Write six pages per day, six days a week.

It's a schedule I can never keep to, but at least it's an ambition. It's the only way to focus around all the idiotic boobytraps in a freelancer's life – the constantly haggling with both debtors and creditors, the incessant distractions, the lapses of confidence, etc. – and focus on just getting the damn job done. Because that's what it is. Even when working's a near- mystical experience, you still have to approach it as a job, and approaching it as a job can get you through those desolate moments when inspiration is little more than a distant tease of a memory.