Maintaining a schedule is about motivation. Years ago, the notion was that an artist had to starve in order to produce great art. We have all heard of this proverbial starving artist, living in his unheated garret. And you know which garret he’s living in. The only running water it has is the water that pours in through the cracks in the roof, whenever it rains. The artist in question must carefully horde his last candle, so that he can see well enough to complete that epic poem, or the painting that might get a showing at the local gallery, or the novel that he will have to publish on his own, because he has not yet made a name for himself. The notion that one might be successful as an artist, enough to live comfortably and well is antithetical to this vision. Except that, like the carrot in the old story, the idea that we could support ourselves comfortably through our art, dangles in front of our noses.

          For those of you who don’t know, one of the old time tricks to keep a donkey moving when he had a heavy load to pull, and he would rather just stop and wait until his master got fed up and carried the load himself, was to tie a carrot to a pole, and hold that out beyond the donkey’s nose, just beyond its reach. The poor donkey, not knowing any better, would plod along, hoping that he would get close enough to the carrot so that he could eat it.

          Our goals are like that carrot on a stick. We’re not likely to put time every day into writing that book, if having it written doesn’t mean a lot to us. We are not likely to put the time into developing our craft, as well as our businesses, unless first of all the work is something we love to do, and secondly, the business itself is not only meaningful but necessary for us.

          In order to learn how to write, and write well, you must put the time into it every day, whenever and wherever it makes sense to do so. If in your busy day, you know you can schedule forty-five minutes to write, before other demands become too pressing, then experiment; How many words can you comfortably write in forty-five minutes? Is it four hundred words? Good. Then every day, when you sit down to write, you refuse to get up until you have written at least three hundred words. Whether you like to write your first draft out by hand, or type it directly into the computer makes no matter. I’m a little bit old fashioned. I have piles of old composition notebooks that I have filled with first drafts. I write fifteen hundred words a day on various projects, type them all into the computer, and then edit three times that amount, before I consider my work day to be complete.