Every writer has pieces that are genuinely difficult to write — not difficult in the sense of requiring research or technical knowledge, but difficult in the sense of resisting being written. The argument that will not cohere. The subject that feels too large or too close. The piece that has been started and abandoned several times without arriving anywhere. Writing a difficult piece is a situation that calls for a different approach from ordinary writing, because the methods that work for pieces that are not difficult tend to make difficult pieces harder.

The difficulty is usually not random. A piece that resists being written is almost always resisting for a reason, and identifying the reason is the first step towards addressing it. Not all difficult pieces have the same problem, and the same approach will not work for all of them.

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