Producing highly creative work requires one to abandon this mystic pursuit and all its upshots along with it

We think of the flow state as a magical place that writers can get to. Writers need to be open to a flow state, but we must never think it is natural or sustainable.

A writer's purpose is to write, not to surrender to the fear of creating the mediocre. A writer's goal is to write the very best story he or she can.

Verlyn Klinkenberg's several short sentences about writing are almost a decade old. The book expounded on ethics of writing that are as relevant today as they were when it was first published in 2012. 

Writing in the way Verlyn recommended, though elegant, is a slow process