Why I'm So Keen on Discipline

Sometimes I wonder what it's like to live inside someone else's head.

I know that's not a particularly novel thought, but it still seems very true to me. It's literally impossible (with today's technology) to have any idea what it's truly like to be another person. Not what you see on the outside, not what the person says or does or how they act in various settings. But that constant interior monologue and those inner moods that you and only you can experience.

For me, all too often, that monologue and those moods would lead me into wasting time and other unproductive neighborhoods. I've been very fortunate in the past decade or so to have some good influences and also, in more recent years, to have read some helpful books specifically on the concept of happiness. Those things have helped, but they're not a panacea. I still have those innate tendencies that would have me utterly frittering away hours. Days. Weeks.

And this is why, for me, having discipline in my life is so important. I've talked about this before, but there are plenty of days on which I don't feel like writing. In fact, today has been one of them. And yet, here I am, taking the time to put these words down on the screen. And, for the moment at least, I feel good. I feel productive. The only interior monologue is the one that's helping me craft these words. Are they necessarily the most insightful words I've ever written? The more useful? Probably not. But I'm not giving in or giving up; I'm pushing through the temptation to do nothing and moving forward even if only incrementally. And perhaps someone else will read this and recognize themselves and find some benefit.

I'm finally using this approach for something other than just writing. There's a whole chapter in "Write Every Day" about using the philosophies and practices behind the Daily Writing Chain to develop a daily routine for other things in your life. I've recently managed to do just that for something relating to the small business my wife and I run and at this point, I'm up to almost 50 days on that other goal chain, though I did take one "mulligan" day on that chain during Pulpfest. (Still no mulligans on the Daily Writing Chain and that's up to almost a year now!) Again, that feels good.

And that's the truly frustrating thing -- getting these things done almost always feels good! I sit there and think "I don't feel like writing. I don't feel like working on the business. I'd much rather just sleep." But having the routine helps me to get past that and when I'm done I generally feel better than when I started.

In a way, I wish that I didn't need these tools. I wish that I would just naturally feel full of energy and directed towards my goals without that extra impetus. But, in the end, I suppose I'm simply grateful that I've found tools that work for me.

Sunday Links: December 18, 2011 Edition

After today there are 13 more days before we turn the page from 2011 to 2012. A lot of people are thinking about goals for next year. A couple of efforts along these lines have cropped up in the twitter-blog-o-verse recently. I heartily endorse both (for whatever that's worth).  @kthanna and @I_Am_LadyJai are leading the charge for #writemotivation and @caramichaels is rounding up people looking to write 500 words on their works-in-progress every day via #WIP500.

Speaking of goals, this is a good time to talk about my December goal progress.

1) Write and submit a new short story for each weekend in December. On-pace and I think I'll be in good shape for the next two weeks as long as I don't let the holiday weekend trip me up!
2) Keep my regular blogging schedule with the exception of a possible Christmas weekend hiatus. On-pace. As mentioned last week (and below) I will indeed be taking a Christmas weekend hiatus.
3) Make decisions on how to proceed with four stories written earlier this year which are not yet on submission and act on those decisions. Some progress. First of all, it's three stories -- not four. I don't know where I got the count of four from... Of the three, I've taken a last pass through one and gotten it out the door. Another, I've decided what I want to do next with it. But it involves trying to trim about 1000 words or 20%. Eek. The third one, I think has a decent core but needs a lot of work. I'm still struggling to decide what to do with it.
4) Read at least fifty short stories which are new to me.  Slightly behind pace. At 50% complete but we're about 60% of the way through the month. No excuse for not finishing this one up, though.
5) Draft January goals to align with my second pass through "Adrift." Already done.

And now, on to the links...

