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Patricia Wrede writes:

“I don’t have time to write” is one of the most common writers’ complaints, both from people who haven’t published yet and from seasoned pros.

The statement means different things to different people, but the most common meaning is “There are a lot of other things in my life that are more important to me than writing, so those are what I spend my time on.”

. . . But. Nobody gets more than 24 hours of time in a day, or more than 7 days in a week. That prolific professional who has six novels coming out next year (and four the year after that, and five more the year after that) has exactly the same amount of total time as the much-admired writer who produces one novel every eight to ten years, the newly sold author who’s trying to juggle editorial revisions and copyedit and galleys while producing his second book, the as-yet-unsold writer who’s struggling to persuade herself that her writing will sell one day in spite of the latest rejection letter, and the one-of-these-days-when-I-have-time “writer” who hasn’t produced two sentences in thirty years on account of having “no time to write.”

It’s not about having time. It’s about making choices.

Go read the rest, and the comments too, some of which are also by P. Wrede and even better (if possible) than the post itself.

And this is why I love Linda Holmes and her gorgeous, wonderful, analytical mind. She can take something as awful as the "Real Housewives" shows and come up with stuff like this:

"If you've never watched anything Real Housewives-related (and really, good for you), let me sum up most of the plotlines in the show's history: Someone Wants An Apology. Somebody did something to somebody else, and the somebody else just can't believe it, and they spend all of their time telling everyone to whom they speak that the lack of an apology is consuming their every thought to the point where they can barely sit through a mani-pedi without twitching. Usually there is a fashion show involved. (And yes, some of it is staged. At the same time, I am entirely convinced most of those who go to war absolutely do hate each other.)

"Meanwhile, Big Brother features a ridiculous amount of crying and emotional superreacting, which has recently included a couple who decided they were soulmates after about four days of making out, and then a guy who lay on a hammock (I think it was a hammock; I cannot bear to fact-check whether it was actually the chaise) crying to himself, all the while telling himself that it was, after all, only Big Brother — a point somewhat undermined by his position lying in the hammock/chaise, crying.

"At some point this summer, it all became clear: the rest of us are saved from becoming these people in part by the fact that we have to get up every day and do stuff."