Wednesday, August 31, 2011

Day 7: Cultivating Self-Discipline

Good timing on this one! I hadn't really looked at the structure of the book (The Daily Writer by Fred White) before jumping in. Since Fred uses actual dates (rather than Day 1, Day 2, etc) I started with the exercise on August 25th. I'm happy he has exercises like today's (and yesterday's) sprinkled in throughout the year.

Summary of pre-exercise meditation:
Inspiration is great, but unreliable and can relying on it can "do a writer in." The more you write, the more inspired you become and eventually you won't be slogging to the computer or notebook to force yourself to write, but quite the opposite. You'll be forcing yourself to take a break from writing.
Fred writes about self-discipline and ways in which to attain it (rewarding yourself with food, coffee, etc) but ultimately you just freakin' do it.

It's actually a great meditation and my summary doesn't do it justice.

Try This:
1) Write a page on this topic: Things that distract me from writing." For each distraction you mention, explain why it distracts you and what you might do to keep it from distracting you in the future.

2) Conduct a survey to determine how other writers practice self-discipline and what they consider to be their greatest distractions. Summarize your findings in an article.

I'll post mine later today since I have two big and (one tiny little huge one) distractions on their way over right now :)


Later

My Personal Writing Distractions
by Laurie Guerin
 The things that distract me from writing fall into two  categories:
1)    Things that need doing
a.       To keep a roof over my head, food in my stomach and clothes on my back:
Work, pay bills, shop for food, shop for clothes
b.      To stay out of jail: Do taxes, pay DMV and ticket fines
c.       To stay healthy: Exercise, keep appointments with doctors, dentists, attend dance classes
d.      To avoid botulism and hantavirus: Keep house clean
e.      To avoid alienating people: Do laundry
f.        To keep pets happy and alive: Feed and wash them
g.       (Most distracting of all) to see the people I love
What I might do to keep all of the above from distracting me in the future? Well, I think I’ve done it by committing to this blog and announcing my commitment to my world. The challenge will be attending to a.  through e. (although suffering the consequences of not attending to e. would give me fewer distractions and more time to write).  f. I would never not do (well, they don’t get a weekly bath like my friend Farah’s dog) and without g. there would be no inspiration for writing. I also might try structuring every hour of my day like my friend Elizabeth does.

2)     Fear of sucking
a.       Running out of ideas
b.      Running out of inspiration
Or
Not having either in the first place
What I might do to overcome this distraction is write to find out. And I am. But this is perhaps the second biggest distraction of all (see letter g. above). Terror, not just fear.

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