I didn't know coal mining was creative work.

Bryan, that's what I was thinking too!:) I am assuming what he means is writing is hard work and at the end, no matter what, just like coal mining or anything else that needs to be done, you just have to push ahead and do it.

I get that, but making people think creative work like any other manual labor is wrong. If it's truly creative, you're going to spend 90% of your time thinking and planning. Of course, by the time a coal miner goes into a mine, 90% of the thinking and planning of where to dig has already been done.

I think there's a subtext to this line: "coal miners don't get coal miners block' I interpret it as: don't whine, don't make up excuses for why you can't write, but just do the work.