Half an Hour?

Allegedly, this is a Robert Hass quote: "Take the time to write. You can do your life's work in half an hour a day." 

I say "allegedly" because I haven't seen first-hand where or when he said this. I only found it after hearing Jane Hirshfield this evening quote Hass as saying that you don't have to write a poem every day. 

Regardless, it takes me more than half an hour to write a poem. I may start on, or tweak, or labor over a poem every day. But I don't write one every day. Even if the first draft is quick, the final draft usually represents hours of work. 

Even posting a blog entry daily and researching markets and submitting the poems that I hope will be a good match takes more than thirty minutes. Whether or not this is my "life's work," I can expect to spend 300 to 600 hours this April in poetry-related writing. 

And that's fine with me. I enjoy the process. It's a slow, sludgy, slog of a process. But I like it.