No, for me it’s the opposite. I have to find ways to stop the thought process because the thought process is constant; it’s constantly everywhere. And that’s not to make me sound pretentious, because it sometimes makes me unhappy. It can keep you awake or you have it in the middle of a meeting.

There’s a lot of ways to talk about this but in terms of writer’s block, every block I’ve ever had, every metaphysical obstacle and every obstacle inside of me that has prevented me from doing something that mattered to me always factored down to fear. It was really a matter of, in most cases, lowering my standards, and it was this kind of perfectionism. Like, I can’t write badly, I can’t fail, I can’t be rejected. If it becomes okay to be rejected or to fail or to stutter in your attempt at something, then it becomes more possible to do it. If I have to do it perfectly the first time—and my default is that it should be perfect the first time—then I become immobilized.

I don’t get stuck creatively. I was built to use and know my body—to trust its limits, only in that they can be broken. My mind works like an athlete’s mind and body. I’m an ox on the page, yoked to some aching heaviness, grinding some mark of myself into the clay. If I’m ever frustrated or angry or bored, I use my body. To walk, to run, to make love, to touch.

Yeah. The downside for me is, say I have something that I know is out of my comfort zone in terms of my ability, the discipline comes in where I know I have to do this thing that’s out of my comfort zone when it would be so much easier to get the immediate satisfaction from doing the thing that’s in my comfort zone and get the positive response 10 times over.