About ten years ago I read in the blog of one aspiring writer that if you want to be a writer, you should write every day. I hated her immediately. She seemed to think she knew how to be a writer, and that she was an authority at said venture – that she could say anything about being a writer and because she said it, it would be the ultimate truth.

I also hated her because she had this legendary status among my writer friends for “winning” Nanowrimo for three years straight. And I hadn’t even heard of Nanowrimo.

She was so arrogant that I wanted to discredit her immediately and deem anything she said to be wrong. But let’s face it. I only wanted to disagree with everything she said because she was more prolific than me.

The truth is that she was right. Even if her status as only an aspiring writer didn’t give her enough credibility to pose as an expert. If you want to be a writer, you should write every day. Or, as I like to put it,

if you write every day, you’re a writer.

It’s not difficult, and it’s definitely not as intimidating as she had put it. If you write every day but miss one, you’re still a writer. Only if a significant portion of your days are non-writing days, are you not a writer.

And mind you, even five minutes or 100 words a day counts.