When my task at work is to craft something with words, to write something more meaningful than a simple response to an email, I sometimes run aground. As one might expect, a shorter, more pithy piece is easier to complete than a longer, more enduring work, but they are both hard effort.
Similarly, the shoal, the sand bar that blocks my exit from safe harbor into the wider water is harder to traverse depending on the words that must be written. Or perhaps the bar and the water over it remain the same and it is the weight in my craft that grounds the hull on its way to deeper parts.
Whatever the case, the price to pay to cross the bar and write what my work needs written seems, ironically enough, to be more writing. I find that when this writer's block is struck, a short piece, a few words soon sees me over.
Sitting down to "do" performance reviews for my team first requires a short crafting of words in an unrelated theme. Writing a job description is preceded by a series of paragraphs on something more organic than roles and responsibilities. And writing my own performance review demands repeated iterations of rowing out a kedge anchor and straining at the capstan to get me over.
On the other hand, crunching numbers to create reports and graphs, while lengthy and easy to accomplish, requires writing unrelated sentences and paragraphs at the completion of the task, rather than before beginning. More of a cleansing the palate or holystoning the deck than clearing for action.
Frustratingly, I sometimes kedge off to begin the real work, the paid-for writing, before the distraction piece is completed. Unlike today. Today, I saw the shoal first and began this piece, not knowing what I am to write when it is finished.
