Why you shouldn’t wait for inspiration to strike with Harlan Coben
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My takeaways:
- Stop waiting for inspiration. Amateurs wait for the muse; pros treat creative work like a job.
- Routines wear out. Coben writes somewhere (a café, a supermarket deli counter) until it stops working, then moves on. Switching pens, notebooks, or screens helps too.
- Get comfortable with boredom. If you take a walk because the blank page scares you, you’re dodging, not creating.
- The magic isn’t the process. It’s seeing words on a page that was blank this morning. Progress beats bliss.
- Character is plot. Don’t describe who someone is; show what happens to them.
- Worst advice: write for the market. By the time you finish, the trend is dead.
- Best advice: if it helps you produce pages, good. If not, bad.
- Good collaboration isn’t 50/50. Aim for equity, not scorekeeping.
- “You bring your own weather to the picnic.”
- Doubt never goes away, even for Stephen King. Let it fuel you, not freeze you.