A while back, I was reading this article from Writers Write, and it really hit home with me as a writer. Every day, I have a minimum word count of 2,000 words. I usually wind up writing around 2,500 to 3,000, and a lot of those words are worthless and will be scrapped and/or edited later, but what’s more important is that they’re being written.

Writing is both an art and a craft. I’ve said it once and I’ll say it again: if you sit around waiting for inspiration, then that’s all you’ll do. Novels aren’t written by muses. They’re written by people who are willing to sit their asses down and crank out a certain number of words per day.

So set your minimum. It could be just 500 words a day, or 350. But set a minimum. If you’re serious about writing and wanting to be an author, don’t wait.

This post will come in around just over 250 words, and it won’t count towards my goal for the day. So no cheating. Sit your ass in that chair and start writing.

Remember, even if you write something that’s just going to be scrapped later, it’s writing. Writers write. Use your words and create something that’s all yours.

Now get to it. Go write.

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Anne Hogue-Boucher is the author of Exit 1042 and the upcoming Silver Hollow. You can follow her on Twitter and like her on Facebook. If you don’t, monsters will erupt from the void in your closet at night and do terrible things to you. But no pressure.