Spice Up Your Discipline
The name of this blog comes from Dorothy Parker’s quote, “Creativity is a wild mind and a disciplined eye.” I really think that finding this balance between wildness and discipline is key in creativity, which is not only about thinking of ideas and expressing them, but also about developing them into some form of finished project (unless we go with the Leonardo da Vinci quote: “Art is never finished, only abandoned”). I don’t know how wild my mind is, but, having grown up a classical pianist, discipline is kind of my jam. Discipline is required to develop craft and technique and to get things done. Without discipline I would be a wandering mess of vague ideas and hazy intentions—and I would certainly have no idea how to play the piano—so hooray for discipline!
Unfortunately, discipline is hard. It’s worth noting that the first definition of “discipline” in my Merriam-Webster Dictionary is “PUNISH.” The second definition is “to train or develop by instruction and exercise esp. in self-control.” If exercising in self-control is one small step away from punishment, it’s understandable that discipline is not exactly viewed as a fun time by most people.
Luckily for me, I love a good challenge. Because I have less of a work-work schedule in August (my piano students tend to be traveling or otherwise checked out before the school year), I turned this month into one big discipline commitment with the objective of completing a(nother) revision of my novel by September 1st. My plan was to be at my desk by 6 every morning until the revision is done. (For context—because I know there are people who get up this early on the daily—rolling out of bed before 6 is not the usual for me, so this discipline challenge has indeed been a challenge.) I decided to use Instagram Stories to hold me accountable, and this has succeeded at getting me out of bed in the dark every morning even though nobody really cares what I’m doing. (If you’re not in the Instagram Know, Stories are posts that disappear after 24 hours—unless you save them for yourself, which I did in order to compile my daily check-ins into the super beautiful collage above.) I also figured if I committed to this daily 6 a.m. novel-revising thing I’d have something to write about for Wild Minds at the end of the month (oh my gosh, that’s this!), which offered another layer of accountability.
To be perfectly honest, I thought: this is great! I will cover approximately 15-20 pages a day with some super light editing because my draft will already be so amazing, and then at the end of the month I will have a fully revised novel and I will be a cool and collected morning person and I will be able to write all about my pleasant experience on Wild Minds.
Ha, ha! Revising is difficult, this revision has called for more rewriting than I expected, and I am tired. Some mornings have been a real slog, but the consistency of early-a.m. desk time and baby steps have gotten me through (and will continue to get me through, because, no, I am not going to meet that September 1st deadline—but I’m close!).
My falling short of unrealistic expectations aside, I have accomplished a lot in the past three weeks: I’ve cut an additional 5,000 words from my manuscript, I’ve gotten the hang of being awake at 6 in the morning, and I have revised 150+ pages which is no small feat. I know that I would not have gotten near this much done without my commitment to discipline, so I do believe it is a skill worth honing.
If I speak from my pianist perspective, my approach to discipline has always been the Nike way: just do it. It really is that simple. However, I know it doesn’t always feel as easy as that, and our brains can be averse to work and mess and focus and slowness. So, hear me out: I think it’s important that discipline is allowed to be appealing and fun. Shouldn’t it be something to look forward to if it’s so necessary to the process? Wouldn’t it be easier to get work done if discipline were a little less rigid, a little more of an experiment? Do we have to keep using the “it should be like brushing your teeth” analogy to form new habits? Because I don’t want my daily creative work to feel like brushing my teeth, as much as I am pro-teeth-brushing.
These are the questions I’ve been considering during my August revision rush, and here a few things that have helped make discipline and I get along pretty well for the past three weeks, even on the sloggiest days:
Novelty
Like I said, I don’t usually wake up before 6 a.m., let alone get to work immediately at 6 a.m. The early-morning time is what made this experience feel like a fun little adventure. For the first few days, it was exciting to get up in the 5 o’clock hour because it felt special, and this kicked my brain into some good creative energy. But after about ten days of this, my wake-up time did not feel so unusual anymore and it wasn’t giving my creative juices the same jolt. I thought about waking up even earlier to continue chasing that early morning high, but landed instead on the occasional 5:30 coffee trip so that I’d start a few days with leaving my house instead of shuffling immediately to my desk. Being out in the world and seeing other people at 5:45 became the new novelty for a while. Then I went on a cold-pressed juice kick which kept things interesting for a few days (a new juice to try each morning!). The point is, finding ways to keep your practice feeling fresh is a good way to avoid a rut, plus this offers a creative challenge in and of itself.
Rewards
I believe it’s important (and fun) to celebrate yourself for getting out of bed in the morning, let alone editing a novel for four hours before it’s even 10 a.m. Rewards can be something to look forward to after the work or to enjoy with the work. Make some tea, plan to watch a good show later, promise yourself a nap after X gets done. Change them up, too. Don’t let rewards become their own routine. Also, have an end date! My goal is not to get up at 5:45 in the morning for eternity. The past three weeks have been neat and productive, but I will soon need to return to being asleep at that time, which will be its own sweet reward.
Inspiration
Whenever I get some quality reading time in (I’m having a blast reading Jesse Q. Sutanto’s Dial A for Aunties right now), my mind calms down and I feel inspired to get back to work on my own project. It’s easier to be disciplined if you’re feeling inspired to be. Sure, you can’t sit around and wait for inspiration to hit you before doing your work every day, but isn’t it more fun to work when you feel a little inspired? For me, taking in other people’s art is the easiest way to feel some creative motivation of my own.
