Category Archives: Discipline

Pretend Someone is Watching–and Other Tips to Help Your Writing

Posted on by
6

A couple weeks ago I wrote a post that compared the discipline of running to the discipline of writing. That struck a nerve with some readers who have never even put on a pair of running shoes. I am following up this week with three more crucial disciplines from running that help me as a writer. Unless I follow these habits in both running and writing, I can’t get anything done.

1. Take It In Segments.

When I start my morning run, I can’t bear the thought of all that territory that lies ahead.  I follow a regular route that winds along some horse trails and streets through parks and neighborhoods near my house. However, when I’m out there, I don’t think of myself as running one long route. That would feel too overwhelming.

Instead, I run a series of segments. First there is the warm-up walk from my house to a certain driveway one street over. Then comes the segment that takes me to the end of my neighborhood. Then there is my run through the park. And so on. I can do those little segments. Each one by itself feels manageable. If I think about how far it is to the end of the run, I might be tempted to quit. I run one part, then another, and then another. Eventually, I reach the finish line.

When I’m writing, I follow a similar discipline. I don’t sit down and think of myself as writing a book. That’s too daunting. I don’t even think of writing a chapter. Instead, I think of one small part—maybe a paragraph, or scene, or anecdote—that I know I can do. I work on that. Once I finish it, I work on the next bit. Momentum builds, and so does my confidence. Before long, the ideas flow freely.

2. Pretend Someone is Watching.

This one may sound a little weird, but have you ever watched a group of kids around the neighborhood playing basketball or some other sport, and one of them is announcing every move like a TV sports announcer? Do you ever hear that announcer in your head when you’re playing sports yourself? Sometimes when I’m running, especially on days when my motivation is lacking, I pretend this is more than just some regular daily run. Instead, it’s a momentous race, and everything—say, the fate of the world, or my country—hinges on my reaching the finish line. People on all sides are cheering me on. I barely have room to run. They’re all watching. I’d better not screw this up.

With writing, I also sometimes envision an audience. Some writers I know think of specific people they are writing to. I have done that, but often I write to an idealized audience. It’s the type of reader who is leaning toward me, listening with anticipation, ready to engage my ideas. I don’t want to let that reader down. I want to hold up my end of the conversation.

Writing can be a lonely task, with just me and the computer in a quiet room. Imagining an audience reminds me that if I do this right, that pretend audience might become real if I stick to my work and get the words down on the page.

3. Get So Lost in the Work that Time Slips Away.

When I’m running, the worst thing for me to think about is the running itself. If I’m thinking about my breathing, or my feet, or my movement, that over-awareness makes the run seem much longer. The best runs are the ones in which my mind is thinking about everything except running. As I daydream or plan, the time slips by, and once I break out of that deep concentration, I might be surprised to realize that the run is half over. I may not remember much about the last mile, but I ran it anyway. The work is done.

With writing, the key is not to focus on fretful thoughts such as, “Oh, I should be writing. WIll I be able to do the writing? I am worried about the writing.” Instead, I need to let myself get close to my ideas. Let the images and language lure me in. Shut out all distractions and let my mind get absorbed in the world of the writing project. When I create conditions that help me get lost in the work, I look up an hour later to realize the paragraphs that had seemed so daunting are now on the page, and I am ready for more. That won’t happen if I’m checking Facebook every ten minutes, or writing emails, or answering text messages. I need to be surrounded only by the words. The computer. The books and other materials I need for research. A calm and energetic mind. A determination to sit there until the words begin to flow.

I wish you well as you run the race of writing.

 

What Running Reveals About Writing

Posted on by
18

Photo by Mike Warren http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/2.5/

I run several mornings a week, but there is a point in the running process when I just don’t want to do it. Those moments of resistance taught me something important about another activity that is important to me—the discipline of writing.

By the time I have been out on my morning run for about 15 minutes, I start to feel pretty good. By then I’m warmed up, physically and mentally. My breathing is settled, my body feels that smooth running rhythm, and my mind is lost in the solitude that running allows. At that point I don’t care if it rains or whether it’s cold or hot outside. I am committed to the run by then, and I will finish it no matter what.

