Reading and Writing

"If you want to be a writer, you must do two things above all others: read a lot and write a lot. There's no way around those two things that I'm aware of, no shortcut."
~from On Writing by Stephen King

King suggests that if you're not willing or able to do those two things, you can forget about being a writer. His recommendations are a couple of hours a day of reading and however long it takes to reach your daily goal of writing. Given his suggested daily goal and the average time it takes him to write that amount (as stated in On Writing), and considering also how long it takes me to write that number of words on average, I'd say a couple of hours of writing is the daily figure.

Both are possible to accomplish with a full-time job. However, you have to use your lunch break or get up really early or have no household duties whatsoever or go to bed late or all of the above. I never achieved both while working full-time. But I did meet the daily writing goal for an entire month while working all day in an office and pregnant! If you've never been pregnant, never mind--but it's impressive, damnit! The thing is, I don't think I read much, if anything, that month and I couldn't have gone longer than a month without burning out.

What I'm trying to say is that, to follow King's recommendations, you must treat it as a job in its own right.