It takes great discipline to be a writer—but there are many kinds of discipline.
I am an obsessive, driven person who might not write for six months and then plunge into a novel and not stop writing for two months, at which point a finished novel lies printed out on the table. That's my kind of discipline.
For another, it might be writing every day, rain or shine, back pain or no back pain, accumulating the novel over a year of such steady work.
For yet another there might be research, planning, and a commitment to so many pages on a weekday with weekends off.
The point is... there has to be some kind of discipline to produce the work—and the more flexible one can be about the discipline, the better it is.
I've heard a male writer complain that when he took a year off his job to write, he didn't get anything done. He couldn't handle the open-ended free time. A female writer, on the other hand, used to juggling housework, child rearing, and recreation when she can squeeze it in, might find it easier to get a novel done in bits and pieces and at all hours.
~ Anne Rice
My thoughts: There really is no excuse for us to not write in whatever life we are in.
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