Man, I’d forgotten how much writing on a schedule, as opposed to “whenever I feel like it” can take it out of a guy. In a previous life writing for magazines, the work was extremely spiky: Write twenty things in a week, then nothing for a month. Oddly enough, I find that easier than grinding out x number of words a day or week.
There’s always a risk turning anything you enjoy into a job, or even treating it like one. My experience is that instead of loving your jobs (which is, presumably, the desired outcome), you wind up resenting or even hating the thing you enjoyed. Turning something you like to do into something you have to do isn’t always a good move.
That said, sometimes it’s just a matter of self-discipline, isn’t it? I have no patience for people who say that working in any kind of steady fashion stifles their creativity. I say this as a person who’s said that from time to time but has come to recognize that it’s kind of a bullshit excuse. One of the key tricks to Getting Things Done is to do them when you don’t feel like it, and doing what you have to do to pay the bills that allow you to do the thing, or things, you love.
Which is to say, time to close the blog and get back to work…