Charles Dickens to a friend:
“It is only half-an-hour” — “It is only an afternoon”– “It is only an evening,” people say to me over and over again; but they don’t know that it is impossible to command one’s self sometimes to any stipulated and set disposal of five minutes — or that the mere consciousness of an engagement will sometimes worry a whole day. These are the penalties paid for writing books [or any other creative venture]. Whoever is devoted to an art must be content to deliver himself wholly up to it, and to find his recompense in it. I am grieved if you suspect me of not wanting to see you, but I can’t help it; I must go my way whether or no.
Teresa M. Amabile, in Creativity in Context, sharing this quotation from W. Allen