Why Is Discipline So Important For A Writer?
Hello fam! Hope y’all are keeping well amid the cold waves and I can very well say that we are all geared up for the festive season, and why not? It’s the month of December — the month of giving and rejoicing. So, y’all must be knowing for now, that I have successfully published my debut novel, and I promised to take y’all through this literary journey of mine. So, what I decided was to narrate one chapter or episode from my novel writing experience and today I am going to be talking about why and if discipline is important at all in a writer’s journey, as I mentioned in yesterday’s blog.
The short answer to that is a plain and simple yes. Not only writing, for any job that you undertake — whether cleaning your house, cooking for your family, working out, everything needs to have its routine. And, what goes hand in hand with discipline? Continuity. So, if you train your body and mind to work in a particular way where you do the same things every day at the same time, you’d see that you do not have to repeat yourself everyday to do the same task — it’ll just happen voluntarily, on its own.
So, coming back to my literary journey, so in my case, when I started writing the novel, I was very sure in the process that all that my writing has to be released in the form of a book, not a mere blog or some meagre article, so in short I had to repeatedly remind myself that this is my book that we are talking about, and I better take it seriously. So, when my system was finally convinced about it, I had to set my next target — which was setting a particular word limit for everyday, of course sometimes excluding the weekends. But you know what? When the writing bug hits you, you just wouldn’t want to stop till you finish your novel.
And, the same happened to me too. In my case, I had fixed the word count to 2000 per day. Don’t freak out yet, please believe me that when you do write fiction, you just lose track of time and are transcended to a fairy land where you are served an unending supply of Tiramisus, and you can just keep indulging into the delicacies without gaining any weight! So, I’d treat myself this trip to this wonderland and would just swing myself, let myself loose and complete my daily task of writing 2K words everyday.
Yes, of course there were days when my fingers wouldn’t cooperate and I’d feel too lazy, really lazy to write all over again. I mean for sure 2K words seem daunting, isn’t it? But, like I did reveal in my previous paragraphs, being disciplined and consistent were the very backbone of my writing journey and I had to check that box. So, I started retraining my mind and body and they started complying eventually.
So, yeah here I am — after a rigorous disciplined routine that I had followed for at least a year and half and I can say that the book was finally picked up by a publisher from Canada. So, they are a clan that belong to the category of a traditional publisher, where they don’t charge you money for publishing your book, instead they make money from the sale of your book, where you are given a certain percentage of royalty as well.
Can I therefore say that all of this was a result of me being thoroughly disciplined throughout the process? Of course yes. Imagine a scenario where I’d be still stuck up with the climax of my book, and would just keep lazing around, procrastinating until I see someone coming up with a similar idea of mine! How brutal would that be! Can we choose to live voluntarily in that auto pilot mode? Nope, we can’t. I believe that as writers we are responsible to ourselves, and the society. It’s our very responsibility to spread out our message to the mass and if we are not disciplined, then who will be?
So, dear readers, this was just a snippet of my daily life of being a writer and nothing makes me happier than spreading this knowledge with y’all. I recall someone expressing their desire to know more about the editing process while writing a book, I’ll take that up as my next blog maybe.
Merry Christmas and happy holidays to everyone in advance!
