The ‘Discipline’ Thing
The three questions I hear most often: Where do you get your ideas? (Answer: everywhere.) Do you have to do a lot of research? (Yes, and no.) And I suppose you have to be very disciplined? (Er, no.) I was comparing notes with an artist and her husband, both of whom work at home. The Husband said: ‘I couldn’t be a writer. I don’t have the discipline. If I don’t have a deadline to work to, I don’t work.’
I shrugged. What’s a deadline anyway? (I mean, yes, there are authors whose contracts impose deadlines. I haven’t yet met one who actually kept to them. And I haven’t heard of a publisher who sued because they didn’t. Maybe it happens, but not in my universe. When I set to work on the latest revise of WE I imagined that it would take perhaps three weeks. And then I had an Idea, and as a result it took six.) The Artist agreed with me. Yes, she worked to a project plan. But she didn’t keep to it. The point of a project plan was just to tell her how far behind she was. The point of the work was to get it right.
This conversation occurred at about quarter past four on a Wednesday. I had interrupted their working day to bring my children round to see if we could sink our air mattress in their swimming pool. (Answer: No. It very obstinately continued to float.) Husband’s laptop hummed neglectedly upstairs. Artist’s sketch sat abandoned on her desk. To sounds of distant splashing and hilarity, I enjoyed their company and my cup of tea.
Discipline? Authors are as human as anyone else. Well, this one is - I think. It’s not discipline that gets me to my desk every morning. If it was discipline I wouldn’t still be sweeping the kitchen floor and making the coffee a quarter of an hour after I should - by my own, self-imposed schedule - have started. It might be Guilt that gets me there in the end. Auden once said that if he didn’t write something every day he felt physically sick. Now, I don’t feel sick, but I do feel nagged - by me. And although I am a self-forgiving sort of person, I do need a reason before I can forgive myself. Last Wednesday it was because I happened to have got myself a day ahead of my own personal project plan (revised). And, as it happens, I have kept that advantage. WE went back to my publishers yesterday. The summer holidays beckon.