Theme? Writing and Life is what comes to me... how to balance the writing life with the other tugs you may have...
The ABCDEaria of the Writing Life -
D is for Discipline
For those of you who have read me before you know I like to write about the paramitas and the writing life. Discipline is one of the paramitas. You can find it on my side-bar under the paramitas if you like - I won't go into it here - we all know what discipline is and I think it is scary for many people. It sounds punitive but that is wrong-headed. True discipline is a joy - it is the marriage between passion and work and what marries them is habit. I don't need to decide every day that I am going to walk for instance. I already decided that walking makes me sane so I will walk every day. I know that writing also keeps me sane so I will write every day. When I have revision to do I will make myself a schedule and I will make it workable and once I'm swinging along inside of that discipline, joy will arise. It just does. I don't have to discover that every time - I know it now and so I can keep on keeping on. If I decide that my discipline is balance then I know that I will have times when I naturally can do one thing more than the other and it will even out in the wash. It is easy for me to write in Labrador - a little trickier here but I will write these little essays, I will write my letter a day (a discipline I started on Oct.13th of last year), I will write in my journal and there will be a thread that keeps me in the writing life. Ah discipline - I loves ya!
5 comments:
Great post, Jan! As a very disciplined person, I appreciate it, too...discipline too often gets a bad rap.
Jan - You put that so beautifully. Real discipline is a very healthy thing and actually nurtures passion. It allows passion to feed us while making us stronger. Terrific post!
I think I'm kind of lacking in discipline right now. But at least I'm managing to visit people for the A to Z ... right? hehe
Discipline is something I need to work on. Great post, Jan.
I like the rethinking there--that discipline lets you out of having to constantly make decisions... you make it once and go with that, which is freeing, in a lot of ways. Discipline for me comes in spurts, but I definitely love how much more productive I am when I can get into the discipline of a routine. The BREAKS in that tend to come from outside.
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