Today, I watched The Pacifier. It was on, don't judge me. If you haven't seen it, the premise is basically the same as Kindergarden Cop or that movie where Jackie Chan did exactly the same thing. Vin Diesel is a badass Navy SEAL and then, in the course of his mission, ends up protecting/babysitting a group of troublesome kids from an upper-middle class white family. The thing that stuck out to me about this movie, and the reason I bring it up now, is that Diesel's character approaches a number of issues from the kids' behavior to directing an amateur production of The Sound of Music (seriously) with the same solution: needs more discipline. This is used to humorous effect, what with the kids crawling on their bellies and doing drills and shooting Taliban insurgents (I may have made one of those up).
I think that applies to writers. The real key, the real work of writing, is self-discipline.
I'm not harping here. I'm not the most disciplined person. I'm overweight and I eat poorly. I was in the best shape of my life at sixteen, when I had a football coach shouting at me through drills and weight training. Not to say I didn't enjoy those things. I still do, in fact, but I need constant support or I just...stop. I've struggled with smoking and other, less savory things, in life. All a lack of self-discilpine. Don't feel bad for me, though, that isn't the point. The point is, you need discipline.
In King's On Writing, he gives an example of his own method. He writes two thousand words every day. If he finishes something, he sets it aside and starts something new. If he is halfway through a sentence, he stops and leaves himself a note so he knows where to pick up the next day. He allows, of course, that every writer will have a different method and that what works for him may not work for someone else, but look at his body of work and tell yourself that discipline didn't have anything to do with it.
Not the quality of his work, mind you. I'm talking quantity. The quality of any writer's work has a lot to do with the amount of time they dedicate to writing, but it also requires raw talent. I don't want to discuss that here. Not in-depth. Suffice to say, discipline and raw talent will take you far. But raw talent without discipline? Good luck.
Ideally, you should write every day. Right now, I'm in a fortuitous position that makes that fairly easy. I'm unemployed. Not a bad thing to be, not when you're trying to get your writing off the ground (not a good thing either, naturally, don't get fired just so you can have time to write). Now, should you write for four hours? That's up to you. The amount of time you have to dedicate to writing will vary with your obligations and your lifetsyle. The important thing is to dedicate that time. Buckle down and make yourself do it. Have a free half hour between class and soccer practice? Boom, write. Have a three hour break between jobs? Boom, write.
One thing about our society is that most of us that are trying to juggle a thousand things, have a fairly regular schedule. That makes finding time to write a little easier. You know when you have to be at work, at school, grocery shopping, doing laundry, orbiting the earth in a hot air balloon, whatever. Your life is your own. I'm just saying that if you want to make it, you have to work on your writing.
I don't schedule myself these days. I used to, back when I was in school or when I had to write around a job. I'd schedule my writing time and it was tough to stick to, but I did it. I wrote for two hours some days, forty-five minutes other days. It varied based on the day of the week, but I always made room for it. Now, well, things are a bit different.
These days I get up around mid-morning, straighten up the apartment, walk the dog, check my e-mail and spend a few hours loitering about on the internet or playing Skyrim. Some days I go and do odd jobs or visit my parents. Once the hottest part of the day is gone, I sit at my desk in this little nook in my livingroom, beside a grand window that looks out over the yard and a copse of trees behind the building and spend my evenings writing. Some days I get to it earlier, other days I don't get into the meat of my writing until the sun has gone down, but I spend at least two hours writing every day.
I split my time a little unevenly. I spend most of it working on new projects. The blogs or Skyborn, mostly, get my attention just about every day. I try to devote a half hour of most days to the edits I'm working on. I'm sure as I progress into the story I'll run into problems that take some time to work out in my head and, while I work on those, I'll devote more time to Star Rider or Eve.
Just to give you an idea of the difference that little bit of discipline makes, when I started writing the first draft of Eve of the Dragonspeaker I was in seventh grade. I didn't finish it until I graduated from high school. Now, allowing for a few re-writes and mishaps, I'd say it took me more than five years to write a single draft. I finished the second draft my sophmore year of college. That's another three years. So two drafts, each about 300,000 words, and it took me more than eight years.
I started For Glory that same year and finished it two months ago. So three years and roughly 500,000 words. See the difference?
More importantly, I started this current project about three weeks ago. I've already written about twenty pages of notes for Skyborn, the first three chapters, and every single post on this blog. AND (but wait, there's more!) I've edited the first two chapters each of Eve and Star Rider.
All the difference is in the details, you see?
Now the most common argument you'll hear from writers when you tell them they need to be more disciplined is some bullshit about not being able to force creativity. They want to give you the idea that their ability to write (or paint or anything) is some cosmic force that can't be stifled by foolish mortal concepts like schedules.
Give me a break. Look, I know you can't force yourself to have ideas. I know that. But if you're passionate about a project (and you'd better be) you won't have to. See, you're not forcing creativity. You're channeling it. Rather than random flashes of inspiration, conditioning yourself this way will help you turn those floods into a steady stream. Sure, you'll still get the occasional crushing wave of ideas, but you can handle them if you've taught yourself to write daily.
Some days will be hard, but if you're suffering with Writer's Block, (and you won't suffer nearly as much once you get disciplined, trust me) on one project then move onto another. The key isn't to force yourself into a linear path. You can juggle as many projects as you like, and move from one to the next at your leisure.
I don't care what you write, as long as you write every day.
Devotedly Yours,
-S.R.
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