There
is a muse. He lives in the ground. He’s a basement kind of guy.
You have to descend to his level, and once you get down there you
have to furnish an apartment for him to live in. You have to do all
the grunt labor, in other words, while the muse sits and smokes
cigars and admires his bowling trophies and pretends to ignore you.
Do you think it’s fair? I think it’s fair. He may not be much to
look at, that muse-guy, and he may not be much of a
conversationalist, but he’s got inspiration. It’s right that you
should do all the work and burn all the mid-night oil, because the
guy with the cigar and the little wings has got a bag of magic.
There’s stuff in there that can change your life.
Stephen
King, “On Writing”