Having a buddy
As you can see in my collage of Instagram check-ins at the top of this post, my cat Ava Gardner has been a pretty integral part of my morning discipline practice. For the first couple weeks of August, I’d come downstairs at 6, turn a light on, and she would hurry from wherever she’d been sleeping, shocked awake and screaming at me about it. Now she’s finally gotten the hang of the new wake-up time, and I find her waiting quietly for me on the staircase landing at 5:50 each morning. She then sits in my lap and/or watches birds out the window for a good 45 minutes before she gets tired and retires to her cat tree. Morning cat cuddles while working helps ease me into desk productivity mode—it’s hard to feel isolated when someone’s eyes are staring at you like that, right?—but if you don’t live with a companion animal who apparently has some sort of dependency/attachment issue related to you, you can also find a human buddy who’s up for doing the same challenge and let the commiseration begin. (Or just make some time to visit animals, because animals are great and they don’t care a bit about your artistic goals.)
Flexibility
This is so important, perfectionists. I have not actually gotten out of bed at 5:45 every single morning—just most of them. I missed one after an overnight volunteer shift, I skipped the morning after my cousin’s wedding, one morning I just really didn’t feel like it… This is something I struggle with, but it’s okay to have an “off” day (by which I mean, living your life and/or taking care of yourself) and still be on the discipline train. Another flexible thing? My goal was literally only to sit at my desk by a certain time every day. Some days I worked for two hours, other days I was at it for eight, others were just horribly unproductive. Roll with the energy you have. And remember to keep that pinch of novelty if you can, which is part of flexibility. I.e., on just one day out of the past 21 I felt bored with sitting at my desk, so I worked in my cozy living room chair. It felt like a fun, wild adventure, and Ava was so confused.
Remembering I’m not alone
To quote the fabulous Dorothy Parker for a second time in one post, “I hate writing; I love having written.” It always brings me solace to remember that the creators I most look up to can also find this to be a tremendous effort. I’ve also been reminded of the words of various Wild Minds guests during the past few weeks, which has been pretty neat. I thought about what Hannah Drossman said about creating while tired (how your brain is too sleepy for overthinking), and how true I found this to be while working early in the mornings. When I hit a big plateau of boringness in the middle of my story, I remembered my sister Jane’s Q&A, when she talked about how her illustration process is simply about getting something started and then getting it finished (no middles! no plateaus!). One morning I was feeling particularly stuck and frustrated with a scene I was rewriting, and then I just cut it after recalling Carleton Whaley’s reflection on how it’s important to enjoy what you’re writing or people won’t enjoy reading it. And then, how could I forget Ifrah Mansour’s request that her friend bring her a bouquet of flowers taller than her head after a performance? This reminded me to be good to myself. All these little voices popping into my head have helped me feel like I’m part of an all-humanity-encompassing artistic community and not just sitting alone in my PJs during a dark six a.m. thunderstorm. It helps. You might be alone, but we’re all alone together, you know?
Recording progress
The daily grind of working on art (at least, in my experience) is slow. It’s difficult to notice your own progress when you’re in your own body 100% of the time. As a piano instructor, I regularly see this frustration in my students, who often feel like they aren’t getting any better when they in fact sound improved to me, who only hears them once a week. Some days I’ve worked for a good five hours but I’ve felt like nothing at all was accomplished because I maybe moved from page 124 to 125, which is frustratingly slow. I found it helpful to write down what I accomplished each day—whether I lowered my word count, solved a plot problem, made a sentence better, or had a good idea. Recording what I accomplished helped me to know I was moving forward on the days I really did not feel like I was moving forward.
Checking in with the outside world
Discipline is a pretty personal endeavor and it’s isolating to be at the same thing every day all by yourself. It’s been helpful for me to check in with people who are not, you know, me. One day I didn’t realize how exhausted I was until my sister said, “You seem really tired.” And it’s a little jarring to talk through the morning’s work with my boyfriend and hear him ask such basic story-sacrilegious questions as, “Do you even need that character?” Discipline requires a lot of being in your own head, so make sure you get out of it when you can. Outsiders can help you see more clearly. They have a big picture view that you just don’t have. Also, I hear that socializing is good for you.
Being okay with just sitting there
I’ve had a couple mornings where I’ve faced a block in my story or even a sentence that I didn’t know what to do with, and I’ve just sat there and achieved basically nothing for a good hour or more. This absolutely feels like a waste of time (and, I think, is a waste of time?). However, sometimes I have to sit with a block for a while until I get frustrated enough to break through it. This probably isn’t good advice, but it’s how my revision is [slowly] getting done. Sure, I could step away from my desk and go for a walk, but is that actually what I need in that moment or is that procrastination? Ingmar Bergman said that moviemaking is “eight hours of hard work each day to get three minutes of film. And during those eight hours there are maybe only ten or twelve minutes, if you’re lucky, of real creation. And maybe they don’t come.” Not every moment of your work has to or will feel creatively exhilarating or even productive. But you do have to sit there and be with it—consistently. That’s discipline. And it can be your friend if you want it to be.
Check out 12 Habits of Highly Effective Artists over on artnet. Says visual artist Liza Lou: “It’s a lot like being an athlete: you train under all conditions. Just get in the studio no matter what you feel like.”
For little jolts of inspiration to cultivate a good writing discipline, I like Pep Talks for Writers by Grant Faulkner, the executive director of National Novel Writing Month (affectionately known as nanowrimo).
Have I still not inspired you to get disciplined?! This is your last hope.
Read more Wild Minds posts here.