There is a muse, but he's not going to come fluttering down in your writing room and scatter creative fairy-dust all over your typewriter or computer station. He lives in the ground. He's a basement 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 this is fair? I think it's fair. He might not be much to look at, that muse-guy, and he may not be much of a conversationalist (what I get out of mine is mostly surly grunts, unless he's on duty), but he's got the inspiration. It's right that you should do all the work and burn all the midnight 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, page 144.
As far as how-to books are concerned, there are many out there. I like to couple Stephen King's memoir with Natalie Goldberg's Writing Down the Bones. They couldn't be more different. Yet, they both are right on, as far as writing goes. My students find them both equally helpful.
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