Starting out as a writer, how much time should I budget daily to reasonably get going?

Starting out as a writer, how much time should I budget daily to reasonably get going? –@Bmp135

The most important thing is consistency. Every day. Seven days a week. Writing is like a muscle. You start to get writer’s block more frequently when the muscle atrophies. I’ve been writing consistently since 2002. Before that I wrote consistently from 1991-1995.

Nothing good, mind you. Just writing. But, I’ve also read a lot of books on writing by well-known and successful writers. Here’s the general consensus that I’ve experienced myself and all the writers I have read seemed to have lived by:

Three to five hours a day, every day.

Walter Mosely (one of my favorite mystery writers) has written that if you just write 500 words a day (three paragraphs) then in 100 days you have 50,000 words. Which is a roughly the length of a small but publishable novel. So you can write 3.5 novels a year. Or write one really really good one that you’ve rewritten quite a bit. Try it.

One of my new year’s resolutions is to try it.