Once again.. I am meant to be writing my book, and instead I am distractedly typing away on WordPress.
My boyfriend just published an article about motivation, and in that he commented on the difference between motivation and discipline. He pointed out that whilst he is motivated to write, he is not disciplined enough (atm) to move from the blog posts and story excepts, and onto the thing which bigger and scarier- his book.
Or he is, but not at the ratio that he would like.
His ‘work on book:general writing’ ratio is probably at about 1:4. Over the last week mine has been at about 1:10.. whoops. Though, to be fair to myself, I made a conscious decision at the beginning of last week to spend the whole week working on my blog.
I wanted to see if I gained any more traffic by publishing articles daily (which I have), and I wanted to focus on reconnecting with a lot of my follower who I had lost touch with. I hit 100 followers the weekend before last, and so spent last week trying to build on that positivity.
This has gone really well, but now the book looms.. I cannot justify spending another week working on the blog- I need to get back to the serious stuff!
Going back to Ru’s distinction between motivation and discipline; it is like I need to channel the energy and the enthusiasm which makes up my motivation; I need to be strict with myself and put that energy into the work I really want it to fuel.
Motivation without discipline is great, if you are ok to kinda fly between projects, and have no driving desire to really achieve or complete anything. It is when there is a desired focus for that energy; something you really want to achieve– that is when you need discipline and the strength of will to use that energy wisely and efficiently.
I find that I am disciplined for a while and able to work well and get lots done; but then I lose that focus again and very quickly start to flounder. I kinda vacillate between states of discipline and non-discipline. I guess this is something every writer deals with, and writing about it probably isn’t doing much to help..
If I could work out what was happening in those moments when my focus and attention drifted- that might be useful. I guess that is a project for another day.
I’m currently planing an article on the differences between cathartic writing and self indulgent writing.. and what causes one to be useful and the other not so. Though this is feeding into my terrible ratio of 1:10- and isn’t contributing anything to the work I really want to finish!
I’m being very self-indulgent right now… 😉
I just need to keep keep focusing on the thing I really want to achieve; the project I really want to finish. The motivation is there, and the discipline is there- quite a lot of the time.. I’ve had a week to let ideas germinate and sink into my thinking, and I have a free afternoon ahead of me.
I just need to get off WordPress.
You can read my wonderful boyfriends article on motivation here: https://ruhenhoque.wordpress.com/2017/02/27/motivation-a-strange-word/
Mad new world 
You (and your boyfriend) have just clicked a switch in my head. I’ve been wanting to write stories and instead have been queuing blog posts ad infinitum (I have several weeks of posts scheduled). I didn’t realise until this post that it was a matter of discipline. I’ve obviously got the motivation to write (I wrote 9000 words of blog entries last week alone), so I didn’t understand why I couldn’t bring myself to write what I was wanting to write. Now I do. Thank you for this post!
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Lol am so glad we were able to help out!!.. and good luck with the story writing- it’s bloody hard going at times!
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