Enthusiasm discipline two writing strategies that work. They are great in fact. The trouble with all that enthusiasm starts with a burst of energy and good will but it does not have the staying power to keep a large project going beyond a day or two. It fizzles as the project becomes a slog. It is when you hit the slog that you find who has discipline and who does not. Of the two you need discipline more.
That’s not to say you don’t need enthusiasm. You do. Enthusiasm can get you off your duff and jumping out the door. It’s the starter. You need it, but it is different from discipline both in how you use it and how you fix it. All too often we confuse the two. Then wind up using the wrong solution for the problem. Today we will look at what both are.
Opposing Forces
Enthusiasm and discipline are not really opposing forces as writing strategies go. If anything they are the forces we use to create things and move mountains. We get a charge from our enthusiasm. It propels us forward to try. Discipline is our inner force to start and stay with a given task till it is done. They are really our why and how. Without both we will drop to the ground never to know what it means to fly.
How we use them.
Quite a few people miss the point that these two traits do in fact work together because they fail to see how they actually work or even which one they are dealing with. Some even think that one of them is not really all that necessary.
Two Stances
In my research I ran across an artist who sees discipline as inferior to enthusiasm. She went to such an extent that she suggested running away from anyone arguing that discipline is a needed element in any art’s tool kit, or any other creative for that matter be they writer, performer or business builder.
To be fair, I have seen some sources that see discipline alone as the only universal one size fits all tool you will need to get your work done. I really cannot blame a panicked artist for their take since there are many who focus on discipline sans enthusiasm.
Feedback Loop
There is a reason though for that focus on discipline. Discipline is about the only way to develop anyone to high enough level in a given filed that enthusiasm will have any real power for them. Humans gain enthusiasm for what they like, which more often than not is something they feel they are good at on some level. The reality is that discipline is reinforced by enthusiasm and in turn this provides a discipline feedback loop to the enthusiasm. We can see that loop in the form of the end results it provides.
More Enthusiasm
There are those who argue that enthusiasm rules over discipline because they think it will not get you very far. They tend to see self-discipline as joyless and cold. What they miss is that there are literally millions of enthusiastic people in the world who never write, draw, paint, sculpt, perform, or create anything. In fact they have more than enough joy and enthusiasm for the task, but they lack the control and direction that discipline brings to the table.
Disciplined Works
The disciplined artist or writer gets to their work regularly instead of spending time on Facebook, binge watching Netflix, spending time with the guys and gals at the bar a little too often, or any number of a million other distractions. While it’s true those enthusiastic folks love their work, the trouble is they don’t love it enough to discipline themselves to actually do the work. So they wind up puttering around with it on the weekends that lead to dozens of unfinished and never started projects. Discipline is what Steven King uses when he argues for the need to finish any given draft in a season.
Discipline Stands with Enthusiasm
This is not to say you should not love your work. In fact one of the most prolific writers of all time Isaac Asimov said you should love your work. He was right. Love of the work, enthusiasm, will drive your work. You need it.
Disciplined to Quit
However, Asimov like all writers had a problem with writing. At times his brain just did not give him all the answers he needed on a given piece of work. His solution was to be disciplined enough to know when to let the work go for a bit, then come back later when his mind had had the time to work things out.
The thing to remember here is that Asimov was highly disciplined. When he was stuck on a given project, he did not just walk away from writing completely. He planned for being stuck at times. That’s when he chose to work on another project that he did have solutions for till his mind could sort things out. This is the reason he had so many typewriters about his office and house, each all ready setup with its own work already in process. This is discipline taken to a very high standard.
Other Productive Writers
Asimov is not the only writer to use this kind of self-discipline. Many highly productive creative writers have multiple projects in play at any given time. That’s really why they are so productive. Multiple projects allow the writer to use our most valuable commodity of time with the greatest economy and outcome both in volume and quality. If you stop writing on a given project to give your subconscious time to work things out but lack the discipline to work on another idea that’s ready to go in your head, then while you may be freed to go cavort about in the hills, that story or article is going to have to wait till you get the stuff in front of it out.
That greatly decreases the chances of what might have proved a brilliant masterpiece ever seeing the light of day. It takes discipline to ensure that your valuable creation time is not wasted on sideline items that denies your inner artist their chance to create.
When they are just not clicking.
There are many times when you will not click with what you are doing. There are just two choices. You can slog till you break through or quit for a time to let the water settle a bit. Both can and do work, but the trick is you have to know when to do which.
