Don't write every day

Yep. You heard me.

Hello and Happy Wednesday.

While it’s my hope that writing instructors and workshop leaders aren’t still telling people “you have to write every day to be a writer,” my fear is that they are.

Telling someone—especially someone who is spending money on their writing instead of earning money from it—that they need to “write every day” is basically the same thing as saying “be rich.” It’s classist advice. It’s naive. It’s infeasible. And even if you could write every day, writing every day isn’t sound advice. (I’ll explain why.)

To illustrate, I’d like to share my basic weekly schedule with you, separated into three day parts: morning, afternoon, and evening. Keep in mind that I work from home and I work for myself which makes me lucky, and in relative control of my time.

I’ve highlighted in blue the mornings I devote exclusively to my own writing. In teal, I highlighted the work that is linked to writing, but usually resembles editing, researching, or in some other way re-honing what I wrote on Monday and Tuesday.

And that’s it. That’s all my principal project gets in terms of “writing” time each week. Two mornings of writing, an hour or two of revising. Basta così.

Do I devote these “blue times” to my writing because it’s the only writing time I can afford? Well….right now I’m working out of contract on a new book, which means I don’t have an advance for it, nor am I seeking a book advance before the thing is written because I tend to get performance anxiety when I write under contract. But honestly, my schedule is so militaristic and engrained and practiced, I don’t need to write any more than I do now. Here’s one of the reasons why: