The inclination to write is common. Sometimes every other stranger who hears that I write confesses a desire, even a plan, to do the same. It doesn't surprise me that so few of them ever follow through. Consider how much is required. Time on the grand scale: years of patient practice to develop craft. Time on the ordinary scale: a few daily minutes or hours, getting a draft down, rethinking it, polishing. Concentration: the right environment, and freedom from distracting worry. And above all, conviction: the belief that the words on the page matter and the confidence to hang on to that belief in the face of a skeptical world.
-- Bruce Holland Rogers, Word Work 181 (2002).
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