COMPARISON IS THE THIEF OF JOY (AND SUCCESS)

Don't let the bad advice grind you down.

- BY ROB HART

You have to write every day.

You've heard this, right? It's a common piece of writing advice, that the only way to achieve your publishing dream is to get words on a page every single solitary day.

And it makes a certain degree of sense. Having a routine can be helpful. Some words are preferable to no words, even if they aren't very good; you can always go back and replace them with better ones.

But on three separate occasions, I’ve had writers say to me they don't think they'll ever get published, because someone told them this little bon mot, and the demands on their time are too great.

They have a job, a sick relative, a kid ... whatever it was, they simply could not write every day.

I told them all the same thing, and I've repeated this to other writers countless times, because it's an important little piece of perspective: I do not write every day, and I’m a full-time author. In fact, I can’t remember the last day I wrote something (excluding, now, this article).

Actually, I just went back and checked. It was two weeks ago when I sent pages to Jeff Rake for the sci-fi series we're co-writing together.

What did I do in the interim?

It was summer, so I hung out with my daughter, celebrated my partner's birthday, and took some much-needed rest because I was feeling a little burnt out. No one kicked in my door to cancel my contracts.

I work best in large chunks. I know this about myself. Sometimes that means bingeing 8-10,000 words in a few days, fueled chiefly by Cheez-Its and Diet Coke.

Point is, it doesn’t matter if you write every day, or every other day, or once a week.

The only thing that matters is that the work gets done.

And this, my friends, is why I think a lot of writing advice sucks.