It taught me a lesson too. The difference between a “writer” and “somebody who writes” is the difference between showing up on a schedule and only showing up when you’re inspired. If you insist on always loving the craft, you’ll quit in the face of turmoil.

Over the next few years I’d start projects, get bored with them, and toss them aside. Every time writing started to feel like work, I’d quit and dream up a new project that was more fun to write on, until I got bored with that one. Writing isn’t supposed to be work; it’s supposed to be ice-cold whiskey and sunset sessions on a beach, crafting beaut

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Rising at five thirty to write a thousand or more words before beginning the day’s labor became an entrenched habit, unbroken to this day. Each day’s writing ended with four or five short reflections on subjects then occupying my mind. By the late ’90s, my writing had grown to five thousand pages containing several thousand of the short reflections

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