How to nurture the creative process, by Mary Oliver (in an interview)

MS. OLIVER: "Discipline is very important... We have to have an appointment... because the creative part of us gets tired of waiting or just gets tired. It’s helped a lot of students, young poets doing that, to have that meeting with that part of oneself."

MS. TIPPETT: "When you write about that — the discipline that creates space for something quite mysterious to happen. You talk about that “wild, silky part of ourselves.” You talk about the “part of the psyche that works in concert with consciousness and supplies a necessary part of the poem — a heart of the star as opposed to the shape of the star, let us say — exists in a mysterious, unmapped zone: not unconscious, not subconscious, but cautious... you say — you promise — it learns quickly what sort of courtship it’s going to be. You’re saying that the writer has to be kind of in courtship with this essential, but elusive, cautious, as you say, cautious part. And that if you turn up every day, it will learn to trust you.... This is a very practical way about talking about... the creative process."

Interview referencing Mary Oliver's Poetry Handbook.