Back to writing

What does a scientist spend most time on? If you had asked me this before I became a scientist, I would probably have answered lab work, or field work, or reading....but actually I am finding it is writing by far. You spend two months doing research and the rest of the year analyzing data and writing it up. My feeling is that an average paper takes about 3 years to get published. Those 3 years include not only conducting the study, but also re-editing figures etc for various journals and waiting times in between. That's a lot!
I am currently writing a lot again, with a deadline of submitting this on the 1st of April. It's the second of 5 manuscripts from my thesis I hope to get published. Sometime....The deadline for this one is so tight that I ended up making a day to day planning for the writing process. Should keep me busy for the next three weeks or so...