The Many Faces of Discipline

A lot of attention is paid to the need for discipline in pursuing writing, specifically, the discipline to put one’s butt in the chair and simply write.

But it’s occurred to me lately that discipline issues come in many shapes and sizes. We need discipline not just for B-I-C, but also:

~ for learning the craft
~ for finding the fortitude to do One. More. Stinking. Draft. To get it right.
~ to block out creative distractions—new ideas that beckon seductively or the temptation of learning what certain publishers or agents think is “hot” and therefore selling
~ The discipline to cleave to our own unique creative vision, no matter how much we doubt it or it scares us or that annoying internal editor whispers we’ll be damned if we write that. (Can you tell I struggle with this one a lot?)
~ not coveting thy neighbors publishing deal or marketing plan. This one is also hard, especially with so much information available on the web as to who got how much for what deal and the cyber evidence of how much certain publishers are promoting certain titles.

All of those are death to our writing. And it occurred to me this week that while I’ve been smugly chortling over NOT needing discipline in keeping my butt in the chair, I very much DO lack discipline in some of those areas. So how about you? What areas do you struggle with?

And because this is kind of a brave, public admission, we’ll have a special drawing for everyone who leaves a comment on this post!