Poetry is the record of the best and happiest moments of the happiest and best minds.

What gets made in a good hour outlives the hour by a long way. Nobody writes their best at their average, and what survives is a record of the rare stretches when a mind was working at full capacity and felt something clearly. That is why reading somebody else’s best moment can lift an ordinary afternoon of your own. You are borrowing conditions you do not currently have.

Keep a small collection of things that reached you when you were at your worst. Not advice, just whatever had that quality. And when you have a good hour yourself, use it to make something rather than to answer messages.