David Handler, who wrote Lemony Snickett, said he has come to appreciate the times when things are going really badly, because he knows that pretty soon they are going to get good again. And he gets there by just pushing through, and doing crap writing.

Rick Riordan says the only way to write is to write the story that must be written, that insists on being written, that writes itself. I imagine myself saying back, “That’s not how it works for me. The more I wait for the perfect story, the less I am able to write. I have to choose any story, and make it good enough.”