A professional writer writes. Period. While some of us struggle to juggle day jobs, night jobs, family jobs and many other little, trivial things that interrupt our daily writing schedule, professionals write. I guess that’s what weeds out the “wanna-be” writers.
I used work with a friend who owned a screen printing business. We used a manual, five color, printing machine. Each color had to be aligned, and hand printed using a squeegee to apply the ink into the shirt. Though it helped me build and tone my forearm muscles, it was boring. Sometimes we would have a run of 500 shirts, with three to five colors. Yeah, the math. A lot of looking at the same design, hour after hour. Oh, by the way, the way the shirts go on the board you have to look at it up-side-down. You constantly have to check for mistakes and keep all the screens aligned so the final print isn’t all “fuzzy” looking. The only way to complete the job was to be persistent. You could see the stacks of shirts diminishing one by one till finally you printed the last color on the last shirt. Celebrate! Then, start on the next order.
Sounds like a lot of work. Just as is writing—a lot of work. The more we write and get rejected, the better we get, and the more we learn. I hope. Somehow, we write no matter what. Somehow, we break free from all the other little, big, and trivial jobs we must do, and write.
Rick Starkey 
I agree, Rick. Write, we must. Every day. A word at a time ~ as I’ve been advised. =)
Thanks, yeah, I like that – a word at a time- some days it’s all I can do to revise or change just one word in a MS. At least I did something. (I tell myself)
So true. The problem arises sometimes when we forget it’s work. Because, ya know when you hit that stride and the words flow and life is grand. . .then it feels like magic. And we get spoiled and want that all the time. We forget that the magic happens when we’ve got our nose to the grindstone, doing the work.
It’s great when we can spoil ourselves and let the magic happen. We all need a little more magic in our lives.
I have to admit, I don’t find time to actually write everyday, but I do do SOMETHING with my writing every single day whether it’s researching, commenting on blogs, or just jotting down ideas. It is hard work and even harder to find time but like you said, it’s a must!
Like I said in an another post, it all has to be done. It is all a part of “writing.” Even the aggravating task of trying to get the addresses printed on the labels to put on the submissions.
Interesting question that is. I dont write EVERY day. Oh I do something that has to do with writing everyday but no, I dont actually sit down and write everyday. I tried that at the beginning of my freelance life and realized, it burned me out. I needed days to just read or to catch up on emails or to organize the plethera of loose papers that I accumulate on writing. That’s my take anyway.
ctny
http://www.ctnyrene.blogspot.com
Yeah, it all has to be done. Sometimes the time away from the actual putting ink on paper, lets us see thing more clearly. It’s hard to be creative if we are burned out.