So the posting every day in November only lasted, what, 6 days? Honestly, that was a bit longer than I expected. I’m not good at doing something every day. Every other day generally works just fine for me. I’m going to continue to make the effort to post every day however.
I didn’t write yesterday. I probably could have found the time, but I had a sinus headache all day and quite frankly didn’t feel great. Still felt good enough to go out and see friends, however, so that may say something.
This morning I woke up with a migraine, which is unsurprising given the day long headache from the day before. This morning, though, I will write.
Writing discipline. Not that other kind! Get your thoughts out of the gutter.
My friend Cyn and I made our annual pilgrimage to Powell’s last month. We go for a weekend, stay at a lovely B&B, spend a day at Powell’s, treat ourselves to really good food, enjoy the fall colors, etc.
Breakfast is served family style, around a big formal table in the dining room with all the other guests at the B&B. This time maybe a dozen other guests were there. We met an older couple from Sheboygan, WI. I talked about how lovely the trip had been, and how I’d had the chance to write that weekend.
The man made some comment about it taking a lot of discipline. I explained that no, that wasn’t the point, not that weekend. It wasn’t about discipline at all. It was joy that drove me to write, that fire in the belly to put words onto paper. There was no discipline involved, not that weekend.
This morning it’s all about discipline. I’m not feeling great: my head’s wrapped in cotton wool and all the thoughts have to fight to come out. It isn’t about joy or ease. Maybe I’ll find some once I start. Maybe it’ll be okay and the words will be all right. Probably the words will be cliched and awkward and I’ll have to rewrite. A lot.
Too many days without joy in writing, without fire, and I start losing it. It’s very obvious to me, when I start rewriting, which parts were written without that fire. I’m detached, not deep enough behind my character’s eyes. It means lots of rewriting. I think it’s one of the reasons why I define myself more as a rewriter than a writer. I draft fast and loose, sometimes through force of will. The rewrite is where it becomes tight and layered, where the fire rekindles.
I’m not worried about completely losing the fire for this project. Ways to bring it back include re-reading the parts I’ve written, doing more research, writing out some of those back stories, and in general, not feeling like shit like this AM.
I need both — that fire to write, as well as the discipline. What about you? When the fire thins, how do you rev it back up? How much do you write on sheer discipline?
That’s one nice thing about photography, and may be why I’ve stuck with it a relatively long time: The act of taking a photograph is external, so all I have to do is put myself in the place where I see photographs. I sometimes wonder if I’m avoiding the deeper sources of creativity, and sometimes decide not to worry about it.
For me, I sometimes take pictures when I go out on an artist’s date. It speaks to something in my soul. So it may be going deeper than you realize. Or at least that’s my theory.
That’s one nice thing about photography, and may be why I’ve stuck with it a relatively long time: The act of taking a photograph is external, so all I have to do is put myself in the place where I see photographs. I sometimes wonder if I’m avoiding the deeper sources of creativity, and sometimes decide not to worry about it.
For me, I sometimes take pictures when I go out on an artist’s date. It speaks to something in my soul. So it may be going deeper than you realize. Or at least that’s my theory.