In all my years of running, I don’t remember ever regretting coming out for my run once I am past those first 15 minutes or so. By that point I am always glad that I’m out there and that I didn’t let any excuses hold me back.

When I say that I never regret the run, that is not to say that I “enjoy” it. While I do enjoy being outdoors by the foothills near our home and the feeling that I’m doing something that’s good for me, for the most part running is difficult and painful, and I’m always glad when I reach the end of my course. It’s physically draining and takes time out of my day. But once I finish, I also feel a small sense of triumph that I have gotten the day off to a good start.

For me, the hardest part of the running process takes place about an hour before the run. I wake up early, have breakfast, sit on my recliner and drink coffee and read the newspaper. In those groggy but comfortable moments, I sometimes think, I just can’t do that run today. My mind seeks excuses not to do it. Is it raining? Do I have an early meeting at work that would prevent me? Should I sit here and drink a second cup of coffee and forget the run?

I have learned that this is not the time to make my running decision. Intellectually, I know I’ll be fine once I’m out there, but emotionally I’m still fighting it. I have learned to ignore those urges to skip the run. I turn off those thoughts as I get off the recliner, get dressed for the run, and head out. It takes awhile to convince myself I’ve made the right choice, but if I can just resist the excuses long enough to get outside, then I’ll be glad I did it.

Running Lessons Applied to Writing

Something similar happens in the writing process. Once I have been writing for awhile, say half an hour or so, my brain gets fully engaged in the project, and I don’t want to stop. Writing is “enjoyable” only in ways similar to how running is enjoyable. I’m glad I’m doing it, but it’s also difficult and painful at the same time. I never regret writing once I am fully absorbed in it.

The most dangerous part of the writing process is the half hour or so before I start writing, and the first twenty minutes or so of sitting at the computer, before my brain has fully engaged. As with running, it’s the transition from the comfortable world to the world of the writing project that the lazy part of my mind wants to avoid. If I can resist the urge to give in to excuses not to write (and there are thousands of them, from emails that “need” to be written to household chores that “need” to be done first), then I am likely to have a productive writing period.

With writing as with running, feelings are my enemy during those transition times. I have to anticipate that I will not want to do it, and I have to prepare myself to do it anyway. I can’t claim that I always win this battle, but I have gotten better at it once I learned to identify and fight the thinking processes that prevent me from pushing forward.

Forty-Seven Different Endings? Some Lessons from Hemingway about Revision

Posted on by
23

For the past several weeks my students and I have been immersed in the novels of Ernest Hemingway. I have had the pleasure of teaching a course on him and William Faulkner this semester. In most literature courses, we study only the final, published drafts of novels and other works of literature. That gives us the chance to enjoy the final masterpieces, but it doesn’t reveal much about the torment the author went through to make the book as good as it is. How many revisions did it go through? How many false starts were there? How much bad writing did the author produce before he found discovered the right way to tell the story?

A new edition of Hemingway’s masterpiece, A Farewell to Arms, was published earlier this year that sheds light on his careful, sometimes agonizing writing process. Depending on how you count them, Hemingway produced up to 47 different endings. The exact number is tricky to determine because some drafts use bits and pieces of other drafts and therefore are not completely distinct from one another. The editors have grouped the 47 drafts under nine categories, such as “The Nada Ending,” “The Religious Ending,” “The Live-Baby Ending,” and so on.

Examining these very different endings reveals much about the creative process of writing a novel. Here are a few points his methods illustrate:

• Even very good writers are capable of very bad writing.

Hemingway may be a brilliant, Nobel Prize-winning, best-selling author, but some of these drafts are just bad. One of the “Nada” endings, for example, says, “That is all there is to the story. Catherine died and you will die and I will die and that is all I can promise you.” The first of three “Funeral Ending” drafts says, “When people die you have to bury them but Continue reading →

Five of the Eighteen Reasons I Write (by William J. Torgerson)

Posted on by
6

Editor’s Note: This post is the third in a series that features former students of mine who have become professional writers. I asked each of them to focus on the topic, “Why I Write.” Today’s post is by Bill Torgerson, whom I first met when he was one of my writing students at Olivet and who is now an award-winning screenwriter, novelist and writing professor. His first novel, Love on the Big Screen, is set at a fictionalized Olivet in the era when Bill and I were there.  (To see the first post in this series, by Dr. Michael Clark, scroll down or click here. To see the second post, by John Small, scroll down or click here.)  

