Knowing and Doing

When writer Tom Wolfe died in 2018, The Paris Review republished excerpts of its 1991 interview with him. When the interviewer asked Is there any mnemonic device to get you going?, Wolfe gave a decidedly pragmatic answer:

I always have a clock in front of me. Sometimes, if things are going badly, I will force myself to write a page in a half an hour. I find that can be done. I find that what I write when I force myself is generally just as good as what I write when I'm feeling inspired. It's mainly a matter of forcing yourself to write. There's a marvelous essay that Sinclair Lewis wrote on how to write. He said most writers don't understand that the process begins by actually sitting down.

Or standing up. But you do whatever it is you do to start writing.