Sunday Links: December 4th, 2011 Edition

As part of my writing goals for December, I finished up a new short story Saturday and got it out on submission. This was the first of my "Write 1/Sub 1" stories for the month. This one ended up developing sort of interestingly. I ended up just starting freewriting with a setting and some characters and saw where it took me. That's something I basically never do, but it seems to have worked well in this case. So the lesson here is that sometimes breaking out of your existing writing routines can work well.

I also got a little pleasant surprise in my email this afternoon, word that one of my story submissions already out has moved on to a second round of consideration. Not a sale yet, but a nice little bit of encouragement for a Sunday afternoon.

And now, on to the links...

The Seinfeld Chain

One of my first blog entries talked about how "Writing Begets Writing" and NOT writing begets not writing. I'm really committed to maintaining the momentum I've built up in the last month around my writing. Some days it feels like the easiest, most natural thing in the world. Other days it can feel like a real drag -- the words don't want to come on a new story, the story I'm going through an edit on feels like it's just not working, etc.

So I'm looking for ways to help myself keep writing. I've already talked about one of the techniques, using peer pressure as a way to keep myself writing, not wanting to have to tell people "Yeah, I guess I sort of set that aside for now." (Again.)

Getting into the Twitter and blog world has been helpful, too. I spend lots of non-writing time thinking about writing and discussing writing with other people. There's a hazard, though, that I could end up spending all my time talking about writing instead of actually writing. That's a balance that I'm trying to carefully calibrate. (Hmm... Could that be foreshadowing of a future blog post?)

My third approach to holding myself accountable to my own writing goals will be The Seinfeld Chain.

Writing Begets Writing

This isn't exactly a novel thought.  A google search for the phrase "writing begets writing" comes back with quite a few results. There are a lot fewer hits, though, for the equally true converse "NOT writing begets NOT writing."

For me, at least, it's incredibly easy to NOT write.  I've repeatedly gone years without doing any serious writing at all.  Then something will spark me to start writing again, and all of a sudden, I'll be at it full-tilt. Until something comes along and I stop writing and start not-writing.

I've gone through this off-and-on cycle as far back as I can remember.  I dabbled at lots of various juvenile writing when I was, well, a juvenile.  Then around my senior year of high school, something led me to start writing. A lot.  Just in the last few days, I found my old folder of (handwritten) records of story and poetry submissions to magazines in the 1990-1992 timeframe. There were probably over a hundred submissions, in all, for around two dozen different works.  (I've always been surprised when a professional writer indicates that they've forgotten about something they wrote. I guess I shouldn't be surprised any more. Several of the titles I'd written on those pages meant absolutely NOTHING to me.)

Then, around early 1992, I just stopped writing, other than papers for my classes. But, from time to time, I'd start back up in a burst of activity.  One summer was spent in part working with two co-writers on an epic comedy screenplay.  (This, most likely, did not play to my strengths as a writer. But it was an interesting experience all the same.)  Probably the second most-sustained amount of writing I've done was in 2007. I wrote quite a few new short stories during that time, a couple of which have been published.

For a while during late-2007 I was doing a "Seinfeld chain" where I wrote at least 500 words every day.  I wrote the longest story I've ever written then -- a mystery of about 9000 words.  Then I hit a bit of a dry patch.  For a few days I said "Well, I'll do revising on some of the things I've written, and I'll give myself credit for that."  My self saw through that ruse real quickly and said "Hey, we're back to NOT writing now. Groovy."

And that, mostly, is where things sat until recently. I was still occasionally looking at my submission log (now in a nice spreadsheet) and sending out what I'd written, but there were even long lags in this activity.

In the last few weeks, I've written two new stories, come up with an idea for NaNoWriMo, made notes on another story, and done some moderately-heavy revisions to one of those 2007 stories.  Clearly, the switch is back to ON.

So, why write all this?  Heck if I know.  I'm writing now, right?  So, I guess I'm writing about writing. And hopefully some of my friends are reading this, and they'll ask me from time to time "So, how's the writing going?" Maybe that will help me keep from going back to NOT writing.