To know which to choose you have to know if it is an enthusiasm problem or a discipline problem. The important thing to keep in mind here is that you are facing a problem, not some break in you or a sign you have no skill. Problems are a just problem, which means they also have solutions. Work the problem and you will find the solution, but first you have to ask what problem discipline or enthusiasm.
Feedback is also good for building enthusiasm and discipline. Check out Feedback Response is Important for the full story..
Solve the Problem
Frankly most people will be able to tell instinctively most of the time. But, there are times that your own biases will get in the way. In the end it is just about getting the balance of the feedback loop working again.
Find the Joy
For an enthusiasm problem it is a matter of getting in contact with our why or just giving the brain a chance to chill with all the ideas it had. You can do this with some journaling around the idea, working on something else, or just taking a walk among the trees. Either way you will be able to work through the problem and your words will flow again.
Move in the Grind
For those times when your gut says slog, go for it. In the Marines the most valuable skill that is taught is how to be miserable. We learn to love the grind because of it. We focus on the movement and the grind itself as we let the hump just slide under our feet. Motion is the answer. It takes away our ability to over think things. Over thinking is very much the reason why you see baseball players strike out while you almost never see a tennis player miss a ball. The secret sauce is the fact that the baseball player cannot move, but the tennis player can.
In fact movement ensures the results. Moving prevents the tennis plaer from focusing on hitting the ball and over thinking the process because they are focused on their feet. Meanwhile the major league baseball player can only think about hitting the ball. He cannot help but over think things. In fact he has time to think about a lot of things on the road to Yips land. Pitchers and catchers know this. That’s why pitchers take their time to throw and the catcher often talks smack to get in a batter’s head.
To Write is to Grind
Grinding works much the same way with writing as with a long hump. If you can remove your focus for what you are saying to something else, such as typing accurately, then you can get out of your own mind’s way and let the words flow where and how they come out.
Sometimes no amount of time away will fix the problem like slinging stuff left and right till you are just about blind. We grind then we can rest and go back to edit and cut with the same voracious appetite till we have a clearer idea of the piece we want. It’s much like sculpting clay. We build a general form then cut and smooth away the stuff that is not the shape we want.
Long Term Projects
Things get different when we look to optimize our enthusiasim and discipline for better and longer term performance. Short term hacks will work but over the long term you need a better strategy, one what will feed both your enthusiasm and strengthen your discipline.When you are working as a professional with a deadline with less than interesting material there are some ideas you can use to keep enthusiastic over the writing itself and not just the need for a paycheck. Though, that fact has been quite inspirational for many working writers for centuries. The key here is to make the work interesting. I have found that blogging gives up some great ideas that are useful for other forms of writing.
Look for new angles. Use a clever metaphor for the frame work or flip the advice to tell people how not to be successful.
Use some form of writing constraint for the piece. For instance refuse to use a given vowel or word in the piece. This will stretch you a bit and work the vocabulary.
Get really focused on the reader. Someone is going to read this. Make this bone dry stuff as clear and direct as possible for that person. Creating a clear and uncluttered work is the hallmark of a master writer.
A plan works better than hitting a blank wall.
You can avoid crashing to a great degree by creating your own set of habits and rituals that work around your over thinking mind. Five habits to have in play for your daily work are:
Build your work into your day.
For writing to work consistently it needs to be a part of your larger routine. That routine has to be geared to support your work with time as well as the physical, mental and emotional energy to do it. Much in the same way your daily system will get you to work on time and ready to work instead of being late and tired because you only got five hours of sleep, skipped breakfast and forgot to do your laundry this last week
Use a warm up routine.
Letting your brain know it’s time to work and possibly what you will be doing are two great ways to ease your way into a productive writing session. Here are some ideas to try.
Journal
Journal about what you are going to write on or create a mind dump of everything that pops into your head of things you need to do, have done or want to do right now. Either way primes and clears that mental deck.
Eat
Get some coffee or tea, maybe a light meal. A little food is good to get chugging, but keep it light. A heavy meal has the opposite effect.
Re-read Yesterday’s Work
Re-read what you wrote yesterday. A variation of this is to stop at the end of your writing day and take a moment to write down your next step or part you will write/edit/etc…The idea is to remind yourself where you are and what you need to work on so the mind can get to work when you come back.
