When I was studying poetry as an undergraduate, I took a seminar in non-fiction prose that was taught by one of the country's greatest living essayists, Joseph Epstein. (Seriously, if you don't know his work, you should -- and I do NOT make that sort of recommendation lightly.) Intimidated by the mere thought of writing an *entire* book -- not that I wanted to at 20 years old, mind you -- I asked him how he managed to pull it off.

His answer was simple: 250 words a day, day after day, five days a week, for a year, with two weeks off a year for vacation. That's a total of 62,500 words, which is a short book; double it for a longer book and take two years to do the job instead, or write 500 words a day to cut the time in half. Add another six months or a year to revise your first draft and you're done.

It's not a lot, 250 words. This blog post is already almost 250 words long by the end of this paragraph, and it didn't take me very long to write. You can do that much in a day... easily. What's harder is doing it day after day after day, never taking a break -- treating it like a job, or perhaps like a calling that cannot be ignored. That requires discipline. But you can develop discipline through practice. Discipline can be learned.

One way in which I keep my own writing muscles honed is by blogging. As you know, I write here for TheatreFace every Wednesday. In addition, I write a substantial post on my own blog on Mondays, then a smaller post on my blog for Fridays. Three days a week, and the average post is, oh, 750 words. I think I may be giving Professor Epstein extra credit. (Though I could not possibly give him enough credit for having helped me develop an interest in non-fiction.)

One might ask whether blogging so much takes time away from writing plays... but I would answer, if asked, that blogging makes me a better playwright in two ways. First, it forces me to codify my ideas about our art form -- I have to do so in order to express them with clarity. Second, it builds my stamina for stringing words together. The practice of daily blogging keeps me strong: it's the equivalent of doing wind sprints in order to play better basketball. When I blog regularly, I work harder on my plays...and that may be the most important metric of success.

Of course, there are other reasons to start a blog, too -- and it's easier than you might think, given technologies like WordPress -- but I think I might just save those for another blog post!