Ellen Urbani: Ignore All the Advice

These many years later, I’ll say I’m an author if someone asks me what I do — because I have a new book out and it seems a reasonable assessment of my present time investment/commitment — but I also feel that I am just as much a farmer (I own my own tractor and can mow an enviably straight row in a hayfield!) and a mother and a beast-wrangler (dogs, llamas, horses, and the occasional errant guinea pig) as I am a writer. When I sit down to write a book or an essay, I do so only because I am no longer capable of holding the ideas inside me anymore. It’s like my gut has caught on fire and I have to spit the flames out of me onto paper to get any relief. That burning/yearning is the only reason I write.

Ignore all the advice. If you’re inclined to write every day, write every day. If you’re inclined to write only when you feel like it, write then and harvest vegetables or walk your dog or love your spouse or read a book in the other spaces. No one else can tell you how to live your life or express your passions, so stop giving others egress and opportunity to try. Heed the burning in your own gut, and tend your own flames.

http://www.advicetowriters.com/interviews/2016/3/15/ellen-urbani.html