DISCIPLINE WHEN YOU WRITE

There are times when you have to beat your lazy self into submission. There is always a part of the makeup of we writers that hits those times when we don't want to put seat to the chair and pen to paper. We'd rather play.

I haven't been playing but have found my injury and pain has curtailed the drive to write. I think my muse has been hijacked. I realize we can't always control this urge to be nonproductive but I am putting myself on a guilt trip. So I have tried to do something I teach writers to follow: take up my notebook and write this resistance out of my system. As I always preach, I plan to allow five or ten minutes to these voices who have nothing to do with what I should be writing--maybe work on my next book, write a short story for an online site, a new poem for my critique group, or sketch out another children's story. (If I worked on all of these, even bits and pieces, my notebook would certainly not be empty.)

Two friends and I have started a new snail-mail writer's group. We keep in touch in between submissions to each other (a newsletter from each of us to each other)by email and in a short while have already created a good bond for helping each other with our writing and our lives. I don't like groups where they expect you to be perfect or to always be striving for an agent or a market for your bestseller. I also don't enjoy groups that tear the offered writings into little pieces word by word but, on the other hand, I don't want someone to always hold back with critiques or pat me on the back with a "wonderful everything" proclamation either.

But I need to write, as do you. I need to find my way back to the demand on my mind and heart to create. And that takes descipline--and maybe more than one trick. I can tell myself I only have a certain time each day to write so I can't fool around and waste one minute of it. In other words, I should set a writing/working routine.

I read once that every writer should try to fill one of the 80-word spiral notebooks each month. That's a mountain for me--not because I can't do it but because I writein so many notebooks--writing, morning glories, quotes, etc. I need to stick to a open-ended notebook for writing anything and everything that comes to mind.

Whatever it takes, you and I should descipline ourselves to write something--dare I say somewhat useful--on a reasonable schedule. Only then can we continue to call ourselves writers.