“You fail only if you stop writing.” —Ray Bradbury 

I’ve always known I was a good writer. Teachers complimented me on my writing and encouraged my creativity. A high school teacher once commented “Ever considered becoming a writer?” on one of my last essays senior year. My mom proofread my essays and papers throughout grade school and high school, pointing out every mistake; at the time, each red pen mark pricked me, but now I realize that I must have been a good writer even then, because the details she picked out were small.

With this praise came pressure: pressure to…write.

I knew that the one piece of writing advice that nearly all authors agree on is very simple: You must write every day.

You must write every day. It’s as simple as that: 15 minutes when you wake up, or a page, or whatever you can spew out in a preordained number of minutes. But you see, that’s a must. I must write every day to be a writer.

What if I don’t write every day? Does that make me not a writer?

Read the rest of my essay at Fiction Southeast.