“What will sustain you with any difficulty in your art is your love for that art. So if you’re having problems with your art, you’ve got to re-immerse yourself in your love of it … I always tell anyone who’s a writer who’s like “I got a writer’s block” like, fifty novels in a hundred and fifty days. You will be reminded of why you love this shit. You won’t even get to fifty — no, the love will return. I think part of the problem is that we think that we can muscle through this shit … if you grew up like me, powering through shit was the way we survived. You’re like, I’m two-hundred dollars in debt? I can work thirty-six hours straight. Art doesn’t respond to that. Art does not respond to the whip. Our bodies do, but art isn’t about our bodies. And so you’ve got to move away from the “powering through it,” it isn’t going to work.”
— Junot Diaz, on the cure for creative/writer’s “block” (via altrastella)