Sacrifice? I Think Not

I've heard it so many times before I couldn't begin to figure out who said it first, but it always goes along the lines of 'If you want to succeed in writing, you have to be willing to make the sacrifice'.  Sometimes they mean sacrificing your time, sometimes they mean sacrificing your activities, a lot of times they mean sacrificing sleep, and sometimes it feels like a sacrifice of one's sanity.

Except for me, it isn't a sacrifice to forgo one activity or another to achieve your goals.  When I take a chunk of time and use it for writing, it's not a sacrifice.  There are a lot of other things I could be doing during that time, but none as important as writing.  When I miss prime time TV so I can write, it's not a sacrifice.  I love my shows, but I love my writing more.  When I lose sleep over a story - either because I'm up late writing or because I'm laying in bed kvetching over it - it's not a sacrifice.  I can sleep another time when things aren't so pressing.  And my sanity?  Well, that's questionable anyway.  LOL  But I can find ways to regain it once the crazy time has passed.


But then again, maybe it's all a matter of perspective.  Personally, if I felt like I had to sacrifice something in order to write, I'd begin to resent the act of writing.  After a while, it would eat at me so much I'd never be able to get the words on the page because the whole time I'd be feeling guilt over what I had to sacrifice to take this time to write.  Maybe that's just me.  Could be that other people view it differently and feel noble that they were willing to make a sacrifice for their art.  :shrug:  I don't get it, but to each his own.

What do you think?  Is giving an hour a day (or whatever time you devote) to writing a sacrifice?  What do you give up in order to write?

** Eight days to NaNoWriMo.  Stay tuned for fun and interesting NaNo related posts.