Last night, just before going to sleep, I sent myself an email. It was a note about something I am writing at the moment. I have a notebook next to my bed, but that doesn’t really work if I don’t carry the notebook with me all the time. And so I sent the email knowing I can access it from anywhere.

Writing is not just a job that has to get done, it is a full time preoccupation. Because the writing mind does not take breaks. Inspiration, or ideas, can strike anywhere, anytime. Sometimes when you want to conjure it, and sometimes right out of the blue. And I have found (time and time again), that no matter how brilliant an idea, if you don’t grab it and pin it down by writing it somewhere, it will dissipate like morning fog.

Even when you do write it down and return to it later, the fizz is often gone. The splendour, the verve, sharpness and vigour of the idea has fizzled out. Gone flat. Like day-old bubbly. Picking it up and trying to revive it only works sometimes, and then only partially. It might appear that you’ve done the trick because when other people read it back, they say it’s fine. That’s only because they can’t compare it to what was originally in your head, which is not what they’ve read.

But you know it’s not the same. It’s one thing to be looking right at the glory of fine detail and subtle colour identity of a shell and capture it with a photo, or write about it as you look at it. It’s another thing to try to recollect all the shading and nuance of the beauty of nature from a few scribbled notes and a faded memory. So while the writing might appear to work, you, the writer, know it’s only a pale imitation of the original. Like bread, you can’t tell it’s stale until you bite into it.

This is why writers who can devote themselves to the art full time often remark on how wonderful that is – to get away from the distractions. I suspect it’s also because they are free to drop everything and capture the muse when she strikes.

Even then, the writing may not sing.

There are no guarantees.

For those of us who do multiple other things alongside the writing, it’s a matter of staying on the job, of remembering to capture, grab, trap, and then use what flies past us, but to remember that it’s often as fragile as a butterfly and you mustn’t crush its wings.