So you sit down to write and you have no idea what to do. The page stares at you. Your mind races, then goes blank. You can’t think of a single story that seems worth writing about, or even a single story at all. You can’t remember what you wanted to say. You feel insignificant. Your ankle keeps itching. You are suddenly very sleepy, and you feel a little ill, actually. Maybe you should just lay down for 10 minutes. You can’t write like this. This is stupid.

Congratulations, you are on your way to being a non-writer.

I’m not sure what it is about writing that makes professional writers feel that we have the right to the strange affliction of being unable to do our jobs, suddenly, strangely, for no discernible reason. What if we had things like “surgeon’s block” or “fireman’s block” or “senator’s block.”  I don’t know, I just don’t feel like I can do surgery on this heart patient today… I don’t know what it is… I’m just distracted, I guess. I’m going to lay down for a while. I can’t work like this.

Eh…

Writing is, like most grand and important things, a decidedly unglamorous application of butt to chair. You sit, you write. You don’t give yourself options.

It’s simple. Too simple. We like to make it complicated.

The simple truth is this: you can write when you’re tired, you can write when you’re sick, you can write when you’re distracted, you can write when you’re bored, you can write when you’re upset, you can write when you’re heartbroken, you can write when you’re lonely, you can write when you’re busy, you can write when you’re angry, you can write anytime you want to. Excepting, of course, the freak accident that leaves you with two broken arms, in which case: you can dictate when you’re tired, you can dictate when you’re sick…

“All those I think who have lived as literary men – working daily as literary labourers – will agree with me that three hours a day will produce as much as a man ought to write. But then, he should have so trained himself that he shall be able to work continuously during those three hours – so have tutored his mind that it shall not be necessary for him to sit nibbling his pen, and gazing at the wall before him, till he shall have framed the words with which he wants to express his ideas. It had at this time become my custom… to write with my watch before me, and to require from myself 250 words every quarter of an hour.” -Anthony Trollope