I've been thinking about my writing process today. Berating myself at my lack of self discipline. I want to write but it's a total act of iron will for me to sit down and write for an hour every day. I mean, I do get stuff written, but only if I'm on on external kind of schedule. I really want to be able to get to the point where I can follow my own schedule, but how I do that is such a mystery to me. I'm driven but I guess I'm not driven enough.

In Stephen King's book on writing, he said he wrote about 10 pages a day and he's very regular about his writing. Joyce Carol Oates is the same way. She's totally self disciplined about her writing, writes about three books a year and has a full time job I think teaching at Princeton. Both have been writing since they were kids, so they're been writing for years. I've only been writing seriously for four years, which means I don't have the years of discipline and habits that they do. I wonder if I'll ever get this way.

I keep thinking I will one day, if I just work at it. But then another part of me just thinks I'm fighting this losing battle against my own laziness and inertia. When I do sit down to write, I really enjoy it. I read somewhere today that Joyce Carol Oates said writing is another way to tell yourself a story and I think it's true. When I write, I tell myself a story. So writing has never been a painful, pulling ideas out of thin air kind of thing for me. Writing for the most part has mostly been very enjoyable for me. But it's the discipline of doing it every day that I don't like and that's the painful, hard part; the forcing of myself to sit down and work. It's bad enough I have to do it at work to earn a paycheck, but it's another thing to do it at home when I could be doing all sorts of other things that are equally enjoyable and not such a pain.

But I have to break through this not writing every day barrier and I guess I'll keep reading and trying different techniques till I do.