It's Not About Discipline

At an event recently I was asked if I had advice on how to become more disciplined so you got more writing done. I think this is not the right way to look at it. If you think you need more discipline, that means you are going around telling yourself all the time how undisciplined you are and that you are a bad, bad person for not getting your writing done.

It’s possible that you really do lack discipline. But far more likely are a whole host of other things, including:

1. You are too nice to tell people no when they ask you to do things for them that aren’t writing.

2. You don’t know what your story is yet. When you know that, it often writes itself, or at least it burns inside your head and demands to be written.

3. You have certain compulsions to finish other projects first before you write (cleaning, etc). That’s not lack of discipline. It’s called a mental illness.

4. You have children who genuinely need attention and that means you only have 5 minutes stretches of time to write in.

5. You have physical health issues that need to be addressed before you are going to feel alert and happy enough to write on a regular basis.

6. You work a full-time job and are too exhausted emotionally to have resources to write creatively daily. Try the weekend instead and build a schedule from there. Lacking a schedule is not the same as lacking discipline.

7. You need to figure out the right time of day to write where you will have energy for it.

8. You haven’t given yourself permission to give up on the current manuscript and your heart isn’t in it anymore. As soon as you realize you’re “allowed” to move on, you will find you love writing again and don’t lack discipline.

9. You’re wounded from a nasty critique and need to recover from this.

10. You’re writing in the wrong genre/to the wrong age group.

People who truly lack discipline don’t get much done in life. If you only lack discipline in this one area, it may be time for you to think about why that is. We often beat ourselves up instead of investigating the real problem. Be a scientist here and think about a bigger picture.