Sometimes, there’s nothing you can do to get out of the slump. You feel as though there is barely enough time to make the work good—let alone to escape, clear your head, reset your energy. You’re feeling scared, too. You don’t want the slump to turn into a block.

You probably know the answer: keep your bottom in the seat and work through it. At best, you can manage the load more carefully. Do the work, or do nothing. Before you know it, you’ve done something. It might not be good, it might not sound like you, but it’s there.

One consolation you can take is that you are not a reliable judge of your own work (and the world isn’t much better). 

That same work you want to throw out might, with some extra effort, turn into your best work yet. 

But it’ll only have a chance to grow that way if you decide not to cave into the impulse to quit in the middle of the slump.