Five of the Eighteen Reasons I Write

By William J. Torgerson

Professor Joe Bentz was the first person I ever knew to be actively working on a novel. When I was his student at Olivet Nazarene University just south

of Chicago, I was an English teacher who wanted to be a basketball coach because I’d long understood I couldn’t play professionally.  I had no plans to write, but I’d heard that Joe’s house was wallpapered with notes for his book.

As a country kid from Indiana, I found Professor Bentz’s ambition exotic, as if he were a space traveller who’d gone to Mars and come back to tell me about it. Professor Bentz was the first person to encourage my writing. I wrote an essay in his class about a bad date, and he told me I should send it out for consideration for publication. Over fifteen years later, a revision of that essay appeared in my first novel. Upon receiving Joe’s request to write this guest post, I was quickly able jot down eighteen reasons I write. Here are five of them:

  • To Stand Out. Even when I used to think of myself as worth noticing because I could shoot a basketball from a long distance and make it go through a hoop, I was an everyday writer.  At first, I wrote because it was a way in addition to basketball that a girl would take notice of me. Even though I’ve always thought of myself as a latecomer to writing, I realize that even as a middle school student I wrote (by hand on paper!) regularly for a specific audience: a girl I liked. I revised like an obsessive-compulsive madman.
  • For Mental and Physical Peace.  I have a high-octane mental and physical motor.  There’s something about intense workouts and at least a page a day that allows me to get as close as I can to relaxing.  When someone asks me what I do for fun, one of my first thoughts is that I run. Writing gives me a mostly positive act toward which to direct my addiction prone energy.  When I write, I am somehow able to empty my mind just enough to get some sleep.
  • Because I Can’t Stop.  I received Prof. Bentz’s request to do this guest post via my iPhone at 5:08 PM when I was wandering around an outlet mall and my family was doing some school shopping. I could not stop Continue reading →

This is How I Know I’m a Writer (by Michael Clark)

Posted on by
12

Editor’s Note: This post by Michael Clark is the first in a series that will feature former students of mine who have become professional writers. I asked each of them to focus on the topic, “Why I Write.” 

Dr. Michael Clark has had an inspiring journey as a writer. He has worked professionally as a journalist, a high school English teacher, and now as a college professor. I first met him at Azusa Pacific University, where he became editor-in-chief of the student newspaper while I was faculty advisor. He had extraordinary energy and drive. Once he graduated and became a newspaper reporter, I thought his career was set for life. He was good at it, and he could have stayed with that work for as long as he wanted to. He married another of my talented former students, Heather (Murphy) Clark, an Honors student who became a teacher and is now a part-time college instructor. Michael felt the urge to try teaching, so he completed the education and other steps necessary to move into that career. Once again, I thought he was set. Then he felt the urge to earn a Ph.D. in creative writing and pursue fiction writing. He applied to universities across the country and was accepted at the University of Wisconsin-Milwaukee. It took courage for Michael and Heather to move their young family a couple thousand miles away to pursue this dream, but they did it, and once Michael finished his Ph.D., he was hired as a writing professor at Point Loma Nazarene University, where he now teaches. 

This is How I Know I’m a Writer

by Michael Clark

I’m a writer. This is a reality I have finally accepted. I do not have a large number of publications. I may not be very good at it. I can’t really tell. But I am a writer nonetheless (if for no other reason than I use the word nonetheless unreservedly).

How do I know I’m a writer? Simple – it’s what I do. Two full novels written (unsold), a third well underway (40,000 words and counting), and more than 20 short stories (mostly on my hard drive) that I would show other people attest to the simple fact that writing is more than my hobby. My body of work is solid and continues to grow, whether or not anymore ever sees the light of day. This is how I know I’m a writer.

I have a stack of rejection letters, like every other writer I know. They’re from journals, publishers, and agents across the country. I have a spreadsheet that keeps track of all the times I’ve been rejected and accepted. According to this ledger, I’m deeply in the red. This is how I know I’m a writer.

