If you have enough content in your head to write every day, then writing every day works.

If you don't, however, having a set schedule can turn the reluctance to write into a full blown aversion. Writers like Stephen King write every day because they have the skill to do so. Advice like Chuck Palahniuk telling writers that all they need to do is hit their deadlines is kind of ridiculous. If you have deadlines, then absolutely, hit them. If you don't, what can you do?

There's a lot of advice on how to write your first novel and a lot of advice on how to get your book published, but every writer has to figure out for themselves how to get from where they are to writing at a level that coming up with the content to write every day. Writing every day can kill a story if there's a fatal flaw at the beginning and everything that comes after that point has to be cut.

Of course it's assumed that if you are a write every day kind of writer that you're going to go back and edit out or fix all the stuff that was just in there to hit your daily goal. Thanks to word processors, though, it's very easy to make the final draft a polished version of the first one.

Telling people to just be more disciplined is like telling people to lose weight by diet and exercise as though people who are overweight/can't write hasn't already heard that a thousand times. If it was possible for some people to have enough content and enough drive to write every day, they already would be doing so.

Based on Kindle's numbers from 2012, the percentage of your self published books making over 10k is 0, if you go by per hundred. Only a thousand authors (.2%) made over 10k, which is still far below the poverty line. Only .02% of the authors made over 100k.

I've critiqued a lot of work, first for free, now for pay. I've seen the wall writers hit when the only way to fix what is wrong with the story is a partial or total rewrite. Every writer is competing against themselves to make the story the best it can be, but once it gets onto the slushpile for any particular market, it's now up against work by writers who did put that time in.

But more important than that, most people will never have the amount of success that they want, no matter where they personally set the bar. Depending on your talent level, every writer should be at least able to write well, lots, or fast. Sometimes they can pick two. But good writing that is done quickly on a tight schedule is extremely rare and something that for the vast majority of writers out there, has to be learned.