Towards a Disciplined Writer’s Life

Ask any writer, and they’ll tell you: It’s not the actual writing that’s difficult, for the most part. It’s the actual sitting down to do it that’s difficult. Before we sit down to write, we find a million and one excuses not to, and most of those excuses really are just that! Excuses!

Developing the discipline it takes to sit down on a regular basis and pound out a poem, story, article, or chapter in a novel, is the greatest gift you can give yourself as a writer. Whether you aspire to literary greatness, desire a profitable freelancing career, or wish only to record your thoughts, these suggestions will help you learn how to sit down, and just do it.

Discover Your Style

Some of us like to write in pencil on a yellow legal pad, and some of us like to pound away at our keyboards. Others prefer to write longhand in fountain pen in a Moleskine, or leather bound journal. Some select cheap disposable pens and spiral bound notebooks as our repositories. Whatever your preference, discover it, and then use it. Discovering it is a simple matter of keeping a journal in several different ways for a week at a time. Spiral bound one week, computer file the next, and so on until you’ve found the method that seems to work best for you. Once you’ve found it, use it exclusively. You’ll find that establishing a ritualistic method of writing will help get you focused more quickly when you sit down to write.

Make the Time

Notice I didn’t say, “Find the time”. I said, “Make the time” and that’s exactly what I mean. Take out your day-timer, or load your electronic calendar. Block out writing time for the next five out of seven days. Yes, you may give yourself two days off each week, but during those other five days, make at least one hour of the twenty-four hour day your writer’s hour. Call it that, if you like. Make it sacred. During that one hour, (or more – I need more, because I spend at least a half hour of my scheduled writing time humming and hawing and checking my e-mail before settling down to actually write.) you will focus all of your attention and energy on writing. Alert family members to the fact that this hour is your hour, and you are not to be disturbed. If this means popping in a video for the kids, or sending your spouse off on some errands (or out to play poker, go shopping, or whatever will keep them from knocking on the door of your inner sanctum), then do it. If it means hiring a sitter, or trading childcare time with a friend, do it. If you can write while chaos goes on around you, and being completely alone is impossible, then go for it.

Have An Inner Sanctum

This might be easier than it sounds. I live in a two-bedroom house with my spouse, and two teenagers. On weekends, when I do the most writing, we have a teenybopper over. There is no space that is only mine anywhere in my life, yet I have managed to create my own space.

My “Inner Sanctum” is a couch. It’s red. It’s leather. It’s about six feet long, and it’s mine. Adding headphones, which I plug into my laptop, makes this work for me. I can ignore the goings on around me so long as I’ve got Imogen Heap or Anugama blaring into my ears. People watch television around me. They make and take phone calls. Life happens at an astounding volume, but when I sit here on this couch, and I plug in my headphones, I’m in my inner sanctum. If attempting this would drive you to murder/suicide, create a corner of your bedroom that’s dedicated to your writing. Or write in the bathroom. Or the car. Maybe you think I’m kidding, but I’m being completely serious. Find space. And use it.

Create a Goal and Reward System

Personally, I’m all about the word count. I thrill to the chirring whir of my laptop as it tabulates the number of words I wrote that day. Before sitting down to begin a project, I create a list of milestones. The first 1000 words gets me a Grande Frappuccino. The first 10 000? A manicure. Having this list of milestones and associated rewards can keep me going when I’m feeling uninspired, especially since I have told my spouse what these milestones are. If I say, “I’m going to get my nails done” he knows enough to ask me – “Did you write 10 000 words yet?”

After he’s recovered from the swift kick in the shin I’ll surely deliver if I haven’t, I will knuckle under and write those first 10 000 words. Otherwise, my nails will look like crap until the day I die, and we can’t have that, now, can we?

Word count may not work for you. Some writers prefer to go scene-by-scene or chapter-by-chapter. Some like to add up pages. Some create an outline and use the major events as milestones. Whatever gets you excited will work best.

And please make sure you actually reward yourself. When you don’t, you are breaking a promise to yourself, and eventually your imagination, which is really nothing more than a little kid in disguise, will refuse to cooperate when you try to access it. It will flop down on the floor and have a tantrum, and you will be left high and dry with nary a good idea in sight.

Permit Yourself to Suck

This is probably the most difficult step of them all. If you’re anything like me, you want every word you write to be just so. You have, in fact, caught yourself writing a paragraph, throwing it out, writing another, and repeating until you found yourself buried in a sea of paper snowballs. Do not do this. It makes baby trees cry, and its very bad for your writer’s soul.

Let it suck. It’s a first draft, for crying out loud. And if it’s the second or third draft, well, let that suck, too. I can almost guarantee that if you finish it, and put it away for a period of days (at least a week), you will find merit in what you’ve written. You have my permission to moan and groan about how terrible it is, even while you’re writing it, but write it anyway. Explore every half brained idea that comes into your mind, if you like. Swear like a sailor as you reluctantly commit the stupidest, most ridiculous sentences to paper. But commit yourself to the act of writing as a process, a process that includes writing the worst first draft you could possibly write. If you do this, you will find yourself with a half decent second draft, a pretty good third draft, and an excellent fourth draft.

And there you have it. Five small things you can do that will move you towards a disciplined writer’s life. There are a thousand more things you can do to improve your writing. There are books you can read, and exercises you can undertake. But you must begin writing before these will have any impact whatsoever.

So, begin, already!

Happy Quills!