When I hear stories of famous authors who struggled to find a publisher before they were finally granted a book, I am unabashedly soothed by them. The fact that Elie Wiesel couldn’t sell Night for years gives me hope, not that I will ever be Elie Wiesel, but that I can continue to try. This is how I know I’m a writer.

I simultaneously love and hate with the way I say things.  I want the ability to revise my conversations as they happen and fully expect that every time I try to put things into words the result will be fantastic. It is a frustrating way to live. This is how I know I’m a writer.

Every aspect of the world around me has the potential to be told. To live and breathe not just in the moment I witness it, but on the page and for much longer than it would have otherwise. Thus, I am alternately interested in everything and overwhelmed to the point of shutting out those closest to me. This is how I know I’m a writer.

I often forget to eat, but I never go long without coffee. This is how I know I’m a writer.

I live in San Diego, three miles from the ocean, but I spend more time in a chair wrestling with the next character, the next scene, the next story than I do in the water. This is how I know I’m a writer.

People tell me that fiction is a dying form and it makes me nervous to the point of feeling like a poet. This is how I know I’m a writer.

I only find mathematics understandable if it is part of a narrative with tension and great character development. When I studied math, I often critiqued the lazy form of word problems. This is how I know I’m a writer.

If you are my friend, part of you might just end up in a story. If you’re my close friend, I might just kill you in print. This is how I know I’m a writer.

I write because it is comparable to breathing. When I do it, it is so natural I don’t think about the fact that I’m doing it. When I don’t do it, it’s pretty much all I can think about and I feel like I’m holding my breath. This is how I know I’m a writer.

 

Michael Dean Clark is an author of fiction and nonfiction as well as a professor of writing at Point Loma Nazarene University. His work, most of which is set in the San Diego area, has appeared in Fast Forward, Relief (where he later became the fiction editor), and Coach’s Midnight Diner among other publications. He is currently at work on his third novel-length manuscript and will move on to number four as soon as he is done. He’s sort of obsessive that way. When he’s not writing, he is likely herding one of his three children around or speaking to his wife sarcastically because sarcasm his love language.

You Will Have to Neglect Something: Make Your Choice

Posted on by
19

I used to think that if only I could get organized enough and follow the right disciplines, I could find a way to fulfill my goals and obligations in my personal and professional life without having to leave work undone or relationships unsatisfied.

I no longer believe that. I now believe that time and energy are so limited that I will have to neglect something important to me. I simply have to choose what that will be. Will I write less than I want to? Will I devote less time to my family than I want to? Less time to my church? Less time to my students?

The Limits of Our Attention

A group I am in is studying the book, Creativity: Flow and the Psychology of Discovery and Invention, by Mihaly Csikszentmihalyi. In one section he discusses the idea that attention is a limited resource but crucial to creativity. Since we have only so much of it, we must decide where we’re going to put it. Then he makes this memorable point:

“Another consequence of limited attention is that creative individuals are often considered odd—or even arrogant, selfish, and ruthless. It is important to keep in mind that these are not traits of creative people, but traits that the rest of us attribute to them on the basis of perceptions. When we meet a person who focuses all of his attention on physics or music and ignores us and forgets our names, we call that person ‘arrogant’ even though he may be extremely humble and friendly if he could only spare attention from his pursuit.” (10)

As we pursue our passions, few of us want to be perceived as selfish, arrogant people who care only about our writing or our music or our art or whatever other work we feel called to do. Better to be a generous, well-rounded person who cares about others but also makes a meaningful contribution to our field. However, with the truly creative person who brings about a groundbreaking change in a domain, Csikszentmihalyi writes that “it is practically impossible to learn a domain deeply enough to make a change in it without dedicating all of one’s attention to it and thereby appearing to be arrogant, selfish, and ruthless to those who believe they have a right to the creative person’s attention” (10).

Is he right? I am writing this in the midst of the Olympics, which I have been watching occasionally. One commercial I saw shows athletes training vigorously, and in voice-overs we hear them tell some of the things they have given up. “I haven’t eaten a dessert in two years,” says one athlete, and others say they have sacrificed television, burgers, etc. The list they give focuses mostly on trivial pleasures, but I’m sure many of them have also sacrificed more important things also, such as spending time with family, hanging out with friends, and so on.

