This post might actually call in to question all of that "hard" work I was talking about in the post below. Maybe a better term for what I was trying to describe was consistency in ambition--or something like that. Anyway, my overall point there was that to get to a point where you have a manageable schedule doing what you enjoy, you have start at the bottom and that takes drive.
This actually leads me to another point too...I've known people who did not start at the "bottom" per se of their craft. Rather, they chose to go through the suburban route of schooling, only to find when they got out of their schooling with post-graduate degrees, they were too far up the ladder in expertise to be comfortable starting at the bottom. For example, the PhD who loves literature and aspires to be a novelist full time, but won't deign to write articles for the Internet at $20 or less a pop, just to pay the bills. And then there's any person with a J.D. or Masters degree whose graduate school friends are doing exactly what their degree was meant to do--staying on that same suburban path--but who aren't humble enough to ask if they can crash on their paid friends' designer couches while they look for a job. I got off track. And, start at the bottom, what you learn from there is the only way to prepare yourself for the top. NO, that doesn't mean skip college. Just don't assume college is your fast ticket up the ladder, espesh if you're going for a creative-type career.
ANYWAY, the Internet. Here's a piece of sage advice: do not underestimate the knowledge you can gain from the Internet--literally. Most of the time when I hear people say "you know everything about that!" or "How do you know that!?" My answer, almost embarrassingly, is that I googled it. And not only that, but this knowledge (such as some of the more esoteric grammar rules) took about 30 seconds to acquire.
