Writing is often grating for me

I LOVE reading. I eat up to 500 pages a week consistently and still wish I could read more. I find stories fascinating and have many ideas that I want to turn into experiences through writing. I've been practicing for a few months now, and I've improved a LOT.

But so often, it's just a frustrating chore. Sometimes I enjoy myself for an hour or so, and I can feel good about some chapter or paragraph that turned out really well (for my skill level), but a lot of my time is spent feeling frustrated and clunky and not really knowing where to go. Today has been one of those days: 1.5 hours for 240 flat and unsatisfying words that are going straight into the bin. I know it's part of the process, but still.

I really want to put in the hours, but that's hard to do if the task is actively aggravating. I've done it before though, with fitness and dancing bachata. Initially these things sucked because they were new, uncomfortable and you're no good at it at all, but once you become sufficiently fluent an exhilerating world opens up for you. Writing is not that yet for me at all. It's hard work.

How do you smooth these moments out? How do you manage to keep putting in productive effort when there's a bucket of sand in the gears? I have the spare time to spend, but this way it's hard to actually do that.