The transcendentalists were torn between the relationship of inspiration and craft. They went to nature to find inspiration. They were romantics on steroids. And yet inspiration is so hard to come by. You seek the right moment and place and then you get bitten by ants.
Perhaps, writing should be treated like meditation. Our relationship with it should be portable. We should be able to do it anywhere and use it from the simplest to the biggest tasks. It should be subsistent: it shouldn’t ask a lot from us to do it.
This also means that whatever comes to us at whatever circumstance should be given a measure of reverence. The thoughts and words that came in the middle of the woods have equal weight to those that came in the middle of a long commute at rush hour.
References
Buell, L. (1973). Literary Transcendentalism: Style and Vision in the American Renaissance. Cornell University Press.