Writing is about putting words on paper, or its electronic equivalent, the file. So, there are a lot of activities that contribute to my daily quota of words written. Over the last couple of weeks, this blog has helped by allowing me to reach a quarter or moreof my daily target!

Of course, there are other pieces being worked on as well, to get the other 1000 to 1500 words needed to be on target. But it's a great way to start the writing day, and not resort to 500 'anything'� entries to start with. It gets the mind rolling, before the serious writing gets done, if there is to be any in the day.

I got an e-mail about the last entry asking if I really only write an hour each day.

Well, I sometimes don't write on Saturdays and Sundays. I might not even turn the computers on those days, and on other holidays. To be truthful, the hour is often split over the whole day, from around 7:30 a.m. through to 5:30 p.m. And sometimes the total is more than an hour (to make up for the weekends and holidays). However, editing/revising is almost a ritual for the mornings after the third coffee and cigarette during the week, and the weekends are when I get the feedback from my 'tame'� home readers ' they collect their comments and pass them to me on Friday nights, so I have a lot to check out. Although, of late, the corrections are fewer than they were a few months ago.

The last couple of weeks (since starting to use the S=CAR approach in my first revisions), the suggestions for improvements have dropped drastically. I can't tell if this will mean better responses from submissions, but one can hope that the same effect will hold ' although I've still got a lot out therefrom before, so it will be a while (especially with the general slowness of response) before I can really say it has helped, except in that it means an easier way to analyse (break down) the story to make it work better.

At least I FEEL that my stories are improving, enough that I can send them out sooner. That has to be a good thing.

The e-mail writer also had another question: 'How many stories should I write before I become a professional writer?'�

Well, if you want to make it a paying proposition, writing, like sales, is a numbers game. You need enough material out there to be able to get responses most days (after a couple of months). At an average two months response time, you need to have 60 submissions/queries out there all the time. And have replacements for them when they sell. No writer can survive (even minimally or as a hobby) on the income they get from writing with a lesser volume.

And remember that most publishers DON'T pay on acceptance, but on punblication.That could be up to 18 MONTHS after you sold the story.If you are lucky enough to find a publisher for your novel, it can take 18 months to 3 years before it will hit the bookshelves; Then your first royalty cheque will come between a month and six months after that.

Hmmm'�.

Somebody asked a while back why I tried to discourage a person from pursuing writing as a career. Maybe the above will suggest why only the most dedicated, stubbornest, stupidest people think of being a professional writer!

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