At certain points in life I have practiced the kind of focused discipline those athletes are talking about. While I was still single and in graduate school trying to finish my dissertation, I gave up television for a couple years, dedicated one room of my apartment to nothing but a computer and dissertation materials, and set rigid hours for working on the project until it was finished. Even now, when I write a book, I commit to working on it at least a little every day until it is finished.

Deciding Where to Set the Limits

As a writer today, I am willing to sacrifice for my passion, but I will go only so far. I believe all of us make trade-offs, but we don’t always knowingly make them. Often we simply slide into letting things get out of balance in one direction or another.

The choice I knowingly make now is that I am not willing to sacrifice my family for my work. When my son says, “Let’s go play soccer in the backyard,” I go. I take him and his sister to their sports practices. I take long walks with my wife. I have more writing projects than I can ever complete. I want to get to them. I do the best I can with those projects, and I get some of them done. But I know that I will simply have to neglect some of them.

My teaching also holds me back. So does my church. So do my friends. So do my other interests. So be it. I care about those things and intend to give each of them some of my Attention. When I teach American literature, I sometimes teach authors who had writing as their only priority, even when it brought shipwreck to their personal lives. They were creative people. They made a contribution to literature. The cost was high.

For me, writing has an important place, but as much as I love it, it doesn’t get all of me.

Creativity: Leave Time for the Unknown

Posted on by
10

Like many people I know, I am pressed to squeeze writing into my schedule in the midst of many other responsibilities and distractions. To get anything done, I create a to-do list and attack it at the start of the day. The more items I get checked off, the more successful I feel.

At some point I discovered that this method, while efficient, meant that I was sometimes missing out on the Creative Unknown—those flashes of good ideas, inspired moments, strange trains of thought—that come when my mind is free and open and I’m not particularly trying to accomplish anything. Some of my best ideas come then—for new projects, solutions to writing problems in current projects, and for new perspectives on life itself. I can’t force these creative flashes. I can’t predict them. The best I can do is Continue reading →

Why Write Books at All? A Case in Favor of It

Posted on by
5

Last week I offered a case against writing books in this new era. This week I want to give some reasons for continuing to write in spite of the obstacles that stand in the author’s way. Here are some things that keep me writing:

1. I Want to Play.

Picture a Little League baseball team. Twelve players are on the team, but only nine can be on the field at one time, with the other three sitting in the dugout. “Please let me go in, Coach!” pleads one boy who has spent too many innings sitting out. “I’m ready! I’ll give it all I’ve got! I want to play!”

In the world of writing, I am that player. I want to be in there playing with ideas, telling stories, taking part in the conversation. I have sat in the dugout long enough, watching the other players, thinking, I could do that too, if only I got the chance. I want to write!

2. I Love the Connection Writing Can Form with a Reader.

The most magical aspect of writing for me, especially when I write novels, is the idea that a story that once played only inside my own head like a private movie now also plays in the heads of readers.

I spent many years writing my first novel, Song of Fire, creating a world filled with people and places that only I knew. I remember how strange it seemed at first when the book was finally published and readers would ask me about certain scenes and characters. My first thought would always be, how do you know about that? Who told you? I felt as if the person had entered my private realm, almost as if they were walking around in my brain. It was disconcerting at first, but of course it’s the whole idea of writing. As a reader, I can connect not only with living writers, but also with authors who have been dead for decades or centuries. I love the idea that Continue reading →

The Best Discipline I Ever Followed: One Hard Thing a Day

Posted on by
9

On any given day, certain tasks loom before me that I really don’t want to do. I’m not referring to bothersome but routine chores that are merely unpleasant. I’m talking instead about things I dread doing. These are actions that I know I can’t put off forever but that I can delay for a good long while. They linger on my To Do list day after day, sometimes month after month. I can never quite get away from them, as they niggle at my brain and make me feel guilty for neglecting them.

I call these tasks Hard Things. They circle around me like deadly predators, and the more I try to stay away from them, the more of them lurk at the edge of my consciousness. As they accumulate, I feel besieged and defeated.

A few years ago I started a discipline that has helped me get these paralyzing duties under control. Very simply, I do one Hard Thing a day.

I don’t try to do three hard things, or ten. Taking on that many would quickly lead to defeat in the form of procrastination, rationalization, or Continue reading →