Reminds me… years ago, I played in a casual basketball league made up of film industry professionals (directors, DPs, screenwriters, etc, accustomed to going from one project to the next).

As I was lacing up my sneakers before a game, one of the guys, a television director, asked me if I’d been working.

“No,” I responded. “I’ve just been writing.”

“Well,” he said, with a grin, “writing is work.”

I’d literally never thought of it that way. Work, in my mind, had to be laborious. That remark changed the way I’ve felt about my profession ever since. It gave me newfound self respect.