{"id":1048,"date":"2017-07-05T07:34:51","date_gmt":"2017-07-05T07:34:51","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.watt-evans.com\/blog\/?p=1048"},"modified":"2017-07-05T07:34:51","modified_gmt":"2017-07-05T07:34:51","slug":"the-rules","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"http:\/\/www.watt-evans.com\/blog\/2017\/07\/05\/the-rules\/","title":{"rendered":"The Rules"},"content":{"rendered":"<p><i>From newsgroup posts dated September 5, 2007 and July 25, 2010.  Long ago I set myself rules to help with the self-discipline necessary to be a full-time professional writer; if I only wrote when inspired, or when I felt like writing, I&#8217;d have starved:<\/i><\/p>\n<p>These are my official rules:<\/p>\n<p>Four pages a day, minimum.  They can be on one, two, three, or four projects, but there must be four pages.  A page is defined as &#8220;Enough text to get onto the next page without altering any margins or spacing or anything,&#8221; no word-count is specified.<\/p>\n<p>&#8220;A day&#8221; is defined as from the time I get up until the time I go to bed, but does not include any such period that either begins or ends somewhere other than my own bed, nor any period when I&#8217;m away from home for more than four hours.<\/p>\n<p>Starting a new project <i>does not count<\/i> toward my four-page quota.  &#8220;New project&#8221; is defined as a file that&#8217;s been open less than forty-eight hours, or that contains less than two pages of prose.<\/p>\n<p><i>That last provision is because writing new openings and starting new stories is <b>fun<\/b>; it&#8217;s finishing them that requires discipline.<\/i><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>From newsgroup posts dated September 5, 2007 and July 25, 2010. Long ago I set myself rules to help with the self-discipline necessary to be a full-time professional writer; if I only wrote when inspired, or when I felt like writing, I&#8217;d have starved: These are my official rules: Four pages a day, minimum. They&hellip; <a class=\"read-more\" href=\"http:\/\/www.watt-evans.com\/blog\/2017\/07\/05\/the-rules\/\">Read More<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[7],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-1048","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-writing"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.watt-evans.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1048","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.watt-evans.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.watt-evans.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.watt-evans.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.watt-evans.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=1048"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"http:\/\/www.watt-evans.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1048\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":1049,"href":"http:\/\/www.watt-evans.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1048\/revisions\/1049"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.watt-evans.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=1048"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.watt-evans.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=1048"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.watt-evans.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=1048"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}