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The idea will fall into your head one day. Maybe you are out getting a snack. Maybe you are talking with a friend or lover. Maybe you are washing the dishes. But the idea comes to you the way a dewdrop comes to the ground. It hangs overhead, just at the edge of thought, for a very long time, and then suddenly is soil, the first nourishment for what will soon sprout from your head.

A flower that no one will ever have seen before. A bloom that you will be the first to name. You must tend to it. You must take every chance to give it care.

But you are not a botanist.

You are a writer.

Or at least, you want to be. If you only knew how.

Well. This is how.

At the time you've allotted to sit at your desk and do what you need to do, you get the essential things out of the way.

In particular, you are the sole editor at a boutique publishing house, which punches out ten to thirteen titles every year.

Or maybe you are a teacher, two sections and sixty high school students to your charge, whose papers you must read before anything else.

Or perhaps you are one of those students. And your paper isn't due for another week, but you need to get a head start.

In any case, there is something else you need to do. And maybe you are typing, or maybe — better yet — you are clicking around the various applications and browser tabs, hopping from one link to another.

You click.

And you click.

And you click.

And you click.

And after clicking on the screen for several hours,