Actually, You Don’t Have to Write Every Day
I don’t know where this idea started, but it does nothing to help a vast majority of people who are still afraid to call themselves writers because of this mostly unrealistic piece of advice.
There’s a certain rule for being a writer that takes me aback every single time I hear it, yet it’s so commonplace that most people don’t question it:
In order to be a writer, you have to write every single day.
It’s included in every article, every roundup of writerly advice. It’s become synonymous with the idea of a writer, that person who wakes up every single day, chugs a cup of coffee, maybe goes for a walk in the woods, then comes home and starts in on a full day of writing. Rinse and repeat.
Except, of course, that you don’t have to write every day to be a writer.
Being a writer just means that you write. Writing daily can help you gain new skills and improve, of course, but it isn’t a prerequisite for being able to call yourself a writer.
And for me, and many, many other writers out there, writing every day just isn’t feasible. To be clear, yes: most days I write. But most…
