"I remember when I was writing my first book, and I was feeling ... you know, I'd have these days where I would get nothing done, and I would take solace in, like -- y'know, Kafka is a great example but there's a million writers you can, you can go through their diaries, and their diaries are like, 'didn't write enough today, took two naps, had my first drink at 4:15,' -- this is Kafka but pick a person: Didion would do this, Hemmingway, all these people that were incredibly prolific, briliant people, but writers' diaries are filled with self-loathing, 'I'm not writing enough, I'm not writing enough, not writing enough.' And what you realize is ... you know, creative work, to me, is like cooking a
turkey: it takes as long as it takes. There's no trick or hack to cook it faster; the ideas are going to take as long as they take. And that, at a more fundamental than the physical concept of the office, is in tension with the 'butt in seat for a certain amount of time' idea." -- Chris Hayes (chrislhayes), Why Is This Happening? podcast, MSNBC, 2022-08-30, "'Out of Office' with Anne Helen Petersen" (17:34 to 18:33 on my copy but may vary a bit if a feed has ads).
[I probably should have cleaned up the extemporaneous-speech markers more than I did (akin to removeing "um" and "uh" in other people's quotes) but I was transcribing in a hurry while listening to the episode the first time.]