…people with talent for only writing — and nothing else?
…people who are brilliantly talented in many directions…and who have a maid/cook/laundress?
…the rest of us.

Material need not come from experience. If you know how, it’s easy to imagine events, places, and characters. The tough part sometimes is to describe them so that others see them the same way.

I can definitely see that daily word counts are important for building discipline. There’s same famous quote by a writer to the effect that you don’t want to wait for the muse to sing if your butt is never in the chair. But on the other hand, all the dedication in the world won’t help you without material, and isn’t that what you get by seizing the experiences that life sends your way, even if it gets in the way of your daily goal?

And yes, thanks for pointing out that there’s no one way for everyone. Either/or questions make great blog posts but the truth is that every writer finds their own method. We agents can certainly attest to the variety!

During the past three years I’ve learned creativity breeds creativity and other writer friends of mine tend to agree. Having multiple outlets seems to help with rejection as well. As a writer I might be rejected 100 times before I get the call, but as a designer/project manager there is less scrutiny, and more immediate gratification.

There is also definitely a mindset in the writing community that a certain number of words has to be written everyday, even holidays, in order to be a great writer. From a productivity standpoint, this is probably the method that will produce the most amount of books in the least amount of time. But are they fresh and original?

Who knows? It seems like every writer or artist has their own unique method and that’s a great thing – it’s the differences that give us diverse books/works.