Research Review
Review your research, beat sheet or foolscap outline. Spend some time thinking about your theme. This serves a double purpose since many writers don’t really know their themes till they are well into the writing process, sometimes not even then. More time spent working on the book will make will solve this problem and generate some ideas for what you do want to write.
Meditate
Meditation is also a great way to train the mind to focus while clearing the mental decks. It’s a great one two tool to get ready for today and to strengthen yourself for tomorrow.
Be prepared.
Know that your brain and life are going to play tricks on you to get you out of the chair. Don’t fall for it. Get your pages.
What is Writing?
Have a broader view of what writing is. A lot of people tend to think that all that you do to write is just put words on paper, or as Paul Gallico wrote:
“It is only when you open your veins and bleed onto the page a little…”–Confessions of a Story Writer 1946.
That’s a great metaphore, but not even close to the reality case. There several stages in writing. The least noticed are the preparation, the edit and rewriting stages.
Lore
The writing lore seems to leave people with the vision of some genius pounding keys and cranking out pages by the fist full. Even those writers like Jack London who wrote Call of the Wild in less than a month with such skill that the editors could not make any major changes to the manuscript still had to pass through the other unseen stages.
Reality
The reality is you need to have your homework done, read research, and at least an idea of what you are going to write to some degree before you sit-down. That can be as much as three read books and complete out line with character sketches or as little as a story outline from a classic book and the two main characters. Pressfield started with this for “The Legend of Bagger Vance”.
No matter where you are in the process, you have to start with an understanding of both where you are and what you need to do next.
What about just sitting down at the computer to pants it, but you are a total blank? Take a step back and asks what is this about? What am I missing? Go from there.
Timers are your friend.
Use a timer to write in short periods to help focus the mind, whetehr you know what you are going to write about or don’t. Most of the times I have used vary from five to twenty-five minutes. Training your mind to work in a limited time helps your mind sort through the crud faster and get to the point without much force of will power on your part. When the time is up you can take a break, take off for the day, or even start another round.
There is always a why, just ask.
What is the reason why what you are writing is hard? That is because it is hard or you don’t know something. Time to work the problem. You are not lazy or lacking discipline or have no willpower. It is just a problem to solve, so be nice to yourself and ask why you are struggling to get the words. Look for the real hang-up. You just might need to let things process or take a nap or maybe you really need to spend time with your spouse. Take care of those things then come back and hit it.
More Enthusiasm
You will also want to keep that enthusiasm up. Just like a plant you have to water it a little regularly. Here are some ideas on how to do that:
Play around a bit.
We tend to be most enthusiastic was children, so getting back in touch with that kid is going to have some positives for your personal energy levels.
You can daydream a bit about your child hood or your past in general when you were more child-like through your journals, photos, or even just your daydreams. The point is to connect with the feelings you had back then to be enthusiastic.
Interview yourself as if you are a book character. Ask about fears, loves, who they trust, who they don’t, etc…
Get off the couch and do something that moves you into your body. Build, craft, play games, roll around on the floor like you used to.
Gratitued Practice
Take some time to work through painful or repressed emotions and practice some gratitude. There’s a great meditation call the 6-Phase Meditation that used one of the phases to call to mind some slight you might still feel angry about and forgive it. Another phase calls for you to feel gratitude for things in your life. Processes like this are great for releasing those mental blocks and can aid writers clear their mental decks. Choosing to leave the pain behind while reinforcing the positives in our lives helps keep the mind balanced and relieves much of our daily stress.
Take a Nature Bath.
Studies have shown that reconnecting with the natural world around us grounds us. For many, including myself, much of our childhood was spent outdoors running around and playing. It is one of the key areas we connect with our inner joy and enthusiasm. Immersing ourselves in nature is as easy as taking a walk. The Japanese go so far as to recommend taking a Treebath, walk in a forest, regularly to cleanse the soul. Even some house plants and watching some nature shows help.
Spend Time with Success
Go look at some of your previous work or someone else’s work. Sometimes you forget that you have done things before. Reacquainting yourself with your younger self’s writings can remind you of what you are capable of. You can also take some time to read other people’s work too. A good story can fire the imagination. Use those memories and that to fire your own imagination.
Last Words
The thing to remember with discipline and enthusiasm is that they are not in opposition. They are very much dependent on each other to survive. If the words are just not coming, take some time to find out which is stuck and how best to move the two back into a supporting flow.
Photo by Garrett Sears on Unsplash