“Frustration ... is an essential part of the creative process.”

Jonah Lehrer, author of Imagine:

Every creative journey begins with a problem. It starts with a feeling of frustration, the dull ache of not being able to find the answer…. When we tell one another stories about creativity, we tend to leave out this phase of the creative process…. Instead, we skip straight to the breakthroughs. We tell the happy endings first. The danger of telling this narrative is that the feeling of frustration … is an essential part of the creative process.