It would be wonderful to think that all Jerry Seinfeld’s ideas come to him while he’s eating cereal just like that. Perhaps not “wonderful” but maybe “reassuring,” because then it would mean that is how writing might be sometimes for the rest of us.

No such luck:

I still have a writing session every day. It’s another thing that organizes your mind. The coffee goes here. The pad goes here. The notes go here. My writing technique is just: You can’t do anything else. You don’t have to write, but you can’t do anything else. The writing is such an ordeal. That sustains me…

Seinfeld later elaborated on this with Tim Ferris:

…my writing sessions used to be very arduous, very painful, like pushing against the wind in soft, muddy ground with a wheelbarrow full of bricks. And I did it. I had to do it because there’s just, as I mentioned in the book, you either learn to do that or you will die in the ecosystem.

Keep this in mind as you get ready for whatever 2024 is going to bring. The writing will not always be easy. You will probably want to give up. But this is what we signed up for the first time somebody asked us asked us what we wanted to be and we said, “a writer.”

You just have to keep pushing the wheelbarrow.