I want to write a book.

Of course I do.

After I work out for fifteen minutes, drink two bottles of water, wash the dishes, drop the curtains at the tailors, do a few hours for my freelance job, research places to submit, listen to a podcast, eat lunch and make love to my boyfriend, not in that order.

I’m not sure where the book time is going to fit. And my sense of “responsibility” wants me to be responsible to everything else I can possibly commit to, before allowing me to commit to my own creative life.

Anne Lamott’s essay for Sunset proposes a terrifyingly simple solution. What can writers give up? What matters less than writing? Where can we carve out an hour for a page?

This is what I say: First of all, no one needs to watch the news every night, unless one is married to…