A writer has to take it when it comes and a glimpse once lost may never come again, like Coleridge’s Kubla Khan. Writers don’t write, they read and transcribe. They are only allowed access to the books at certain arbitrary times. They have to make the most of these occasions.
“Where now are our ardent prayers? Where now are our best gifts — the pure tears of emotion which a guardian angel dries with a smile as he sheds upon us lovely dreams of ineffable childish joy? Can it be that life has left such heavy traces upon one’s heart that those tears and ecstasies are for ever vanished? Can it be that there remains to us only the recollection of them?”
Leo Tolstoy | Childhood