Give or take some numbers, that's approximately accurate. I have been known to audibly groan when I open a book or watch a trailer for a film which features a daring diarist in the title role. It shows a wearisome lack of imagination in the author and I think it's fair to assume these are author insertion characters. What's that? Your book's about a reclusive writer living in the woods who happens to become embroiled in a dangerous mystery which results in him sleeping with a beautiful, much younger woman? Can he be played by Johnny Depp? (Don Huan deMarco, John Wilmot, Hunter S Thompson, J M Barrie, 'Mort Rainey') Ugh.
The thing is, I heartily recommend that writers spend a lot of time doing stuff that's more interesting than writing. Get a career that's completely unrelated. Jump outside your comfort zone. Hang out with some Tories. If you have sex on a Saturday night, shake things up and do it on a Tuesday lunch. Then, on Saturday night, eat something which isn't attached to your partner. Go to a lecture. Watch something on TV you've avoided in the past. Read a shit newspaper. Listen to atonal free jazz. Examine someone else's navel.
Much of writing consists of not writing. Look around. Think. Read. Think. Think some more. Have a great idea. Write it down. Think some more. Discuss idea. Change idea. Think. Look around. Read. Think. Think some more. At this point you might be ready to write.
Never feel guilty because you haven't written. If you spent your whole life thinking and looking around then wrote one really beautiful thing, that would beat a lifetime of sitting at the desk and hammering out novels about Johnny Depp's beard. Wouldn't it?
(I am aware that the insertion of the photo detracts from my final point)
