I’ve been thinking about how important it is for writers to write every day.
I never put my writing first because I never think I have the time. Since I have to pay the rent—I work full time as a preschool teacher while going to school—my free time is spent studying and catching up on sleep. I’m sure many of you can relate.
But somehow Kafka managed to write every day while working as an insurance officer, and Charles Bukowski wrote every day as he worked in a post office. My grandmother, Lillian B. Miller, the author of Patrons and Patriotism: The Encouragement of the Fine Arts in the United States, worked her way through Radcliffe and Columbia as a secretary while writing every day. I keep her picture on my desk for inspiration.
If I don’t write every day, how will I grow as a writer? How will I learn and create work that will evolve and change?
While browsing the Internet Wednesday morning before work (when I should have been writing instead) I found inspiration in this article written by author Ben Bova.
Bova writes:
“It takes a long time for most writers to reach the point where they can support themselves solely from their writing. That’s why most writers seem to have such colorful careers: they’ve been working at this job and that, trying to keep groceries on the table and writing in whatever time they can snatch from the day job. First, no matter how demanding the day job might be, make time for your writing. When I worked as a marketing manager for a high-powered research laboratory I was a writer first and a marketing executive second. Even though I traveled around the country constantly, I carried a portable typewriter with me and wrote every morning.
“In all my other jobs, the writing came first. When I became chief editor of Omni magazine, I was a writer first and an employee of Bob Guccione’s second.”