One of the most toxic pieces of writing “advice” I have ever gotten, bar none, is “real writers write every day!”
And yet I see it touted constantly by writers and those who support writers, often bringing up the example of “Steven King writes 8 hours every day!”
Here’s my counter-advice to anyone and everyone who has heard this “real writers write every day” crap.
It’s a lie. It’s an absolute, outright lie, to say someone can write every single day without fail. Even the people who do it professionally take breaks. Even the people whose entire livelihoods are based on the written word will take time out and just relax. And that’s not even bringing up writer’s block or anything similar to it, or just feeling like you don’t want to write today.
That’s all okay. I’ve spent weeks not writing before getting back to it, I’ve dropped projects and started them months later under new names, I’ve done all manner of things that so flagrantly fly in the face of the statement “real writers write every day” that frankly, for a long time, I started to think I wasn’t a real writer.
But that’s bullshit. You can take a break for any reason. Depression, work, illness, and and so forth may actively stop you from writing. You could spend time with your loved ones, or playing video games, or cuddling a dog, or going out to a bar, and choose to not write. That doesn’t make you a fake writer, it just makes you a human.
“Real writers write every day” is, and always will be, a lie. Don’t fall for it.
A writer has to write, yes, and often too. But there is no universal law that you have to do it every day. There is more to life than staring at words on a screen. As Daniel Jose Older has said:
“Writing begins with forgiveness. Let go of the shame about how long it’s been since you last wrote, the clenching fear that you’re not a good enough writer, the doubts over whether or not you can get it done. Sure, the nagging demons will come creeping back, but set them aside anyway, and then set them aside again when they do.”
‘You must write everyday to be a writer,’ is up there with ‘you have to read everything in order to be a good writer,’ on my list of bogus writing advice.
Honestly, I can’t understand where people even get the notion that you have to write every day??
Do engineers design every day?
Do teachers teach every day?
Do actors act every day?
Of course not. Because you need a break. People of all professions generally take off two days a week for a reason, and that reason is that if you kill yourself with your work you can’t actually do it anymore.
Writers are lucky because the work is more lenient, and you can take off whatever days you choose, or write for three straight weeks before a long sabbatical, or write all day for three days and take the other four off.
To be a writer, you have to write a lot, and then
– then you have to not write some.
You decide how and when and why you do each part of that equation.
The only thing that makes you a writer is if you WRITE. that’s it. Not the quantity, nor the quality, but simply WORDS. on the PAPER. Do that, whether it be often or occasionally and you are a writer. Period.
devoursjohnlock
