Ideas come to the individual, but to spread they must available to the others. Writing is iconicized as solitary. A writer, a pencil, and paper. The act of writing is portrayed by pacing, and tossing out paper. Writers sharpen pencil after pencil, until inspiration takes over the writer in a furious spell of writing. Paper moving rapidly and un-hesitantly across the paper. Page after page is filling up. Hear the music?
But that is the movie. Real writers know that sharpening pencils means you aren’t writing. You aren’t thinking, your mind is focused on the trappings of the craft, not on the craft.