'His Dark Materials' author tweets a genuinely useful piece of writing advice

As anyone who writes – for work, fun, or both – will know, writing can be a long and lonely process made even more difficult by self-doubt and distractions from the outside world. Sometimes it feels like you're just sitting around waiting for inspiration.

While writing advice seems to be in abundance, not all of it is that helpful or even realistic. But of His Dark Materials Philip Pullman just shared a really good, tangible piece of advice on Twitter.

He was responding to a question by another author, Kate Foster, who tweeted a request for some advice on how to motivate yourself and get your writing done.

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Pullman provided a pretty definitive piece of advice for actually getting those words on the page: quit waiting for inspiration to come.

"Forget about inspiration and get into the habit of writing every day," Pullman wrote in the tweet. "Habit has written far more books than inspiration has. If you want the Muse to visit you, she needs to know where you are: so stay at your desk."

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Keep this is mind next time you have a deadline and are procrastinating as if your life depended on it.