Write Only What You Must (And Never Force Your Sentences)

By Beth Kephart

There has to be a spark.

How obvious it sounds. How impossible to manufacture. How easy to gauge—the sparked or the spark-less. The book, essay, or poem rising out of some undeniable, unquenchable human need, or its opposite: the diligent, the dutiful, the biddable, the pro forma, the project emerging from the general anesthesia of a desire to write something, which is not the same as the thing.

I can’t-help-myself vs. I should.

I can’t sleep until I know where thi...