I can’t say I agree with all of these. I mean, while it’s true that people may well forget what you wrote ten minutes after reading it, if I believed that was always the case, why take care over your writing at all? May as well just crap out whatever’s easiest and move on to the next piece.

But reading and discipline and sheer bloody-mindedness are all important qualities for a writer to have. And defending writing time, hard as it is, is essential. Otherwise you end up being that horrible cliche: a ‘writer’ who never actually writes anything.

Thanks for putting this together.