Discipline
To get anywhere in this business, one must be persistent. Not just with submitting books and proposals despite the long response times that end in rejection. With the act of writing itself.Things are not going well with the new work-in-progress. Words are coming slowly and crappily. It reminds me of when I took up yoga again after a three-year hiatus. My muscles remembered the movements as if they had happened in someone else's dream, they couldn't stretch as far or as gracefully as they once did, and boy, did they hurt the next day.
It hasn't been three years since I wrote fresh material. It's been two weeks. But the styles of Bad Company and the Crow books couldn't be more different, so maybe it's the equivalent of starting yoga after playing nothing but rugby for three months.
So it's time for Frau Blucher [horses whinny] to step in and impose some discipline. I'll allow myself one hour of internet a day until I catch up. Nearly half of that hour got Hoovered writing this blog entry and reading quotes from Young Frankenstein on imdb.com.
What are your best methods for imposing self-discipline? And keep it clean. This is a family blog.
But not too clean. I'm gunning for higher ratings.
Labels: Voice of Crow, writing life
5 Comments:
Posted by:
Unknown at 5/08/2006 12:02 PM
Posted by:
Jeri at 5/08/2006 12:55 PM
Cecilia
Posted by:
Anonymous at 5/08/2006 3:08 PM
Strange as this may sound, ritual sometimes helps. Priests and practitioners of majick will burn incense or ring a bell - this clears the air, symbolically sweeping out the chaos and shuffle of the day. I heard of one writer who actually went outside and fired a pistol into the air before beginning to write.
Laugh if you will, but this kind of ritual actually works. It clears the head and focuses the thoughts.
Posted by:
gugon at 5/09/2006 1:10 PM
Posted by:
Jeri at 5/09/2006 4:04 PM
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