Writers don’t need discipline, do they? Not according to one well known author.

In one of my favorite writing books (Escaping into the Open: The Art of Writing True by Elizabeth Berg), there’s a chapter on writing myths that the author says you should ignore.

I was reading the list and nodding and “Amen!”-ing my agreement all the way up to Myth #8. It said to ignore the warning that “you have to be disciplined to be a writer.” Really!

No Discipline? Shocking!

I recoiled. Such blasphemy! How could she claim that writers didn’t need self-discipline? “Everyone” knew you needed to discipline yourself to write every day, to study markets, to read in your field. How could she say that? It went against my deeply ingrained beliefs.

And yet…as I read on, her words resonated with me much more than I would have believed possible. If you don’t need to be disciplined, what do you need? She wrote:

“What you have to be is in love. With writing. Not with ideas about what to write; not with daydreams about what you’re going to do when you’re sucessful. You have to be in love with writing itself, with the solitary and satisfying act of sitting down and watching something you hold in your head and your heart quietly transform itself into words on a page.”

Major Paradigm Shift

Hmm…You don’t have to be disciplined–but instead, you have to be in love with the act of writing. For some reason, that rings true for me.

Of my 42 published books, I can only think of three that I had to “make myself” sit down and write. (They were a work-for-hire assignment on a subject that I had no interest in.) But I loved writing the others.

Yes, I ran into occasional rough spots. Yes, sometimes I felt physically or emotionally shot, so writing wasn’t as much fun on those days. But I didn’t have to discipline myself to write.

In each case, I had a story I was burning to tell, and I couldn’t wait for private, uninterrupted time when I could immerse myself in my fictional world–where I could make life turn out like I wanted, like it should be.

Fueled from Within

In the early years, the inner passion for writing fueled me–not discipline imposed from the outside. If I recall correctly, the need for discipline didn’t occur until I was juggling a full-time day job along with raising a family PLUS writing.

I think Ms. Berg is onto something here. Maybe on the days we can’t make ourselves write, we should check our passion quota about our current project.

Passion for writing versus self-discipline–I think I need to investigate this further! Is it one or the other–or both? And if we’ve fallen out of love with our writing, how can we get that back?

How about You?

What does “being in love with your writing” look like for you? Can you describe one of its attributes? If so, please leave a comment!