Back in the old days, people were encouraged to attend to daily prayers. Not just encouraged, bullied into it almost.

So I have a hard time with the idea of a “daily writing.” I’ll write when I damn well please, thank you very much.

But then I think of pianists. They need to play the piano, daily, for weeks and months and years to become merely proficient in their musicianship, much less able to say that they are accomplished in playing the piano.

I watched the New York Open with open-mouthed awe this summer, and listened to the stories of some of these incredible players. Who became incredible by natural ability and then hours of daily practice hitting that damn yellow ball back and forth over the net since they were pre-teens. Day after day, month after month, year after year.

Then I think of my friend, who is training for a marathon, again. She gave herself, and her ailing kidney, a year and a half off from the last marathon, watching her body become sluggish and her figure add the weight she had run off to such effort.  Now, six weeks back into daily training, her face is rosy and her step lighter.

Will my writing become rosier, my fingers lighter if I succumb to daily practice? Will I become a more accomplished writer, by forcing myself to put my words on paper (or laptop), every day? At some point in time, will someone read my stories and say “incredible,” because of the extra effort I’ve made in my life, to write daily?

I know what the answer is, damn it.

How about you? Do you practice your craft/hobby/thethingthatrocksyourworld – daily?

TO MY READERS: I’ll miss next week’s blog post due to an important meeting with the newest member of my family, now 2 weeks old and impatient for my visit. But I shall be writing my observations of a New England fall, my musings about new life and life’s renewals, the joy in reunification with the best daughter in the world, and the fear of flying…. DAILY.