I don't know how it got started, but our society has long romanticized writing. When we see writers portrayed on TV or in movies, they're writing in a secluded cabin, or signing books in Paris, or leading lives of mystery and intrigue only to sit down at a typewriter (always a typewriter -- computers aren't romantic!) and dash off an entire novel in one sitting.
Even writers romanticize what they do. I can't tell you how common it is to see or hear someone talk about how they "just can't write" unless conditions are ideal. Whether it's a noisy household or an inability to find the perfect music to accompany a scene or an inability to find their muse, I swear some people will find any excuse not to write.
And really, that's what it is -- an excuse. There's only one way to write, and that's to sit your butt in a chair and put words on the page, whether it's a physical or virtual page. If you have to wait for the perfect moment or the ideal setting or whatever, you're going to waste a lot of good writing time doing it.
My perspective is different because of my background. I've worked as a journalist, in some capacity, for the better part of two decades. I produced TV news for eight of those years, writing 30-40 pieces of copy a day, on average, with deadlines sometimes minutes away. I didn't have time to wait for my muse, I had to write. NOW! I've also been a newspaper reporter, magazine columnist, and Internet medical writer. While those deadlines are looser, they're still firm. If I don't meet them, I don't have a job.
"But that's not fiction," you might say. "Fiction is different."
That's only true to a point. When it comes to fiction, you need inspiration! You need to feel the creativity coursing through your blood! Right?
Nope. I call BS. While you do need the initial inspiration for a story (or character, or location, or whatever your starting point is,) once you've got that and you've done your research and prep work, all you need is to put your butt in a chair and put words on the page.
I've tried both ways. The problem is, my muse didn't visit very often, which means I had a lot of promising starts that petered out and left me with nothing, because if you don't get to the end, you don't have a story.
When I finally decided I was going to write every day, muse or no muse, until the story was done, what do you know, 12 weeks later, I got to the end. I had the first draft of a novel, something real and whole and ready for the next phase.
Was every day's work full of flowing prose and beautiful turns of phrase? No. A lot of it was rough. Some of it sucked. In fact, at one point I flat out erased everything I'd written the day before because it was going nowhere. But you know what? Even that "going nowhere" day was valuable because it let me eliminate a possible direction.
And you know what? It's ok that I wasn't full of magic every day, because it's just a first draft. I had something I could revise and improve and polish and, eventually, send to a publisher. Which I did. And it got published, and now my publisher wants two more. (Currently, one is out to beta readers and the other is taking shape in my head and notes.) If I'd waited for the ideal conditions, it never would have happened.
The thing is, writing fiction is work, plain and simple. But hey, it's FUN work! You get to tell your story, in your way. And it's not like it's a 40-hour-a-week grind. For me, about 2.5 months of writing a couple of hours a day, with the occasional marathon just because I want to keep going, gets a book written. Then I can spend the next several months making it better, and then I can start thinking about the next one.
I love to write and want to get my stories out in the world. Why wouldn't I want to put my butt in the chair and write?