I just finished reading this New Yorker article on the writer Susan-Lori Parks.

“When you wake up, and look at your lover or husband, or whatever, that’s a way of honoring your commitment. But then you get out of bed and say another kind of prayer when you sit down at your desk. I wake up every day and say, ‘Yes! I’m a writer!’ When you make that commitment, all sorts of things move toward you.”

This sort of statement always inspires me at first because I think, "Sure, I can wake up and say 'I'm a writer' and all the stuff I need to be a writer will find me." And then I get a little annoyed because there is clearly something more going on with this woman. She wrote a play a day for a whole year! She hears voices and turns those voices into characters in her plays! I'm not saying she's manic, but she's certainly not sleepy. Do you have to have that kind of energy to really be a writer? Can't a person plod along, take naps and dream of beautiful sentences? That kind of thing won't win you the Pulitzer, but it's still not a bad way to be.