Melanie Ifield's Blog: Writing with Illness - Posts Tagged "discipline"

Recently my dad was looking up an old Western series he enjoyed as a children through Google. He found the author had written over 700 books.
I was looking through the history of people like Enid Blyton, who was also prolific, and starting to feel the weight of it all!
Some people write literally hundreds of books in their lifetimes and others, like Harper Lee, are known only for one or two. Though those one or two are legendary and are the kinds of novels most only wish we could write.
As I slowly head towards forty, sadly I feel that hundreds of titles under my name will not be the reality of my situation. Not only does it seem impossible to come up with that many ideas – I’d have to write upwards of say, 25 titles a year, then work on them, edit them and publish them… - but I feel I’d become a writing machine, instead of a writer.
I don’t know if writing should be organic, not forced, or be a part of a discipline. I’ve read of two different points of view on this.
1. That writing is a creative pursuit, thus we as writers, should always wait for the muse to turn up and write when we are inspired. Our writing would then flow and feel natural and have a freeness and spontaneous feel to it. Which sounds all kinds of good and would be ideal in an ideal world.
2. Writing is a discipline, a job, like any other. We should learn to sit ourselves down at the same time every day, turn off all distractions, and just write. Make ourselves concentrate and over time, the words would just start to flow. But it takes time and discipline and work. You work at writing. We don’t have time to wait upon the muse for it may or may not come calling.

I don’t know where I stand on this. At one time I was writing every day, quite a lot, and pumped out half a dozen books in a short period of time (well I thought it was short, but looking at the numbers from the example authors above, it was nothing!). I thought I was doing really well, but it didn’t feel like work. It was disciplined, yes, but it was also inspired and the muse was definitely in town!
So which is it? Keep to the schedule and plug away even when every word, every sentence, feels wooden and laboured? Or wait until it flows? Until the words come flooding out of your fingertips, magic in every paragraph?
I’m still unsure, but I can tell you one thing – nothing is getting written while I procrastinate about it, so I’d better wrap this up and get back to the ‘real thing’. In this case, editing.

I was texting with dear friend last night and the topic came around to perseverance and discipline. It reminded me of something I was told many years ago and had only sometimes thought about since. I was told that freedom came through discipline. Or put the other way round, discipline leads to the freedom I am seeking.
It didn’t really make all that much sense to me at the time, because I was young and full of reckless freedom that had little or nothing to do with discipline. However, as time has gone by, it makes more sense now. Reflecting on the hard won discipline that has helped me overcome other things in my life, I suddenly felt the shift (or the epiphany!) of knowing come to me last night when my friend and I had said goodnight.
It left me thinking about what I meant by freedom and what is meant by discipline.
Which showed me how I was finding my freedom through the things I was doing (or procrastinating about doing….) every day.
The freedom of good health (not yet mine sadly) through the discipline of good eating habits and sensible sleep patterns combined with measured intervention from medicine.
The freedom of the body through the discipline of regular and appropriate exercise.
The freedom from mental stress through the discipline of things like Tai Chi and meditation (disciplines that I sadly allowed to lapse when I became ill this time round).
The freedom of my mind, allowing me to go places I’d never have dreamed of, meet people and create people, through the discipline of writing.
I realised, in that darkness of deep night, that while my body was experiencing betrayal of itself through a nervous system that plays havoc with certain functions, there was freedom to be had even though it wasn’t the freedom of my body – YET!I could give myself freedom to explore the world through people I meet and the worlds I create in books.
Procrastination is the antithesis of discipline and perseverance and I have given it a lot of leeway, stealing my own freedom by constantly putting off discipline as ‘too hard’.
I’m not saying I’m about to change overnight, though I am grateful for the text conversation! But it has given me food for thought – if I truly value my freedom, in any little way that I can get it these days, then I should be willing to put in the hard yards – the discipline – in all my endeavours.
Nowhere is this seen more than in writing a book. At the end of a day of procrastinating, there is literally nothing on the page to show for the day’s non-work. But at the end of a disciplined day, I quite often can look back at a whole chapter, or two!
With that in mind, I think little steps and little lifestyle changes might help me to bring back the discipline that I once had that allowed me to write seven books and run up mountains. I possibly won’t be running up mountains again, but enjoying a day out with friends without keeling over, is even better.
Here’s to discipline – and the freedom it may afford me one day!