The way to lead the writing life is brutally simple–simple because it’s easy to understand, brutal because it’s difficult to do. Here it is in three steps: write, bring into your life everything that helps you write, and eliminate from your life everything that prevents you from writing. This includes jobs, family members, social obligations, habits of mind and body, friends, and the opinions of others (especially other writers). Evaluate each one. Does the thing or the person help you accomplish your writing? If yes, good. If no, be ruthless in getting rid of that thing or person.
Additional advice that follows from this:
Learn to accept (and ideally ignore) the low opinions of others. They are not doing what you are doing and cannot be expected to understand. Forgive them and then jealously guard the rest of your emotional energy. This includes critics of your work. They may be accurate when they tell you that you have produced shoddy work, but whether their criticisms are accurate or not is irrelevant. You will write more. You will improve or take a different path in your writing. But promise yourself that it will not be in response to their braying. In creative workshops, see your colleagues as assistants and apply the test: are they helping you improve? If yes, take what is useful from their comments. If no, recycle their responses and save trees.
You can be a creative writer if you have space, time, and the ability to satisfy personal needs. Getting these amounts to bringing into your life everything that helps you write. You can be an electrician, secretary, housewife, criminal, janitor, teacher, cook, paralegal, or any other job that gives you space, time, and wellness. If you are working at the office 80 hours a week, you will not make it. Accept lower social status and forgive your disappointed parents. You do not have to be poor. By all means, be rich (and send some to me).
Read. You are not a scholar. You are a creative artist. This means you can read anything that inspires you, from recipes to comic books to Proust to the Greek Magical Papyri to Don Delillo. You don’t have to worry about acquiring an encyclopedic understanding of Kafka. If you like “In the Penal Colony” and do not like “The Metamorphosis,” good. You know what you like, which is part of being inspired. Read without guilt as long as you are learning and becoming inspired. As soon as you read literature out of obligation, you are no longer functioning as an artist.
Avoid trendiness and over-stylization. These are traps designed to convert art into money. If you want to make money your primary focus, go into business and save yourself the trouble. Do your own thing aesthetically. You know what you like, which is an invitation to pursue it artistically.
There is a lot more that can be said along these lines. However, it all comes down to the three essential steps: write, bring into your life everything that helps you write, and eliminate from your life everything that prevents you from writing.
The Writing Expedition 