It shouldn't be this hard...

Of course there's that first line to contend with. You can't really get a rhythm going until you lay down that perfect opening sentence, so that takes a while. You write it out, get a few paragraphs in and suddenly you've thought of a different angle to open things on so what now? Do you shoehorn that in and carry on as you were or do you take everything apart and try to reconstruct things to fit the new approach?

Or perhaps you save those few paragraphs as a draft and start from scratch, this time with the new opening?

You decide to go with the latter option and whilst it seems a little drastic to set yourself back to the start, it will all be fine because you have an idea of where it is you're going now.

But by this time you're thirsty so you hold off on getting much further until you've fixed yourself a cup of tea. And a sandwich. And the kitchen is a little messy and you could do with going to the shops to get some bread. You don't but the thought is there now and that'll kick around in there for the rest of the afternoon. Well done Jay.

Back to the laptop with the tea and the sandwich and the mental list of other things that suddenly feel as though they won't wait and you've not forgotten exactly where you were but that feeling of certainty with regards to the direction you were headed is gone. You load up the draft, the version that was in favour before you decided to start over from a new angle and suddenly you've no idea what was so wrong with this idea in the first place.

Now you have two opposing approaches to the same piece, two juxtaposed variations on the same theme and deciding between the two, something that should be simple, feels for all the world like being asked to decide which child to sacrifice in exchange for the promise of divine inspiration.

So you hold off and decide to check Facebook, because that never stopped anyone from getting anything done...