{"id":35,"date":"2008-02-03T07:00:00","date_gmt":"2008-02-03T15:00:00","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.orcutt.net\/weblog\/?p=35"},"modified":"2025-03-02T19:36:04","modified_gmt":"2025-03-02T19:36:04","slug":"love-makes-me-write-not-self-discipline","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/orcutt.net\/weblog\/love-makes-me-write-not-self-discipline\/","title":{"rendered":"Love Makes Me Write, Not Self-Discipline"},"content":{"rendered":"

I nev\u00ader<\/em> get sick. I mean nev\u00ader. The last time I was sick was three years ago with a cold, and just before that, a her\u00adni\u00adat\u00aded disc. Which is why I don\u2019t know what to do with myself today because I\u2019m sick.<\/p>\n

But even though I was sick, I wrote today. You can count on it\u2014on days that I don\u2019t write some\u00adthing for this or my oth\u00ader blog, NotWriting.com, I have<\/em> writ\u00adten some\u00adthing, whether it be pages in a new nov\u00adel, a scene in a screen\u00adplay, words for a busi\u00adness writ\u00ading assign\u00adment, an entry in my pri\u00advate jour\u00adnal, you name it. The fact is, I write every day. Every day.<\/em><\/p>\n

Yes\u00adter\u00adday, because I was con\u00adfined to bed and did\u00adn\u2019t have the patience for writ\u00ading in html on the blog, I worked in pen\u00adcil on the syn\u00adop\u00adsis of my new nov\u00adel. That\u2019s the 1\u2011page sin\u00adgle-spaced doc\u00adu\u00adment that will accom\u00adpa\u00adny my book to edi\u00adtors and film pro\u00adduc\u00adtion com\u00adpa\u00adnies. I dread writ\u00ading the syn\u00adop\u00adsis because a part of me feels that syn\u00adop\u00adsis-writ\u00ading has noth\u00ading to do with nov\u00adel-writ\u00ading, and that if a read\u00ader wants to know how it ends, I want to tell him, \u201cRead the book.\u201d<\/em><\/p>\n

But I did it. I wrote, just as I write every day, and I did\u00adn\u2019t do it out of a sense of duty or self-dis\u00adci\u00adpline. I did it because I tru\u00adly love to write.<\/p>\n

My wife thinks I\u2019m freak\u00adish\u00adly self-dis\u00adci\u00adplined, and to the out\u00adside observ\u00ader, I can see why she would think this. Every day, around 5am if I\u2019m deep into a project, I shuf\u00adfle across the hall to my office and get start\u00aded. But I don\u2019t do it out of a sense of self-dis\u00adci\u00adpline. In fact, I think self-dis\u00adci\u00adpline is a lousy moti\u00adva\u00adtor over the long-term. Self-dis\u00adci\u00adpline may get you to sit up in bed, but only love<\/em> will moti\u00advate you to leave the warmth of that bed, get dressed and embark on the loneli\u00adest enter\u00adprise there is\u2014writing.<\/p>\n

Many years ago, I had a rev\u00ade\u00adla\u00adtion in which I final\u00adly under\u00adstood the oft-quot\u00aded line by writ\u00aders and oth\u00ader artists: \u201cProcess, not prod\u00aduct.\u201d You have to enjoy the process of the craft you\u2019re engaged in and do it for its own sake, not for the final prod\u00aduct or its per\u00adceived rewards.<\/p>\n

<\/a>Since then, if I\u2019m ever feel\u00ading down or lack\u00ading moti\u00adva\u00adtion, instead of try\u00ading to dis\u00adci\u00adpline myself to write, I make a list of what I love about it, and always top\u00adping the list is my love of what I call \u201cthe line.\u201d<\/p>\n

\u201cThe line\u201d is that one sen\u00adtence, that one piece of descrip\u00adtion, that one snatch of dia\u00adlogue that comes out of nowhere and sur\u00adpris\u00ades you. You, the writer, have no idea where it came from; you know it\u2019s good, that\u2019s all. And ulti\u00admate\u00adly, I think it\u2019s that love of the line that keeps writ\u00aders writ\u00ading. You sim\u00adply have to love lan\u00adguage, and if you don\u2019t, noth\u00ading short of self-fla\u00adgel\u00adla\u00adtion would make you do this.<\/p>\n

Each year, I\u2019ll reread a few books where the gor\u00adgeous prose inspires me: Hem\u00ading\u00adway\u2019s A Move\u00adable Feast<\/em>, Fitzger\u00adald\u2019s The Great Gats\u00adby<\/em>, T.C. Boyle\u2019s East is East<\/em>, Nabokov\u2019s Loli\u00adta<\/em>, and Flaubert\u2019s Madame Bovary<\/em> (or Tol\u00adstoy\u2019s Anna Karen\u00adi\u00adna<\/em>\u2014depend\u00ading on whether I want to read about the infi\u00addeli\u00adties of a French or Russ\u00adian woman). And more than the char\u00adac\u00adters or plot, what you\u2019re read\u00ading for is the love. To wit\u00adness great writ\u00aders\u2019 love for the art and how they expressed it.<\/p>\n

I did\u00adn\u2019t feel well today, but I wrote. And I wrote because I love writ\u00ading.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

I nev\u00ader get sick. I mean nev\u00ader. The last time I was sick was three years ago with a cold, and just before that, a\u2026<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":3,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"wp_typography_post_enhancements_disabled":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[3,7,13,14],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-35","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-craft","category-personal","category-writers","category-writingexperiences"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/orcutt.net\/weblog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/35","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/orcutt.net\/weblog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/orcutt.net\/weblog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/orcutt.net\/weblog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/3"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/orcutt.net\/weblog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=35"}],"version-history":[{"count":2,"href":"https:\/\/orcutt.net\/weblog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/35\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":9210,"href":"https:\/\/orcutt.net\/weblog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/35\/revisions\/9210"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/orcutt.net\/weblog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=35"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/orcutt.net\/weblog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=35"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/orcutt.net\/weblog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=35"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}