Discipline

I decided that most of what's wrong with my life is due to lack of discipline. And the word comes up all the time related to writing: all the experts say you need to write every day. Either first thing in the morning, or you make an appointment with yourself and commit to it. I've seen that, beyond a shadow of a doubt, my writing gets better when I write more often. I can write every day for two weeks, and at the end of the time, the material is always better. And yet, I've always resisted making the habit permanent. Maybe it's just my inherent lack of discipline. So what better way to jump-start on the path to a more disciplined life than by taking on this very simple, well-defined, highly-touted approach to writing? Okay. So yesterday I said I'd do it, and yesterday I did it. Great. That was easy. Today I'm home with the kids, and it's just that tiny bit harder to pick a time and make it happen, but still: pretty easy. 1pm was the time.

I decided that today I'll write for 15 minutes on some random topic, and I've got a nice little book ("The Writer's Block") in which every page is a writing assignment. Open it to a random page, take your assignment and go. So by 12:57 I've got Gemma in bed, and I'm running downstairs to the studio to get the book. Open the book to a random page, and there's a little photo and a "starter" word -- one word. The picture was ballerina feet, up on tiptoe, and the one word?

"Discipline."

Somebody trying to tell me something here?