The Write Stuff: What five effective work habits make a professional writer the most successful?

 This  one is easy:

1) Sit your butt down and write. Have a plan and stick to it when possible. If necessary, turn off the distractions, like the internet and the radio and your phone if feasible.

2) schedule a regular time for writing. It's your JOB, treat it like one. Even if it's not your job yet, respect the process and treat it like the job you want to have.

3) Accept that sometimes life gets in the way. Make it the exception and not the rule. By that I mean if you lose a day for whatever reason, then you move on, you don't beat yourself up for it.

4) Set goals. They don't have to be realistic. Go nuts, aim for 10 pages or 4,000 words a day. even if you never achieve it, strive for it like a marathon runner strives for distance It's a goal. You keep trying. As I have said before, when I'm on a roll I can still knock out 5,000 words in a day. My best day was 11,700 words written and edited twice in 8 hours. It hurt, but i did it.

5) read every day, preferably from a plethora of genres and even, gasp, non-fiction. You need to see the work to understand and learn from the work.