The Discipline of Daily Writing

I write every morning. Not because I feel inspired — inspiration is unreliable and overrated — but because the habit of putting words on paper is more valuable than any single piece those words might become.

Most of what I write in the morning is bad. That is the point. You have to write through the bad to get to the good. The daily practice is a way of keeping the channel open, of staying in conversation with language, of maintaining the muscle memory of expression.

The poets I admire most — Bishop, Szymborska, Tranströmer — were not prolific. But they wrote every day. The published poems are the visible tip of an iceberg of daily practice, abandoned drafts, and patient revision.