From an interview "‘I’m alive, but battered’: Philip Pullman’s new novel was a struggle" by Sophia Nguyen in the Washington Post (2025-10-23), Pullman's recommendation:

... the way to write a book is to establish the habit of writing. Habit has written far more books than inspiration has. I’ll put it like this: The muse that visits the poets and brings them inspiration — if she wants to find you, she needs to know where you are. If you’re downtown drinking or watching football or something, she doesn’t know where you are. She won’t bother.

_{(cf Slaughter in the Hall (2006-01-11), Rules for Writing (2010-03-07), Evil Certainty (2019-12-09), ...) - ^z - 2025-10-23}