Some rather spectacular donuts at Bread Ahead in Old Street, London. When it was a choice between cold pizza or one of these for breakfast on Saturday, I chose the custard donut.

I have gotten to know a lot of writers and I know now we’ve all been there. Not the same thing at the same time, but the truth is always there: sometimes it’s so hard, and you really don’t know how to make your work work, and it feels like months or years of may have been wasted and you continue to be, beyond all heroic efforts, right smack in the middle of the job, rather than at the end, as you had so brightly hoped.

People will tell you that you need a thick skin to be a writer, what with all that disappointment and rejection, but I think part of what makes a good writer is the ability to be porous, to be able to feel all the intricate and complicated notes, the particular music of each moment. No writer should turn the volume down on her own emotional register. That’s her instrument. We have to feel everything. Which also sucks. That’s where the donuts come in.

Excerpt from a brilliant article by Ramona Ausubel on LitHub, which I highly recommend reading in its entirety.