time Machine – H.G. Wells
Night – Elie Wiesel

Yesterday while running errands, I remembered a story that I forgot I had written. A while back I read about a short story contest somewhere with the topic of “alien witchcraft.” Well that was right up my alley so I set to work on it.

Eventually I had a good idea and I even wrote most of the story if I recall correctly. But as the ways of the world would have it, I never finished. The deadline passed and I got to working on my book and other things. Apparently after that I completely forgot about that story until yesterday.

I’m not sure how it came up, because alien witchcraft isn’t something you usually run across on your day to day errand running. But there it was in my head. This was not a case of thinking of something I wasn’t thinking of a moment ago. I had completely forgotten that I even thought up that story. When I was reminded, it seemed to come out of thin air, as if somebody else had written it.

I was delighted. In part because I remembered it as being not bad, and there being no reason why I wouldn’t go back and finish it. And in part because I felt I had reached some critical mass; I had written enough stories that I couldn’t hold them all in my head any more. Could have been temporary amnesia as well, but at least it was a good story…I think. I won’t know for sure until I find it.

If you are writing a novel and you tell anybody about it, inevitably you will be asked what it’s about. This is a tricky question. If you could really sum your book up in a sentence or two, would you really be writing it? In fact, you may not quite know what it’s really about until you are finished. Nevertheless, people will want an answer, and so will agents and editors if you ever try to sell it.

In fact, you’ll not only need a quick ten second pitch, you also need a detailed written synopsis of the entire book. I’ve spent the last couple days working out a synopsis for Heir to Elara and it hasn’t been easy. First, common wisdom indicates that a synopsis should be written in the present tense which really messes with your head if you spend a lot of time writing stories in the past tense. Second, you have to figure out the most important points to include because many nuances of character and plot will have to be left out.

At first this task seemed like an unfortunate drudgery that could never live up to the content of the book itself. But it forces you to think about your novel in a new way, and after a while I found myself enjoying the challenge of creating a condensed version of the story. The process was very rewarding as well, distilling as it did the essence of the storyline, which is very helpful when approaching a second draft.

I also discovered that if you are not quite finished with your book, this is a great way to iron out an ending. Ideas generally evolve from the general to the specific, and synopsis writing, like outlining, is one possible intermediary step. Of course the best part about it is that you’ll finally be able to tell people what your novel is about.

It was tough to get back to work after having to throw out an entire chapter because it didn’t work. My confidence had been shaken a bit and of course there was no guarantee that the scene I was about to write was going to work either, or even be any good. Did I really know my characters? Did I really know where I was going with this story?

As I said before though, there’s really no cure for this but to dive back into the work. So I sat down and began to write. The first couple of hundred words were difficult. Every sentence was a strain. It was like dragging a heavy log over rough terrain. It was working, but it was hard work. I would stop every few sentences and then force myself to keep going.

Then something happened. Something about a character’s past that I had planned to reveal much later and in a different way suddenly started to come out in the scene. I had not planned it, but because of the situation and the characters involved it just came out. When that happened, everything became easy. It was so obviously right and good that sentence upon sentence just poured out. I entered into that state in which words just flow onto the paper like water gushing through an open dam.

I typed on furiously, caught up in the moment, immersed in the scene as it unfolded. The excitement and the joy of creation built as the scene progressed. I finished with a flurry of keystrokes, as sure of the last words as I was of the first, and rose from my chair in triumph. Did I know the characters? Did I know the story? Yes, I knew these things well. And because of that they could still surprise and delight me. These are the kind of moments that help make it all worth while.