Day seven of National Novel Writing Month and Victoria Fox talks to us about finding the discipline to write.
One of the questions I’m most often asked is how I find the discipline to write. Well, the answer is simple. Writing is my job, and, like any job, I have to get up every day, sit down and get on with it. Sure, sometimes it’s hard. Sometimes I feel like doing just about anything if it means getting away from my desk. But if I worked in an office, say, I couldn’t just not turn up one morning because I’d decided I’d really rather stay in bed and watch re-runs of Frasier. I’m a firm believer that if you sit down with your book for long enough, the words will come. They might not be the right words first time, but they’ll move your story forward and keep your plot turning over.
When you’re on a roll, everything is brilliant. When you’re feeling creatively sapped, it’s an effort. And if you don’t have a book contract in place, that’s the hardest bit. Will it be worth it? Will anyone read it? Is it any good? These are questions the vast majority of unpublished writers, including me, have asked ourselves. Discipline, then, becomes something different. It comes from deep inside. You have to believe, in your core, that you’re going to finish this book. You’re not going to do it for anyone else except you – because you want a completed novel and you can’t let your characters float in uncertainty for the rest of time. The publishing contract is the golden prize but it’s not a given. Discipline stems from your own personal desire to write.
Novel Kicks is a blog for story tellers and book lovers.
Necessary cookies are absolutely essential for the website to function properly. This category only includes cookies that ensures basic functionalities and security features of the website. These cookies do not store any personal information.
Any cookies that may not be particularly necessary for the website to function and is used specifically to collect user personal data via analytics, ads, other embedded contents are termed as non-necessary cookies. It is mandatory to procure user consent prior to running these cookies on your website.