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“Just as the body needs time to rest, so too does an essay, story, chapter, poem, book or a single page”

From Bill Hayes’s New York Times essay on maintaining what might be termed ‘writing fitness’:

Then I woke one day, and a line came to me. It didn’t slip away this time but stayed put. I followed it, like a path. It led to another, then another. Soon, pieces started lining up in my head, like cabs idling curbside, ready to go where I wanted to take them.

I like this as a description of how it feels when a new project starts to find its form and shape.